The Forsaken

mistakes.

SCANNED
    WHEN THE NEXT MORNING arrives, I slouch downstairs and sit at the long breakfast table at the orphanage, next to Sandy and Claudette, two other girls my age. I’ve lived with them for six years, but we’re not as close as we could be. We orphans tend to keep to ourselves, even as we live on top of one another. All of us know how much it hurts to lose people you care about, and it’s hard to risk forming close bonds again.
    “Sleep well?” Sandy asks. I nod.
    Sandy always smells like cherry lip balm and spends most of her time pining over government-promoted teen idols. Claudette is thin and studious with short black hair. Like many of the girls here, both of them lost their parents in the ongoing wars with Europe and Asia.
    “Ready for our big day?” Claudette asks me, arching an eyebrow.
    “I guess. You think anyone we know will fail?”
    Claudette peers at me over her bowl of cereal. “Well, they probably won’t send any orphans to the island.”
    “Really?” Sandy asks.
    Claudette looks at her like she’s stupid. “Think about it. It’d be like the government admitting they screwed up if they sent one of us to the Forgotten Place. That they couldn’t fix our brains. They’ve raised us since we were little. What would it say about them and their orphanages if we turned out to be Unanchored Souls?”
    “Good point,” Sandy agrees.
    After breakfast we line up with dozens of other juniors and head outside to board our bus. The local testing arena isn’t far. Just a thirty-minute drive down the Megaway, the twenty-lane highway that cuts across New Providence like a thick gray ribbon. A decade ago the arena used to hold football games. But now it’s been enclosed and subdivided into thousands of tiny cubicles, each one housing a scanning machine.
    As we drive, I look out the window at all the UNA billboards. Most of them display images of Minister Harka’s benevolent, smiling face. With his dark hair, hypnotic eyes, and rugged good looks, he appears both attractive and paternal. Even the large diamond-shaped white scar on his left temple, sustained in battle, seems to enhance his appeal. But he also seems curiously ageless. Although I see new pictures of him every day in the government media, he looks exactly like he did when I was eight. Of course no one else seems to notice this, or if they do notice, they don’t seem to care.
    We eventually reach our destination and turn off the Megaway. In the distance, the covered testing arena resembles the hub of a small city. Doctors in white jackets lead teams of nurses into the gigantic domed structure, and mobs of kids cluster everywhere.
    We drive down an access road and pull into the parking lot. Miles of buses and cars sparkle under the sun, as automated shuttles transport people inside. I hear a loud droning noise overhead, and I look out the window of the bus to see a military helicopter passing above us, flying low, its spiderlike shadow falling across the crowd.
    On the surface everything seems disorganized. But as I look closer, I see there’s a network of guards, teachers, and social workers, guiding lines of kids along.
    Our driver parks, and we disembark. Some kids look excited, while others look bored. I just feel vaguely annoyed that I have to take a test I already know I’ll pass.
    I wonder how that blue-eyed boy felt on the day of his test, which probably wasn’t even that long ago. He must have suspected he was an Unanchored Soul, with malevolent, antisocial forces lurking inside his brain. I realize that even though he seemed lucid on-screen, it was probably some kind of act.
    I gaze around, taking in the sights before me. I wonder how they even ship the few kids who fail the GPPT to the island. Planes? Helicopters? Boats? The whole system is shrouded in secrecy, but somehow it works.
    We’re led onto one of the shuttles, which comes to a halt several minutes later at an entrance to the arena. After we exit the shuttle, a guard takes us through a brick opening into a noisy atrium. The sound of the teeming crowd echoes off the walls.
    Sandy, Claudette, and I are shuffled into a long line. A government official walks down it, handing out paper cards with absurdly long numbers and bar codes printed on them.
    Another official appears, barking orders through a megaphone: “Keep your GPPT scanning cards safe! Do not bend them. Do not tear them. These are important government documents! You will be led into a holding