“Cure,” Melissa whispers to me. She can’t help herself.
“That boy attacked my Brit,” a rat-faced woman says. Nate’s mom. “She was darn lucky it wasn’t worse.” Then she hacks with a smoker’s cough and clears her throat of the world’s thickest phlegm.
“Excuse me,” Melissa says loudly now, raising her hand. “I’m very sorry about what happened to January, and we all want to keep our children safe, but what exactly are you proposing here tonight?”
“Well, Mrs.—?” Mrs. Cameron waits for Melissa to fill in the blank.
“Doctor,” Melissa says. “It’s Dr. Wright, but you can call me Melissa.”
There’s quiet murmuring throughout the room. Everybody knows who Melissa is now because the paper mentioned that she’s the original inventor of PROFILE. They crane their necks to get a good look at her, this woman who brought PROFILE to little old Quiet High.
“Well, Melissa,” Mrs. Cameron replies, “I wouldn’t say that I’m proposing something. Rather, I’m presenting options for us to consider. In the interest of keeping the children safe, of course.”
“Of course,” Melissa says, and I elbow her because it sounds like she is mocking Sam’s mom. Which she probably is.
“I do understand a parent’s urge to keep those results private,” Mrs. Cameron says. “Our first instinct is to believe that the results must be wrong in cases where we find out something we don’t want to know. But in addition to isolating those people who may be dangerous and who may be putting our children at risk, we need to know exactly what each predicted child is capable of doing.”
Brooklyn’s mom erupts in applause again. A handful of people join in.
Melissa talks over the clapping. “And what exactly do you want to do? Should we lock up the violent predicteds and throw away the key? Should we put a list of future teen mothers on Facebook so nobody asks them to prom? How can you in good conscience do that?” I slink down in my chair. Melissa is right, but I never stop being embarrassed by how blunt she is.
“Mrs. Wright,” Mrs. Cameron says, “I do think that you of all people would understand the importance of taking PROFILE scores seriously.” She surveys the crowd with a smug look on her face. “Many of you probably know that Mrs. Wright used to work for Utopia Laboratories, the company who developed and executed the PROFILE tests in our community.” Everyone turns to look at Melissa. Of course they know her.
“It’s Doctor,” Melissa says amiably. “And I do have a connection to Utopia Labs. I was part of the team of scientists who read and interpreted the PROFILE scores we collected at Quiet High for the past few years. I am not, however, prepared to support any initiative that would in any way ostracize or detain any student based on a PROFILE prediction. I’m against these classroom separations. It’s simply a violation of an individual’s rights. And I don’t want my daughter making decisions about people based on what a test said they might do at some future point.”
Brooklyn’s mom raises her hand. “I completely disagree with what that woman is saying.” She points at Melissa. “These PROFILE tests can help us sort out the bad kids—even better than we already have. We have the information right at our fingertips. If the attacker was a student at QH, and if the student was a sophomore or older, we can find him. We just need to find out who was predicted for attacking a girl with a bat, right? I think we all know who that is.” She looks around her, searching for some kind of validation.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa says. “I have to correct you here. PROFILE doesn’t exactly work that way. The test can’t reveal what exact crime someone may commit. It can only tell you the predisposition someone has toward violent personal crimes. Determining the actual crime is part of Phase II of the research.”
I look at her searchingly. There’s a Phase II of research?
Hannah’s mom jumps in. “I’m Marsha Cramer,” she says in the same weepy voice Hannah has. “I’m a psychologist at Quiet State College, and I happen to be familiar with Melissa’s work.” They smile at each other. “Melissa is trying to explain that while PROFILE does provide data about a person’s possible future actions, that data should not necessarily be used to make important decisions about our children.” Melissa nods in agreement.
“Well, I disagree,” Brooklyn’s mom says.
“A lot of scientists have said—”
Brooklyn’s mom cuts off Hannah’s mom. “I don’t care what scientists say. My opinion is equally valid, and I think the results should be public. I just feel it’s the right thing to do. I feel it in my heart.”
Melissa snorts loudly.
