Page 91 of The Compound

He looked at the house one more time, and then he turned and walked, until I couldn’t make out his shape from formless shadow. I stayed where I was, sitting on the step, as though waiting for someone else to arrive.

Twenty

It took me a whileto get inside. There was no key, but a selection of odd items: a clothes hanger, a screwdriver, and a hair grip. Clearly, I hadn’t kissed Andrew with enough conviction for the producers. I spent a long time trying to pick the lock, my hands numb, switching from the hair grip to the screwdriver over and over. Several times I considered simply bashing a window in, but I remembered, with a distant sense of surprise, that there would be no one around to fix it for me. When I at last unlocked the door, I felt a surge of satisfaction that dissolved almost at once when I went inside the empty house. I wandered around as though it was an entirely new dwelling. I turned the heat on, and heard the house come to life. In the living room, the screen had lit up green. As I approached, writing appeared in large, white letters.State what you want,it said.

“Slippers,” I said.

I pulled on a coat—Andrew’s coat, which he wore when he was trying to get work done outside—and went to the delivery area. My slippers were there, fur-lined and perfect. I had seen a picture of an actress wearing the same ones as she sat in her makeup chair, reading her script. I had lusted after them for years. I wondered how they knew I wanted that exact pair.

You didn’t have to work for the rewards, but you still had to thank the brand.

“Thank you, Corst,” I said. “I’m glad to be the proud owner of a pair of your limited-edition suede slippers.”

I slipped them on my feet and returned to the big screen. I left my old shoes outside, by the delivery area.

State what you want.

“I want an electric milk frother,” I said. I thought for a few moments. “And I want an oil-based cleanser. I’d like heated hair rollers. And heart-shaped sunglasses, and really soft toilet paper, and an ultra-fast food blender, and a sheepskin rug. And I’d like nail clippers and a handheld hoover and a label maker and giant matchsticks and a jasmine-scented candle. I’d really like a black dress that covers my chest but hugs my ass, and a wide-sleeved striped sweater. And a yogurt that promotes gut health and a motorized inflatable for the pool.”

When I had thanked all the brands, I went back to the big screen and asked for a wheelbarrow. When that arrived, I loaded up my rewards and wheeled them into the house. I wanted to take them to the bedroom—mybedroom—but it would have taken too long, so I went to one of the empty rooms on the bottom floor and left them there. I dragged a mattress into the room and sat cross-legged, sifting through all my new things, and ended up falling asleep where I was. I woke in the middle of the night and started violently, thinking that there was a figure beside me, looming over my bed. But it was only the wheelbarrow full of rewards, and when my heart had returned to its regular rhythm, I drifted back to sleep.

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I asked foran assortment of alcohol, mixers, fruit, syrups, straws, and little pink umbrellas, and spent my days drifting around drinking cocktails. It was too cold to swim anymore, so I wrapped up in warm clothes and lay on my motorized inflatable and floated in the pool for most of the afternoon. When I wanted something I asked the big screen, and I spent the rest of the time thinking about what else I might want. After a couple of days, it became surprisingly hard to think of anything beyond what I already had. On the third day, I ordered a pizza, and had been on my way inside when the voice rang out. “Good evening, Lily,” it said. “Please remember to thank the brand.” I jumped at the sound, dropping my pizza. I stood, shaking. I had forgotten about the voice. I had thought, somehow, that it had left along with everyone else.

“Thank you, Gourmet Gals,” I said. My voice was slurred, and I wassuddenly overtaken by a great wave of shame. I put my pizza in the bin, and thought, distantly, of the empty pizza boxes I had seen on my first day there, left behind by the previous residents. I’d assumed that they left in a hurry, perhaps after some conflict, but I wondered now if they hadn’t left quietly; just finished their meal and left.

The sound of the voice had rattled me, and I went upstairs to my bedroom and hid beneath the blankets for a while. I had forgotten that people could still see me. Once there was only one person left, they only aired an episode weekly, rather than daily. It was just a cursory checkup really, showing the embarrassing or interesting things that they did. Viewers weren’t really invested at that point, but they still had a faint interest; it was like checking up on a friend you hadn’t seen in years. Dropping the pizza on the ground while visibly drunk would probably feature. The moment from the day before when I had cried because I couldn’t get my jumper over my head—that would probably feature too.

I didn’t drink the following day.

I continued to struggle to think of what to ask for. It wasn’t that my desire for things had faded, but rather that I felt overwhelmed by choice, panicked that I was forgetting something that I really wanted, worrying that there was always something better that I just hadn’t thought of yet. I was frequently anxious, feeling as though whenever I wasn’t requesting something I was wasting my opportunity.

Having been in the compound for so long, I found it increasingly difficult to distinguish memories of my own life from the recollections of previous contestants on the show. Although I had never met any of the people from the seasons before me, they seemed more real to me than the people who had made up my life before. I sat by the pool, and thought about Brittany and Donna, generally agreed upon to be the most successful contestants in the history of the show.

Brittany and Donna were friends who had made it to the final two. They had been close from the beginning, and while they each had had boyfriends in the compound, they didn’t seem that bothered when they left. They were friends in the truest sense: they defended each other to the death, were honest and kind to each other, and each thought that the other was the funniest person they had ever met.

Although neither of them actually “won,” they had stayed for the longest time. They didn’t get unlimited rewards, but they worked well together, and did enough Personal Tasks to have a steady stream of supplies. Curiously, the tasks rarely took a sinister or malicious edge for them: they were so committed to having fun that the tasks only heightened their potential for goofing around, or for making each other laugh. Occasionally there was a task which was designed to make them create conflict—tell Donna what you dislike about her—but if they didn’t like the task, they simply ignored it. They seemed content to just enjoy themselves. They filled the bathtub with champagne that they had won, but had never drunk. They both got into the bath, fully clothed, and shrieked with laughter, getting drunk on the bubbles they splashed around in. They did all kinds of silly things, and everyone loved watching them. We kept waiting for one of them to turn on the other, to take the prize for herself, but they never did. They stayed for six weeks on their own, and they seemed to enjoy it immensely. Then Brittany won a kite in a Personal Task. They were both giddy, eager to fly it. It was a beautiful royal blue, I remember, with a golden string. They threw the kite up into the air, over and over, but there was no wind, and it fell back down every time. They tried for a while, the blue of the kite thrust against the blue of the sky, again and again. When it fell once more, they left it on the ground and looked at each other. They didn’t speak—it was impossible to know what passed between them—but they went inside, packed up their things, and left within the hour. The next day there were new contestants in the compound. They binned the kite without a second thought.

That evening, I let myself dissolve into tears: loud, ugly, wailing sobs. I spent the next day in a similar way, crying on the tennis court, crying in the kitchen, crying in bed, and crying while walking around outside. I cried while I ate my breakfast and when I showered. When I wasn’t crying I lay in bed, or sometimes on the couch. After a few days of this, when I was collecting a latte in the morning from the delivery area, I found a small phone, sleek and shining.

I sat by the lip of the pool, phone in hand. The pool was disgustingly dirty, the water a murky gray-green, filled with ash and sand and debris.I might have ordered a new filter, but I didn’t feel up to the work involved.

I called my mother, the only number I knew by heart. It rang for a long time, and I thought that if she didn’t answer, I would just tip myself forward and drop into the pool.

“Hello?” came her voice in my ear.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Yes—is this Lily?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh. Oh, very good. You’re finished with the show, then?”

“No, I’m still here.”

“I thought they didn’t let you talk to people on the outside.”

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