Noemi Valentina’s voice is soft in the way it usually only is when she talks me through a nightmare. And still, every muscle in his back bunches. He stops like his feet have been glued to the floor. My friend follows him quickly. His fists balled, Silas nods down the corridor, stomping off ahead. She looks over at me for a moment, but then a steely expression takes over the unsure look on Valentina’s face. ‘Be right back.’ she mouths toward me, and I nod. Hmm, that’s a first. Sure, I have seen her determined before. Every time they came in to take one of us to ‘sample’ or ‘show off’… because the girls were right: they did pick her most of the time. But I have never once seen her unsure. And I swear she had been crying the first night after she made that call when she returned to our r