With each morning herald that first week, Esme and I would drink our water, shower, dress, and eat breakfast in the bright cafeteria. Afterward, we sat through lessons and educational movies. Then there was lunch and free time before a few more hours in the classroom or the private hall for testing. The tests were usually painless, but not always. The worst one required the doctor—a hollow-eyed man in a white coat—to cut a piece of skin from the back of my shoulder. The cut burned and stung and was in an unreachable place. Esme and I changed each other’s bandages in silence before going to bed that night. In another test, we were ordered to shut our eyes for a long time and answer questions about the intensity of light behind our lids. There wasn’t a right or wrong score for any of the tes
