Page 92 of The Compound

“They don’t, usually, but I’m the last one here, so I guess they let me.”

“The last one, you said? Why are you still there, then?”

“I’m the winner,” I said, irritated. “I get to stay as long as I like.”

“Oh,” she said. I could hear the sounds of our kitchen: the splash of water in the sink, the rumble of the kettle.

“Have you not been watching the show?”

“I watched an episode or two. It wouldn’t be my kind of thing.”

I can’t say how I’d wanted the phone call to go. I felt a little as I had when I was a teenager, terribly drunk at a party, calling her to collect me. I remembered the feeling exactly: standing outside, wobbling in my heels, knowing she would shout at me, but thinking it seemed worth it if she would just come and getme.

“What about that boy you were with? Ryan, was it?”

“Not Ryan. Sam.”

“Sam, okay. I thought you got yourself a man and coupled up together. Is that not how it works?”

“It’s a test,” I said. I felt dreamy; I felt separate from everything around me. I couldn’t reconcile my mother’s voice in my ear and sitting in the compound, my feet resting just beside the scum at the surface of the pool. “You find yourself someone you want to live with, and you couple up. If you really like them, you’ll stay together, and resist the temptation of infinite rewards.”

My mother was quiet for a few minutes. I heard a faint scrape, and a slight creak of wood. I could picture her perfectly, settling down in the red armchair by the kitchen door. It was worn and tired, and had been there since I was born.

“You’re not exactly a winner, then, are you?”

I knew, then, that my mother wouldn’t be there at the collection point, wherever it was. Andrew had said he would come, but I didn’t want to see him. He would be so disappointed in me, to see the mess I had made of the compound: how little effort I had made to keep our home as it had been.

“I might come home soon,” I said. “How are things on the outside, anyway? Has there been any trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lily. Things are the same, I suppose. The best you can hope for, with the way things are.”

I paused, then asked, “Any word on Dad?”

“No,” she said. “Still nothing.” She sounded weary, either from listening to me ask that same question again, or because she had to give the same answer.

I used to think that I had tried that life, and was sick of it. I thought that because I didn’t want my little slice of life—sitting in front of the television, trying not to take up too much space in my mother’s house, avoiding the news yet waiting for an update on my father—that I didn’t want any of it. But in that moment, I suddenly wanted to go to a city, and have total strangers walk right by me; I wanted to go to the sea, and let my hair be thrown about by violent, salty winds; I wanted to find Sam, and lie beside him on a tiny bed in a tiny room, and make plans for the weekend together. “Do you think I should stay here, then?”

“Stay there? And do what?”

I picked at the laces of one of my shoes. They were white and gleaming, fresh from the box. “I don’t have to do anything here. I can just live in peace. No one disturbs me. The house, the whole compound, it’s mine to do with as I want. If I choose to leave, the next group of contestants can come and start over, like we did.”

“And what if you decided to stay? What happens then?”

“What do you mean what happens then? I can stay here and get whatever I want just by asking for it.” There was silence for a moment. “The house, the compound, the rewards: it’s all mine. No one has stayed longer than six weeks. But I think I’ll be the first. The longer you stay the more famous you become. No one remembers the people who only stay for a few days, but everyone remembers the two girls who stayed for six weeks.”

“Well,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”

“Hey,” I said. “Do you know—have you heard—if people, ah…like me?”

“I wouldn’t know. I really haven’t been paying much attention. I’m sure they like you. Why wouldn’t they? I did mean to tune in a bit more, but you know how things are with work. I come home so tired, I don’t want to do anything. In fact, I’d better go, it’s about time I got ready. I don’t want to be late.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“All right. Thanks for calling.” I stared unseeing in front of me, feeling hollowed out.

As soon as I hung up, the phone died. I looked at it in my hand, small and dark, like a cockroach. I hadn’t ever seen a version like it, and thought that a new model must have been released while I had been in the compound.

I went to bed, though the sun was still up. I was cold, and wanted to cocoon myself in blankets and stare at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure what time it was; I could have requested a clock, but I had a vague dread of seeing the slow movement of time. I didn’t want to be reminded of how much of it had passed, and how little I had achieved. I wondered if they would kick me out when it became clear that I wasn’t going to do anything entertaining, or if they would continue to watch me as I slept in later and later, and let myself and the compound go to ruin.

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