Page 77 of The Compound

“Fever?” he asked, bewildered. “Where are the others?”

“Outside.”

“What, all of them?”

I wiped some of the sweat off his brow. “I’ll be back in a minute. Try and drink some more water, if you can.”

I went to a downstairs bathroom and got some ibuprofen. I drenched a towel with water, returning as quickly as I could. I glanced out the window, but there was nothing to see, only darkness.

Andrew had fallen asleep again, and it was more difficult to wake him this time.

“Oh, Lily,” he said, vaguely surprised. “Where’s Sam?”

“Open up,” I said. “I have something to make you feel better.”

He looked around, agitated. “Where’s Sam? He’s not in your bed.”

“Sam’s in the garden,” I said. “He wanted to check on the vegetables one more time before he went to sleep. Now, open up for me, Andrew, okay?” He opened his mouth. His tongue was white. I placed the ibuprofen on it and poured more water into his mouth. He fell asleep again shortly after.

I placed the wet towel on his forehead, and dribbled some water on his lips, which were still raw and bloody. The towel seemed to heat up in a very short space of time.

A noise. I looked up and found Tom. He sat heavily on the bed. He looked exhausted. “Well, she’s gone,” he said. I said nothing and wiped at the sweat gathering in the hollow of Andrew’s throat.

“How is he?”

I shrugged. Tom came over to look at him.

“Thanks for looking after him,” he said.

I turned my back to him.

“I forget, sometimes, how young you are, Lily. Well, look at you now. Final three.”

I kept my back to him, not saying a word.

He got into bed, and I continued to mop Andrew’s face, and waited for the fever to break. I hated them both, but I didn’t want Andrew to die—I stayed awake as long as I could, waking him when I could to pour more water into his mouth. I must have fallen asleep at some point, for I woke later, in my own bed, though I didn’t remember moving from Andrew’s side. I didn’t wake of my own accord: it was the sound of the voice that pulled me from my sleep.

“Good morning,” it said. “Andrew has been temporarily removed from the compound in order to receive medical treatment. He has not been banished and will return as soon as is medically advisable.”

I thought I might have been dreaming, but Andrew’s bed was empty. Tom was lying on his bed atop the covers, the sunlight through the skylight shining on his scars and burns. He didn’t move, but I knew he was awake.

Seventeen

Tom didn’t leave his bedfor most of the day. I knew that he was wiped from dehydration, but I thought he might also be moping over Becca’s departure.

I left him there, and checked all the taps and lights and air conditioning, paranoid that something else could be turned off. I would have liked to spend the day in bed as well, but I was frightened of Tom, and frightened, too, of the next thing that might be taken from us, or the return of the producers. Though of course the producers had been nearby the whole time, their presence now felt ominous. Watching Tom sleep, I wondered at what point they had stepped in; how much pain could be inflicted before it was deemed too much?

We passed the majority of the day without seeing much of each other. I added to my little nest in the linen room, where I’d begun to cache food and bottles of water, some clothes and other essentials. I checked the big screen compulsively, but it remained turned off, as it had been during my first days here. It might have been because Andrew was absent, or it might have been because Tom and I were being given a brief reprieve. Although I was glad of it, it unnerved me to see it blank.

I wandered into the dressing room, where I could still smell the other girls’ perfumes. My little screen was glowing softly. I walked toward it, as though in a trance. I had been neglecting my Personal Tasks for weeks, but now that I thought to do them again, I felt a terrible, compulsive need to do as many as I possibly could. In the final three, the rewards were usually incredible, and after our experience with the water, I felt that I had to take everything that was offered. I was determined to win, but I knew that Tom was equally driven; if he did best me, I wanted todepart with a sickening amount of rewards, riches that would make leaving bearable. But they seemed to know that I was desperate for a reward: the task readGive Tom a compliment.Upon seeing it, I threw a shoe at the wall in a fit of anger. I thought, for the first time in a while, about the people watching, how stupid they must have thought that I was. I imagined them laughing at me, trapped in the house with Tom, like a rabbit living with a lion. How silly they would think me, simpering up at him and telling him that he was brilliant.

But the reward was diamond earrings.

I found Tom in the gym. He was lifting dumbbells, the ones that Ryan had earned a long time ago. I thought, again, of how things might look as a viewer: when I had regained my strength, I returned to doing Personal Tasks; when Tom had regained his strength, he went to work out.

“You okay?” he asked when he saw me. I nodded, and when I didn’t say anything he went back to lifting.

“How heavy are those?”

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