The Compound: A Novel

Although it was well built and well supplied, it was incredibly messy; bewilderingly so. There were eggshells on the ground, splashes of sauce on the wall, and dishes in the sink. The floor was dirty, the counters sticky. The bins were overflowing and smelled of rotting meat.

“There’s no freezer,” Jacintha said.

“The fridge is huge, though,” I said. I opened the chrome double doors, admiring its wingspan, and smiled at her. She looked at me like she wasn’t sure about me yet.

There was a large window above the sink that stretched almost the length of the wall. It had a nice effect, though it meant that the kitchen was uncomfortably warm, almost pulsing with heat. Through it, I could spot the swimming pool in the distance. It was only when I saw the blue-tinted water, glinting in the sun, that I fully came to terms with where I was and what we were doing.

“Look,” Jacintha said. It took me a minute to see the girl, curled up as she was, sleeping on the ground at the lip of the pool.

We went out to inspect her. When we approached her, she didn’t move. I wondered briefly if she was dead. Jacintha crouched down and shook her by the shoulder. For a second, looking down at her, I thought that she looked a lot like myself, and felt a pulse of worry. Then the girl woke, and I could see that she didn’t actually look like me: she was just thin and blond too. She was faintly pink all over from lying in the sun. The girl looked up at us, adjusting her hair.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “I’m Susie.” Jacintha and I introduced ourselves, and Susie smiled and nodded. “Those are great names,” she said with energy.

We looked at each other, trying to think of something to say.

“Isn’t the pool incredible?” Susie asked.

I said, “I was just thinking that.”

“I don’t know how I woke up here. I don’t remember going to sleep, but that doesn’t really matter now, does it? Oh,” she said, looking around her. “There’s so much sand. Wow. It’s warm, too. I’ve only just woken up, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so warm in my life! Where did you two wake up?”

“We both were in the bedroom,” Jacintha said. Susie looked a little thrown, so I said, “You’re the first we’ve found.” She looked happier, and we set out to find the others.

As we wandered, we were able to take in, for the first time, the scale of the place where we would be living. The compound spilled out, varied and brilliant: red-brown earth, yellowed grass in some places and startling, vivid greenery in others; pebbled paths, small bits of vegetation and amenities, and surrounding it all, separated from us by a ring of bushes, the desert stretching endlessly to the horizon. Toward the back of the compound, the grass and vegetation bloomed, and an irrigation system spat lazy drizzles of water, the light casting rainbows through the droplets, a casual sort of beauty that contrasted almost garishly with the monotonous plains that lay beyond. The sight of the desert gave me pause; I had seen it before on the television, of course, but it was a different thing entirely to see it before me. The pale gold sand and the flat, barren land seemed as though it had never been tempered by human feet. It was from there that the boys would come, and to there that we would be banished, if it came to that.

While the sheer size of the compound was incredible, it was distinctly run-down. It looked a lot like the home of a billionaire, if the billionaire’s staff had gone on strike.

Directly in front of the house was a patio, wrapping around the side. To the west of the house the grounds were lush and attractive, with long paths intersecting pretty flower beds. There was a pond glimmering in the distance, and gates and walls that led to nowhere as though someone had started to section off parts, but had given up. At the farthest western point sat an immense maze, green and imposing.

The west was picturesque, while the east was functional. There was a tennis court: no net or equipment, but the ground had been properly marked. There was a small outdoor gym with a bench and a step machine. A little farther beyond, there was a ping-pong table, which looked fairly new, and a trampoline with rusted springs and tired, sagging canvas.

Curiously, though there were many parts of the compound which were in serious disarray, you could see that there had been a concerted effort to build a boundary. As well as the bushes, which had been planted a long, long time ago, there was a simple wooden fence running along the entire grounds, demarcating where our home ended at the expanse of the desert. Previously, I knew, there had been only barbed wire. The fence was an upgrade.

There was much to explore, but I was most interested in the huge, egg-shaped pool, and wherever we walked, I kept turning back to look at it again. The pool was the thing that held the place together: it was what transformed some ill-kept gardens and strange walkways into a residence.

The next girl found us; she was already awake. She was standing in a sandy patch of ground behind the house. She had her hands on her hips, looking out into the desert, so still that we hadn’t noticed her at first. She raised her arm in greeting, and I felt her eyes move across us, taking in what she could. Even before we reached her, even from a distance, and with her face partly covered, I could tell that she was beautiful. There was something in the way that she stood, or maybe something about the way her hair fell. Sure enough, when we reached her she dropped her hand, and I saw that she had the kind of face that drove people to madness, with desire or with envy.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Candice.” She looked at us expectantly, and we each introduced ourselves. I remembered that I wasn’t wearing any makeup.

I couldn’t help but stare at her, even as I tried not to look too bothered by her presence. Her hair was long and dark, intimidatingly straight despite the humidity. She had particularly striking eyes of a very light blue, almost translucent; they looked over us carefully, appraisingly. Her mouth was not of a shape or size that was currently in vogue; my own lips were carefully constructed to look full and plump. Her mouth was wide with narrow lips, a decisive slash of pink across her face. There was no part of her beauty that didn’t make me question mine.

“Four of us, now. I think I saw someone asleep by that flower arch. This way,” she said, and we followed her.

It took us a long time to find the others—probably a couple of hours. We searched the whole compound, except for the maze, which none of us wanted to enter, even in a group. When all ten of us had gathered together, we headed toward the pool. The heat was relentless, shocking even, and I had no thought beyond getting cool. We stripped down to our underwear and slipped into the water, relief coming at once.

