Page 3 of The Compound

“We have a washing machine and a dishwasher,” Vanessa said. “It’s not a bad start.”

I picked up a half-eaten apple from the windowsill of the kitchen, around which fruit flies had begun to swarm. The inside of the apple was brown, but not rotten. I reckoned it had been eaten a day ago, maybe less. As I was throwing it out, I saw greasy paper plates and pizza boxes in the bin.

“They had pizza,” I said. No one responded or showed any interest, but it was interesting to me at least. It made the previous residents seem real. I had already begun to see the place as ours; it was strange to think of other people living there beforeus.

I didn’t know under what circumstances they had left—as this year’s batch of contestants we hadn’t been allowed to watch for the last couple of weeks. The last time I had been able to watch, the rewards were just starting to get really good. One of the girls had gotten a hair straightenerthat I’d always wanted. “Salon standard,” I remembered her saying, showing the steaming straightener to the other girls. She had shared it on the first day she received it, but after that had locked it in a drawer and did her hair only at night, when the others were asleep. The other girls would wake up, frizzy-haired, and look at her resentfully.

“I don’t understand why they didn’t take better care of the place,” Mia said.

“It’s not that bad,” Jacintha said. She was standing at the window in the kitchen and pointed out to the garden beyond. “They planted flowers, see?”

I looked out into the garden, at the brushes of pink and violet among the yellow-green grass. Yes, the place was beautiful, even if it needed work. We could begin in earnest when the boys arrived.

We cleaned the dishes and left the kitchen in some semblance of order. But before we prepared dinner we opted to change for the evening, lest the boys arrive and find us as we were, hair uncombed and faces bare.

In our dressing room, we sifted through the various garments that had been left behind. We were generous with each other, bestowing pieces to the girl they would suit the best, and lavishly complimenting each other every time we tried something on. I found a couple of things I liked, and picked my second-favorite one to wear, a pink gingham romper. I decided I would save the nicest piece—a red dress with a sweetheart neckline—for when I needed it badly.

On the front of each wardrobe was a mirror, meaning that even though we turned our backs or retreated into corners there was no way to avoid seeing each other. As I stripped off my shorts and my tank top, I saw flashing limbs in the mirrors: someone’s arm contorting to slip into a dress, someone else’s thigh, hair being swept over a shoulder. I knew that there were a number of cameras in the room, and that we all were being filmed, but, oddly enough, that was one of the aspects of the day which perturbed me the least. I didn’t bother to examine the room to see where the cameras might be. I more or less acted as I had on the outside—with the assumption that we were all being watched in some way or another.

There were very few makeup products, only some different shades of foundation, and two tubes of mascara which we passed around without hesitation. In a different situation I might have thought twice about sharing eye makeup with strangers, but we were in no position to be fussy. Jacintha hovered around when we were sorting through the foundation, and I saw that there was no makeup for dark skin. She met my eye and shrugged. “It’s fine,” she said.

“Sit down,” I said. “I’ll do your eyes.”

I did her makeup with careful swipes, my hand pressed lightly to her cheek to stop her head from moving. When I was finished, she opened her hand and showed me something dark and spiderlike.

“Here,” she said. “Have them. I don’t think they’ve been used.”

They were false eyelashes. I fingered them, feather-light and delicate. “Are you sure?”

She nodded and passed me the glue. I said, “If you want, I can try to use the mascara to do winged eyeliner on you.”

As we did our faces, we kept looking toward the door. Though we were looking at ourselves, we were thinking of the boys. Every so often, if someone thought they heard something and emitted a sudden, sharp “Shhh!,” we all fell deathly silent, straining to hear. When nothing came of it, we laughed at ourselves.

Once we were ready, presentable if not glamorous, we went to the kitchen and made a simple dinner of omelettes. There were two bottles of champagne in the fridge, which we divided up, drinking little sips from little glasses. In the absence of chairs, we sat out on the grass, plates in our laps or balanced on our knees. The air was not sweet, but thick and filled with a desert musk, sitting heavily on my skin. It was intoxicating, and I felt my head go light and airy. I smiled genially at everyone, until I remembered that I look clown-like when I smile too widely. I tried for a moderate curling of my lips, like I had just recalled a joke.

