Page 88 of The Compound

Andrew rarely did Personal Tasks—a couple of days after his return, he received a jersey of his favorite footballer, Maximo Igale. He seemed content with the reward, and wore it most days, but otherwise, he didn’t bother to check his little screen. He spent most of his time outside, mostly working on his monument, which seemed to be an immense pile of rubbish which towered higher each day. There was the packaging that my rewards came in, and other items that people had left behind, and things around the house that had broken, and unidentifiable lumpen objects that had survived the fire. It looked hideous, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him so. For the rest of the day, he puttered about, sometimes trying to mend the fence around the perimeter, and sometimes, worryingly, walking around and talking to himself.

I couldn’t pretend not to notice that Andrew had become strange since his return. His moods were erratic, and while he was sometimes kind and considerate, he was more often distracted and agitated. He came to bed later and later, and slept little, always awake and at work before I had woken. He was irritated by any kind of mess and snapped at me to keep the house orderly. He would always apologize afterward, wringing his hands nervously.

We tried, with excruciating awkwardness, to appear like something resembling a couple. This mostly involved him holding my hand while sitting next to me on the sofa in the evenings, telling me about how his day had gone. Andrew liked to talk about what he was going to do the following day, but most of all, he liked to talk about how well he had been looked after by the producers and production team when he had been sick. He could talk about them for hours. I felt that I had no choice but to stay quiet and listen to him, his hand soft in mine. Mostly, I tried to disassociate and think of other things.

One night, when he had run out of things to talk about, and we were sitting in silence, I asked him, “Do you think Sam would want to see me? On the outside?”

Andrew didn’t look at me. “I don’t know,” he said. I nodded and worked hard not to cry.

“Do you think Candice would want to see you?”

“No,” he said. “She wouldn’t.”

“But how do you know? She might be happy to see you, when you get out.”

“Why would she be? I chose this over her. She wouldn’t want to be second best, and I wouldn’t expect her to, either. And anyway, we’re not going to leave, either of us. We’re going to stay for longer than anyone has: six months, maybe a year. We’ll make a great place for ourselves, and when we finally do leave, the next contestants will be so impressed with what we had.” He took my hand and rested his cheek on the crown of my head.

Though our forced attempt at a relationship was ridiculous to me, there must have been people at home who either enjoyed the sham we presented, or wanted to torture us further. Some of my Personal Rewards were now faintly erotic: lily-scented perfume, designer lingerie, jewel-encrusted handcuffs. They embarrassed me: I added them to the pile of items that made up Andrew’s monument and hoped that he didn’t notice.

Andrew seemed content enough as we were, and never brought up the possibility that one of us might leave. I really don’t think that Andrew wanted to win: I think he didn’t want to leave, but needed someonearound to validate him. I knew that eventually I would have to consider how I might get him to leave, but the more established our routine became, the easier it was to put it off. Another few days, I told myself every week, the air becoming cold and crisp, the evenings rapidly drawingin.

As we spent our tense evenings sitting next to each other in the living room, the screen was lit before us, our current task casting Andrew’s face in a faint blue glow, unchanging for as long as we didn’t do it. In the show’s familiar blocky font, it stated that the reward would be a key, though what it would unlock we didn’t know. We never discussed the screen, though it loomed in front of us, unmissable.Task,it read, and then, simply:Kiss the other resident.

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One night Andrewdidn’t come to bed at all. When the moon had drifted from the view of the skylight, and I had lain stiffly for what was surely hours, sleepless with worry, I went outside to look for him. I felt a thrill of fear the moment I stepped outside. The nights were now bitterly cold, a biting, brutal chill unlike anything I was used to. My breath was visible before me, and I stood in the doorway for longer than I should have, reluctant to leave the warmth of the house. Some instinct told me not to leave, to go back to bed. Then I saw Andrew, standing by the northern perimeter, a torch in his hand, looking out over the desert sands. I called his name, but he didn’t answer. I grabbed his coat that he kept by the door and went out to join him. Though I called his name repeatedly, he still startled when I reached him, looking at me with a confusion that reminded me of how he had been in the throes of fever.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked. “It’s freezing.”

“I’m just keeping an eye out,” he said.

“For what? You can’t stay out in the cold,” I said. “You’ll get sick.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “if I did get sick, they’d come and look after me.”

I wondered, with a drop of dread, if Andrew wanted to get sick.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, putting my hand on his arm.

“Just a little longer.”

“No, Andrew. This is stupid. Let’s go inside. You need to sleep.”

“I think I’ll just work on the monument for a little longer.”

Losing patience, I said, “It’s the middle of the night. You’re being ridiculous.”

He turned to look at me, swinging the torch, the beam breaking up the night. His face was grave. “You’re not angry at me, are you?”

“No, I’m not mad. I just think we should go back inside.”

“You’re sure you’re not mad? You’re not thinking of—of going, are you?”

“No, I’m not thinking of going. I’m going to stay here for a very long time.”

He turned to face out into the desert again, the light of the torch swiveling along with him. “I didn’t realize until they took me away how close they are. That’s how they were able to come so quickly. To us, it just looks like sand and nothingness, but there’s vents connecting us to them, just beyond, I think. It’s an incredible setup—they have everything out there. Of course,” he said quietly, “it’s not as nice as the compound.”

“We’ve made the compound special,” I said. “We’ve made it our home.”

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