I lay on my back and looked at the sky above me. It was a different blue than I was used to. It was clear, entirely untouched by clouds or smog, with no tall buildings to block out great chunks of it, nor artificial lights to disguise its hues. The compound was rough around the edges, definitely, and needed a great deal of work, but there was something about it that felt fantastically real. Wherever the cameras were, they weren’t easy to spot.

We all drifted about the pool aimlessly. We smiled if we caught each other’s eyes, but didn’t speak. I didn’t enjoy the silence. I thought it made it seem as though we were hatching plans of some sort, though I suppose people only wanted to be left to their own thoughts. Toward one end of the pool, Susie was doing handstands. I didn’t join in, but I swam toward her and watched. She was pretty good: her legs were straight as an arrow in the air, and when she was done, she did a tumble under the water and returned to the surface, smiling.

I’ve always been a passive kind of person; it is both my worst quality and the thing that people like most about me. If the others had stayed in the pool for the rest of the day I would have done the same, but apparently they only wanted to cool off, so when the others got out, I got out too, and when everyone sat under the shade of a tree, I did the same, though I dreaded the thought of insects on my bare skin. Were there ticks in the desert? I wanted to look it up, but remembered that I had no phone.

Candice was the last to get out of the pool. I watched her from the shade; we all did. She slicked her hair back in one casual sweeping motion, pressing it close to her skull and away from her face. She dived under the water: sleek, without a splash, only her ankles flashing in the air before she was fully submerged. For a few seconds, she traveled silently under the water, an abstract blur, and emerged at the other side. She walked slowly up the steps, exposing her body one inch at a time, until she was beyond the domain of the water and stood on the deck, dripping and strong-limbed, her hair still in place.

I could imagine just how impressive it would have looked for people watching. It was sort of embarrassing, actually: Candice knew exactly what she was doing, and the rest of us were just bumbling around, trying to avoid the worst of the heat.

When we all had found a comfortable spot to sit, we got to talking a little. A blond-haired girl named Eloise said that she liked my hair, and I said that I liked her nails. Another girl, beautiful and buxom, who I thought might be called Vanessa, added that she felt as though she might die from the heat. It was all harmless chitchat, as there wasn’t much we could really say. Then Candice caught my eye, and said, “If the boys were to arrive this minute, what kind of guy would you go for?”

The gaze of every girl was resting on me. I wrung my hair out a little, to give myself time. It was a good question. It was the question we needed to get out of the way, before they came.

“Probably the guy who gets me into trouble,” I said. I thought it was a good answer, even if it wasn’t necessarily true; I had prepared it in the weeks before I came. I thought that it was open enough that I wasn’t hemming myself in before I’d seen anyone, and it made me sound adventurous. Some of the girls nodded thoughtfully as they looked at me. “And I definitely prefer an older man.”

“Do you have daddy issues?” Susie asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“What about you?” I asked Candice. “What are you looking for?”

She shook her hair out; it was still wet, and small droplets flew about her, one landing on my ankle. I pressed a hand to my arm: it was warmer than the rest of me. I was burning already.

“I like boys who are driven,” she said. “A man who knows himself. That’s what I want.”

The question of what kind of man we each wanted was passed around from girl to girl. Susie liked boys who treated her nicely, and who liked to have fun. Susie didn’t like boys who were boring. Jacintha liked boys who were kind, especially to people they didn’t know. Jacintha cared deeply about her family, and she wanted a man who was also family oriented. Mia liked boys who worked out: it showed dedication, and she appreciated a man who could pick her up above his head. She liked to feel dainty. Short, scrawny guys disgusted her. Becca, who was quiet, and blushed as she gave her answer, said that she liked a man who was kind—that was all. The other girls didn’t answer, which I thought was suspicious.

“When do you think the boys will get here?” Mia asked.

We all glanced at each other.

“It can take a while,” Jacintha said carefully. I understood that Jacintha wanted to say that in previous years it had sometimes taken only hours and sometimes days. She couldn’t say this explicitly, because it would have broken one of the rules.

There were several rules at the compound. The first was that it was forbidden to discuss that the show was in fact a show, or that we had seen the show before. It ruined the experience for the viewer and the participants, we had been told. The second was that we couldn’t discuss our life outside of the compound unless we had been instructed to do so. The third was that it was forbidden to harm another resident. There were other rules, but they wouldn’t come into effect until the boys arrived. We all understood that if we broke any of these rules we would be punished.

“We should start getting the place in shape now, in case they’re here by tonight,” another girl said. I couldn’t remember her name, but she was tall, with sharp features and a faint accent that I couldn’t place. I imagined her as a marketing intern, going out for salads for lunch. As I examined her, she turned and looked at me. I pretended to stare at the sky behind her.

“Where to start?” Eloise said. “The whole place is a mess.”

“The house,” Candice said, and stood. “The rest can wait. We need to get the kitchen and bedroom in shape first.” Candice held her hand out to me. Her grip was strong, and the muscles in her arms moved subtly as she pulled me to my feet. I was small and soft by comparison. The rest of the girls got up too, and we filed into the house like a line of ants. I kept looking around me, trying to make sense of the space, the condition that it was in. Along the way, we picked up the odd bit of rubbish that we found, left by the residents who had come before us.

We separated into different rooms, and it was a relief not to have to look at all nine of the girls at once. Some went upstairs to clean the bedroom, while a group went into the living room to tidy up the mess. I helped in the kitchen, cleaning the surfaces and taking the rubbish out. There was no hoover, and no dustpan either: we swept up the dust using a table mat. The absence of a hoover particularly disturbed Mia, who said, “I didn’t think it would be so poorly equipped. It’s primitive, no?”

“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 before us.

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 straightener that 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 speak without 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—I don’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.