Sam’s dad stands up and moves to the podium, putting his arm around Mrs. Cameron’s shoulders. He is shorter than she is. “Can I say something here, honey?” She steps aside and gives him the podium. “I may not be a ‘scientist.’” He uses air quotes. “I may just be a guy who can give you a hell of a deal on some great import cars.” He flashes a grin, but nobody laughs. He forges on. “I may be just a simple guy who still believes in family, church, and country, but I know one thing for sure: an innocent girl is in the hospital because some animal beat the crap out of her. And not too long ago, our kids were held hostage in this school by a crazed shooter. That shooter could’ve killed my boy.” Mrs. Cameron looks adoringly at Sam. “Well, that girl is in the hospital, and I want to find the bastard who did it. If that means violating the rights of some criminal, well, so be it.”
Brooklyn’s mom begins clapping, but this time, most of the room joins with her. Sam’s dad stands a little taller, talks a little louder. “What good are these tests if we can’t use them? It’s time to put a label on these kids who aren’t going to be good, productive citizens. Let’s prevent another Columbine. Hell, let’s prevent another Quiet High shooting. Let’s prevent another girl being viciously attacked. Let’s not take the side of the criminals.”
The crowd roars—it feels like a football game. I half-expect the room to begin a round of the wave. Melissa stands up and waves her tiny hand in the air, calling for attention. “I’m not saying we should take the side of the criminals. I’m just saying we need to think about this.” She practically has to yell to be heard over the noise in the echoing room.
Mrs. Cameron pushes her husband to the side and moves back to the podium. “I think we’ve all thought about this. We’ve all prayed about it. We all love our children. It’s time to smoke out the rotten apples. The time is long overdue.” Melissa is too angry to even snicker at the ridiculous expression—how do you smoke out apples?
She and I leave before the meeting officially ends.
chapter 20
Buses: Predicted individuals shall not ride on public school buses. Such individuals should make alternative arrangements for transportation to and from school.
Education: Classes for predicted individuals and nonpredicted individuals shall be conducted separately.
Dating: Mixed-status dating and general fraternization shall be strictly prohibited.
—Rules to Live By, an underground pamphlet circulated at Quiet High
“Say something worthwhile,” Ms. Kaplan warns us. “The point is to gain a richer understanding of the text and the social milieu in which it was written. This should not be a prodigious task, people, if you’ve been paying attention.”
This is how Ms. Kaplan talks, calling books texts and using words like prodigious and milieu—words that have zero linguistic value in a high school classroom. Nobody thinks she’s brilliant. We just think she’s wound too tightly. Ms. Kaplan is young, but she seems old—and not the good kind of old, but the bad kind that smells musty and yells at kids to get off the lawn. She has a Master’s degree in British literature from a very important college, and you can tell that she’s pretty bent out of shape about being stuck at QH, so she compensates by teaching a college-level class. “Work with your partners, people,” she tells us now. “I expect you to use your time wisely. You should have already read your assigned novel. Work on analyzing the book an
d preparing a presentation for the class based on critical theory. Remember your central question: Should your novel be included or not included in the American literary canon?”
I look over at my partner, who is making exploding sounds meant to sound like cannons—the kind with two n’s. Great. Fate got pissed off and paired me with Josh Heller. He tried to trade partners, but Kaplan wouldn’t bend, noting that he needed to learn how to work with people, even if they are difficult. Yeah, I’m the difficult one.
Josh and I were assigned An American Tragedy, which I’ve already read. It’s very long, and he’s been trying to plow through it in class while I wait impatiently and stare into the hallway through the open door. I can’t help but notice that he’s only a few pages into the book—a fact that drives me nuts.
He puts the cannon away, reads for a minute—his lips moving as he goes—and then sets the book down, not even bothering to mark his page. He moves his desk closer to dopey Sam Cameron, who is inexplicably also in our AP class. Since coming to QH, I’ve figured out that AP means absolutely nothing—everybody takes the AP classes, leaving the “regular” classes open for only the absolute dumbest or laziest students. “Dude, I’m so glad those losers are gone,” he says now to Sam. He’s referring to the predicteds.
“Yeah,” Sam says.
It’s the second day of school we’ve had with the predicteds out of sight. It’s almost like they have just disappeared. Nobody talks about them—not even about Lexus, who used to be in our class, and who was Brooklyn’s best friend. Now Brooklyn calls her That Stupid Skank, Lexus Flores, as if that is her full legal name. But I detect a certain amount of regret in her voice. Brooklyn misses her.
