Page 19 of The Compound

Jacintha climbed into my bed, and Ryan went into hers. Carlos came into the room, looking for Jacintha. I held my finger to my lips and pointed to her sleeping form beside me. He nodded, and hung around for a couple of minutes, as though hoping she would wake up. Then he said, “Don’t tell Mia I was here,” and disappeared.

I enjoyed the cool air and the quiet. Before I went to sleep, I thought about how easy everything had become. At the same time, everything here felt new and exciting. I felt, now that I was fully removed from it, that there was nothing for me back home, only the same drudgery, day after day. I didn’t know what might happen in the compound in the following weeks, but I knew that there would be opportunities for more. One simple, even fun task, and something new would appear. What tedium I would have to go through to get the same things at home: standing on my feet for hours, faking smiles, pretending to have energy and enthusiasm. When I slept, I dreamed of prizes falling from the sky, and all of us standing in the desert with our arms outstretched, waiting for them to reachus.

When I woke, the rest of the compound was in the living room, sitting on the brand-new, enormous, L-shaped couch, facing the big screen. They stopped talking when I entered.

Task: Choose one person to banish from the compound

Reward: Freezer

“Look,” Andrew said, and put his hands on his hips. “This isn’t goingto be easy. But we need to be quintessential about it.” In the corner of my vision, I saw Jacintha roll her eyes.

Mia said, “It’ll be worse when we’ve become friends and forged relationships. As it is, we don’t really know each other. We should do it quickly, and not make a spectacle about it.”

We had no pen or paper yet, and debated for a while on how to vote. In years past, they usually had writing materials by now. Instead, we went to the edge of the compound, to the dustiest section where no trees or flowers grew. We spent a while looking for rocks and sharp, pointed pebbles; once we had one of each, we scratched the name of the resident we wanted to banish on the rocks using the pebbles. We all spread out, as though we might try to peek at each other’s answers. We then placed our stones in the designated circle.

When everyone had voted, Tom entered the circle and turned the rocks over, revealing the letters etched on each. We crowded around him, all trying to get a glimpse. Becca received six votes and Gavin had the rest. No one felt the need to speculate, or justify themselves. Gav had broken one of the rules in a moment of carelessness, bringing us closer to some unnamed punishment, and because of Becca we almost didn’t have our L-shaped couch.

“I knew it,” he said morosely. “I knew it would be me.”

We stood around uncertainly for a few moments. I wondered if Gav would kick up some kind of fuss. They often did on the show. I couldn’t think of anything more humiliating than being the first to be voted out. But Gav just said, “I think I’ll get a glass of water first.”

We went back to the house, unsure of what to say. Gav went to the kitchen and ran himself a large glass. He drank it in three long pulls, his throat bobbing, his eyes on the ceiling. We watched him, all seventeen of us, piled in the kitchen.

“Okay,” he said when his glass was empty. “I’ll go now.”

We went out with him. When we reached the southern perimeter he looked nervous.

“It’s not like coming in,” Tom said quietly. “There’ll be someone waiting for you along the way. They’ll show you where to go.”

Unexpectedly, Gav reached forward and seized Tom in a tight, fiercehug. “Thanks, man,” he said. Tom said nothing, but he let Gav cling to him. I looked at Eloise, who had been sharing a bed with Gav. She was pulling at her sleeves nervously, but she was also looking around at the other boys, as though sizing up who else she could share a bed with.

There was no real entrance or exit in the fence separating the desert and the compound, but the boys had made a gap to slip through when they first arrived. There was the barbed wire, too, presumably to keep out animals, and Gav crossed over it carefully, then turned and looked at us as though he thought we might change our minds.

“Bye, Gav,” Andrew said, and some of the others chorused in for a goodbye. “We’ll miss you.”

He looked distinctly disappointed.

“Bye,” he said, and went on his way.

We went back toward the house, going along the back so the boys could pick up the freezer. The freezer was a huge win for us, a major improvement to the compound, but we didn’t celebrate; it wouldn’t have been right.

Gav had left quickly and quietly. He hadn’t taken anything with him, not even the razor. We all agreed that it was a classy move.

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With Gav gone,there would be someone sleeping alone, and therefore another person would be gone in the morning. Sometimes people were banished in twos, but generally viewers liked when the residents voted for one person to be banished, which meant that the rest of the day was fraught with tension about who would be left to sleep on their own. Once again there was a surplus girl, and we were left on the back foot. We all shuffled around the compound for a bit, until Mia spoke decisively.

“Let’s go for a swim,” she said. “We need to cool off.”

When we were changing into our swimming suits, I looked at my screen.

Task: Talk toSam

Reward: Necklace

I paused, rereading it. It was strangely simple, and I wondered why ithad come about. The instructions were occasionally random, but occasionally deliberate. Sometimes they paid attention to what the viewers wanted, and sometimes it was malicious, an attempt to stir up drama. I debated whether or not to do it as I fixed my hair and applied more sun cream. I liked Sam. I wanted to talk to him. It was possible that I liked him maybe a little more than I should, and I didn’t want to get sucked into anything. If I rocked the boat this early with Ryan I mightn’t get such a good opportunity again.

Vanessa walked into the dressing room, carrying some kind of gold fabric. She stripped unhurriedly and put on the garment. She turned slowly in the mirror, observing herself from different angles, watching us watching her. It was very small, made of bronzes and golds, and shone as she moved. My own bikini was blue with polka dots. Beside her, I looked pathetically childish.

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