Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.
“They had come from the hills behind the compound, south of the tennis court, slipping through a gap in the fence in the early morning. If we’d have thought to go around to the back of the house we might have seen them yesterday, slowly, slowly crossing the terrain and making their way toward us.They were clearly exhausted: even the ones who were in good shape had cracked lips, were sunburned and covered in brown-gold desert sand. Some of them looked worse: there were three or four who had scrapes and bruises across their faces and arms. One of them, huge and hulking, had scrapes all across his chest, a gash on his leg, and an impressive black eye. I wondered if any of the boys had fought in the wars.It was with some embarrassment that we led them to the grass to sit—they seemed a little surprised that there were no seats, but they didn’t complain. We brought them endless jugs of water and had some food ready to give them: toast with jam, bacon, eggs, bowls of baked beans. One of them lifted the bowl of beans to his face and poured it into his mouth like it was the final dribbles of milk in a cereal bowl. They’d had some supplies with them, they told us, but it wasn’t the same as real home-cooked food. It felt almost indecent, we girls rested and showered, gazing at the boys, dirty and exhausted, their eyes darting around the compound, and traveling inexorably back to us. I thought that the oldest might have been in his early thirties, while the youngest was surely no older than twenty. Even after three days in the desert they were beautiful. But we were beautiful too, and we sat straight and let them look.“How many of you are there?” I asked, though I had counted already.I had to ask, because it was the most important question.“Nine,” one of the boys said. He had neatly trimmed brown hair and warm brown eyes, and sunburn across his neck and his collarbones.One of the boys who had scrapes across his chest, who had introduced himself as Andrew, said, “One of the boys got lost. He won’t be coming.”Yet another said, “How many of you are there?”“Ten,” Mia said, and we all fell quiet as the boys looked at the girls, and the girls looked at the boys.“We’ll show you around,” Candice said, getting suddenly to her feet. I knew what had motivated her into action; we all did. This was the rule of staying in the compound. It was what made people watch the show, day after day, and what people talked about during the ad breaks: you stayed in the compound only if you woke in the morning next to someone of the opposite sex. If you slept alone, you would be gone by sunrise. There were usually ten girls and ten boys to start with, but now, as the girls outnumbered the boys, one of us would be gone by tomorrow. “It’s too big a group to show around,” Mia said. “Candice, you take four and I’ll take five.”If this plan was disagreeable to Candice she didn’t show it. I went with Candice, as did Jacintha. Eloise and Susie went with Mia. Becca and some of the other girls cleared the boys’ plates and brought them into the kitchen to clean up.Candice took us to the west, the prettier side of the compound, where the maze lay, and the gardens and pond. Of the four boys in our group, I remembered only a few of their names. Candice walked slowly, keeping in mind the boys’ exhaustion, though they had perked up considerably, and were looking around with interest. We were showing them around like we were showing off our own property, and they were viewing it as though they had never seen it before.”
From The Compound by Aisling Rawle. Copyright © 2025 by Aisling Rawle.
No comments:
Post a Comment