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They didn’t know beauty, these boys. They saw blurred outlines and thought they knew the picture.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to go home. The endless talk of the wars, and the masks that we wore in the cities and big towns, and the dreary gray skies, and evenings in front of the television.
Going home and dreading doing it again the next day, and still never having enough money. And what was the point of it anyway, if I was never going to be able to afford nice things, or have anything worth owning—when we all would probably be dead in twenty years, maybe thirty if we were lucky? What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an
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“I think that the way we’re living now,” he said slowly, careful not to break the rules and mention that we were part of the show, “preys on the idea of desire. It amplifies it to the point of absurdity. You have to find someone to share a bed with, or you’re out. You have to make someone want to share a bed with you, or you’re out. And then they throw these tasks and rewards at you, and you keep living in this uncertain state, lurching between wanting and having. I think that must affect all of the decisions we make here, don’t you?”
Reality had become a slippery thing: I wasn’t certain on what part of my life I was an active part of, and what was a result of the machinations around me. But that, to me at least, felt no different from how it had been on the outside.
We were silent for a short time. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I came on the show?” “No,” she said. “I don’t need you to explain it. You’re the kind of girl the show was made for.”
knew what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to go back to work, and do little jobs that didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want to force myself out of bed every morning, and feel like my soul was being pulled from my body. I didn’t want to live with my mother, but I didn’t want to try to find somewhere else to stay. I wanted to be free from the daily confrontation with the slow decay of humanity and everything we had built. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted quiet. I wanted to stop pretending that I cared about things.
