Age 4

"Jeanine, are you ready for school?" Mother's loud voice rings through the house. I stiffen and listen closely for noise in the bedroom beside mine. My baby brother, Darren, may only be two months old, but he can shriek like a banshee. Still asleep, I realize in the silence, and I allow myself to relax.

See, we Erudites are special. While all the other four-year-olds in other Factions are busy with...whatever they do(I hope to learn what they do when I go to school!), we are in school to get ahead. That's what makes us so eager to learn, I think. Learning is like our own heartbeats, since we start doing so at the youthful, impressionable age of four.

"Yes, I'm ready! I'll be downstairs in a bit!" I am, indeed, ready. My new dark blue shirt and pants, glasses perched on my nose, a backpack full of books, pencils, and any other supplies we were required to supply. I have a thirsty mind, too, and a wide-awake, laser-focus Erudite mind. Mother tells me I am gifted, destined for great things. But I am missing one thing - guts. I'm terrified.

"Good morning," Mother hands me cereal in a small bowl and a banana. "Eat quickly and we'll go. I have to get to work."

Mother works in developing medicine, and so does Father. They both spend all day figuring out how to solve problems that other people suffer, which I like. I think I want to be just like them - working in medicine, raising children just like Darren and me, and anything else they do that is so great. I even look like them, thanks to genetics - Mother's big grey eyes, Father's wavy blond locks, Mother's small nose, Father's wide smile.

I sit down at the table and eat my breakfast. When the last morsel of cereal is gone from the bowl, I stand up, take Mother's hand, and we set off toward the Erudite Pre-Educational Preparation Facility.

After thirty minutes of walking and silently panicking, I am sitting in one chair in the EPEPF among a line of others, all occupied by my fellow four-year-olds, facing a large stage. From above, this must look like a thin blur of what must be fifty shades of blue, consisting of the eighty or so children who will all be my classmates until I am sixteen, when some will leave to the other four factions. I have no friends here, but everyone else seems to have companions with whom they are holding animated conversations.

"Hem, hem," A rather stout woman dressed in a light blue pantsuit stands behind a podium, making false coughing noises into a microphone and adjusting her glasses. The excitement and chattering dies down, to my relief.

"Welcome, Erudites! I love to see your smiling faces grinning up at me today! My name is Bernadette Charles, and I am the head of the EPEPF," The woman flashes a horrible grin at us. "Now, you will be split into four classes of twenty, children," She slightly lifts a packet that must have been resting on the podium beforehand, waiting for Bernadette.

"These are the names for Class A. These children will be going with Elona Rosen," She beckons a slender, blonde woman onstage from behind the curtain. "Pay attention, now.

"Oliver Aberoff, Larynn Akin, Yonah Blumensen..." She reads off of the list. I allow myself to drift off to my thoughts, as I'm sure my ears will surely perk up at my name, Jeanine Matthews.

Will anyone like me? Will I like school? I worry, shifting nervously in my seat. I glance around the room. Her, with the red hair, she looks nice, or the boy over there with big ears, maybe he'll be my friend...

I have almost dozed off during Class C's list, when I suddenly hear, "Jeanine Matthews, Theo Nissan, Albert Nissan..."

Class C. "Class C, children just named, follow Nicholas Brolden," Bernadette points to a tall, dark-haired man who must have walked onstage while I zoned out. Maybe my focus isn't as good as I thought...

In a single-file line, Nicholas leads Class C through the doors to the assembly room, through a hallway lined with posters about geometric formulas and not giving up, and brings us to a large room full of computers, books, and everything an Erudite girl dreams of seeing in such quantity. I grin, as do a few other excited Erudites. "This," Nicholas sweeps an arm in a semi-circle, gesturing to the classroom. "Is the Class C Headquarters. Now, learning's always best with a companion, so choose a buddy with whom you can explore the wonders of the contents of this room for today!"

I glance around. I was afraid this would happen. Everyone clings to their friend, who had been walking next to them the whole time. I stand alone, a single-celled organism.

"Who doesn't have a partner?" Nicholas calls. I raise my hand timidly, glancing around the room. To my relief, another small, slightly sticky hand pops up.

"Okay, two people, great. What are your names?" Nicholas asks.

"Jeanine Matthews," I introduce myself.

"Andrew Prior," The other says.

"Andrew, Jeanine, you'll be partners," Nicholas walks from his position at the front of the blue sea of Erudites to take me hand and march me over to a short, light-haired boy with a big smile that looks like an eternal crescent on his face.

"Hi, I'm Andrew!" He takes my hand and we skip over to the last free computer. We reach the computer, which is not nearly as high-tech as what Mother told me the grown-ups use, and sit down. He releases my hand, which had grown rather sweaty in his. Mere moments later than us, two boys, one red-haired, the other with a curly mop of black hair on his head, reach the computer. They look at the floor sadly and turn away. I have a hand on the computer mouse when Andrew pipes up.

"Come on, you guys can play first! We'll play with it another time, right, Jeanine?" He grasps my hand gently again, and pulls me over to the bookshelves. Once we are behind the shelf, away from Nicholas and the two boys, I push Andrew down. He tears up, but clearly is trying not to cry. "Why'd you do that? You hurt me," He says.

"You little..." I try to think of a mean word to call him, but I know none. I'm only four, for goodness sakes! "We got that computer fair and square!"

"I...I'm sorry..." He murmurs, the grin long gone from his bright, freckled face. I see a tear, magnified by the lens of his glasses, slip out of his eye. He failed to hide his emotions, which brings back mine. I wrap my arm around this boy, who I barely even know.

"No, I'm sorry, Andrew Prior. I'm not usually like this. I don't know what came over me," I say, expecting him to pull away in disgust and tell Nicholas on me for hurting him.

"Well," He smiles again, surprising me. "I believe in second chances. Will you be my friend?"

I grin and give him a big hug. "Of course, Andrew Prior!" I don't know why I keep calling him by his full name, but I don't mind. Erudite Pre-Educational Preparation just got a hundred times better.