We began to chat with more enthusiasm now, imagining different things we could do with the compound, imagining the kinds of boys who might show up and what kinds of rewards we might get. After a while of saying different variations of the same thing, I was able to speakwithout thinking, and observe the girls, trying to fathom what I could from their idle chat. The truth is, we weren’t interested in getting to know each other—not yet. We were assessing who was the most beautiful and who might cause trouble. At the same time, we were analyzing what our own place in the group might be. Within minutes of speaking to the girls, I knew that I was one of the most beautiful, and one of the least interesting.

I kept smiling and chatting pleasantly while I examined the girls before me, comparing them to myself, and trying to see them as the boys might. Ten of us: myself, Jacintha, Sarah, Candice, Susie, Becca, Melissa, Mia, Vanessa, and Eloise.

Ever since I was a teenager, I worried that in a group of people I would be the stupidest one there. It was sometimes the case, and sometimes it wasn’t. I didn’t think I really was stupid, only that I didn’t know much about bookish things; I became uncomfortable when history or geography was mentioned and had an innate fear of politics. I think I have my own smarts, though. I can read people okay, though sometimes I get things wrong. I don’t think of that as a flaw in my small skill, so much as a testament to the unpredictability of human nature. But with relief, I realized that as long as Susie lived in the compound, I would not be the dimmest person there. I’m not saying that to be disparaging—Idon’t actually value intelligence that much in a person. Intelligence can be artificial, but charm is always real, and Susie had that in spades.

“I love it here already,” she said to me earnestly, her hand on my arm. “It’s so nice to be somewhere new.” I was curious about Susie’s age. I thought that she might be a little younger than me, but it was hard to tell. She had a certain youthful quality to her. I imagined her working as a tour guide, high-fiving children and telling couples that they looked cute together.

Becca was the quietest; she fidgeted with her shorts and looked down at the ground when she spoke. She was pretty in an understated way, particularly when she smiled. She didn’t smile often, but looked around her a lot, as though waiting for someone else to step in. She was the smallest of us all, and paler than anyone. She had applied no tan in preparation for coming. She was also the only one with short hair.

Mia was bitchy. I could tell that she was trying to hide it for the sake of first impressions, but bitchiness will out, and more than once I saw her eyes slide sideways or roll upward when she disliked what someone was saying. I had also seen her openly sneer in another girl’s face. Wisely, she didn’t try it with Candice, but she didn’t go out of her way to be nice to her either. I could tell that she didn’t want to be mean: she tried at kindness, and sometimes succeeded. She was generally thoughtful, and was the first to jump up to get people water, or to clean the dishes. She was a self-proclaimed realist.

“I don’t like bullshit,” she said, looking around her, meeting people’s eyes. “I’m straight. I expect others to be straight, too.” Her hair was a bright, artificial red, which she moved about a great deal as she spoke, and she had long, well-maintained acrylic nails. She was a lot, but she was still someone you wanted to be around: she had that kind of energy.

But it was Candice who shone, and toward Candice that we all gravitated. She was nice, in an offhand kind of way, and had an air of authority about her that we unquestioningly submitted to. Within minutes of sitting beside her, I found myself thinking, with a quiet, burning intensity, that if I could have been anyone in the world, I would be Candice.

At some point, I heard a girl whose name, I thought, was Melissa say, “I have been to a desert before actually, on a family holiday. It was very different.” We stared at her. She looked back at us, uncomprehending.

A voice sounded around us, clear as a bell. I couldn’t tell where it came from. Watching the show the voice sounded androgynous, but listening to it in person I thought it sounded distinctly feminine.

“Good evening,” the voice said. “Please refrain from revealing personal information unless instructed to do so in a task.”

We sat still and looked at each other. It was entirely silent: there were no birds overhead, or sounds from the house, and no boys yet. The cameras, which I guessed were all around us, hidden in bushes and stuck to walls, did not whir or click; they, too, were silent.

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