Sam holds his phone up high for Josh to see the picture he just took. The two of them are flexing their forearms and taking close-up pictures of themselves with their phone cameras. The latest result is a photo that looks a lot like a bare butt. They’ve probably taken at least ten arm-butt photos already, but they never seem to grow bored. Josh laughs so hard that he snorts.
“Don’t you dare bend that book open!” Ms. Kaplan yells at someone in the back of the room. Watching us strain the bindings of paperback books is her own personal hell; she can hear it from a mile away.
I doodle and wonder how many hours it’s going to take me to single-handedly prepare and write our presentation in the next two days. I watch Brooklyn step out from the classroom across the hall to take a phone call. She leans against the lockers. “I know,” she’s saying, “I can’t wear yellow. Not now. Not after what happened at last year’s prom.” She sounds disgusted. I try to imagine what might have happened that would keep her from wearing yellow. A swarm of angry yellow jackets were released in the school gym and ended up roosting on her yellow dress? The red stripes painted on the gym floor marking the four-square courts clashed with the dress? She takes out a compact and squints at her teeth in the mirror. The fact that she’s worried about gunk in her teeth makes me despise her a tiny bit less. Insecurity is a real bitch.
With quick jerking movements, I slide my desk closer to the open door, bizarrely interested in the yellow conversation. That’s when I see Jesse walking down the hallway. He doesn’t see me—he walks with his eyes straight ahead. I sit up straight. He’s back in school. The suspension is over, and the school can’t do much else right now. So far, he has not been arrested for January’s attack, but he is guilty, according to everyone at Quiet High. And he isn’t supposed to be in New QH. All of the predicteds are kept in one small area of Old QH. But he walks like he belongs here.
Josh, done with arm-butts for the moment, follows my eyes to Jesse. “I feel kind of sorry for the guy,” he says matter-of-factly. “His dad is probably going to kick him out. My mom wants him to. It’s gotta be rough.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“What? I’m trying to be nice.”
I look at him suspiciously. “Can you be nice? Do you have that capacity?”
“Come on, Daphne, don’t you think you’re awfully hard on people? Not everybody is as perfect as you are.”
“I never said I was perfect,” I say huffily. What he said rankles me, though. Melissa is the type of person who makes everyone else feel inferior. Am I a mini-version of her?
“I’m just saying that Jesse is predicted. And it’s better for him—and everybody else—if he’s not around anyone he can hurt. Believe it or not, I don’t want him to hurt you, Daphne. I respect you. I like you.” There’s a strange look to him—an eerie shining in his eyes. Is he actually being nice again?
“I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“Are you still defending him?”
I don’t answer.
“You know he’s guilty.”
“Then how come he’s not in jail?” I answer.
“What’s going on?” Sam asks.
“Daphne is awfully cranky. Must be that time of month.” They both laugh hysterically, like this is some original joke.
I cross my legs one way, uncross them, and then cross them the other way—a gesture unconsciously borrowed from Melissa. I flip my book open, bending the binding until I hear a satisfying snap.
***
“What’s wrong?” Dizzy asks me. “You’re thinking about Jesse, aren’t you?”
We are at Whataburger, an impromptu lunch decision made at exactly the moment we saw the cafeteria’s beef stroganoff, a lumpy mess of paste-like substance over chunks of sawdust.
“You’ve been acting weird lately.” She stuffs a fry in her mouth. “What’s your deal?”
“Weird things are happening. For one, I’m working with your boyfriend on this English project,” I say, instead of answering her question about Jesse.
“Lucky you,” she says without irony.
“Even Sam Cameron would be more help, and I’m not entirely convinced he’s even literate.”
“Sam has a crush on you, you know. He has ever since he saw you on your first day.”
“If I’m supposed to be flattered, I’m not. Besides, what about Brooklyn?”
“Eh,” she says, “they hook up. It’s not a love match.” Dizzy shakes her head at me, first a slight up and down nod, followed by a vigorous shake back and forth. It’s a very Dizzy-esque gesture—it illustrates how many contradictory thoughts she is having at once. She reaches for my fries, even though she still has half of hers left. She chews while she pulls out a mirror from her backpack and opens it. She blinks her eyes rapidly at her reflection, making that long-O mascara face at herself.
Dizzy wears heavy blue eye shadow today that matches her low-cut tank top. She looks like she’s twenty, at least. I like that Dizzy is not ashamed to be partially manufactured—so different from Melissa. She snaps the mirror shut and skims it across the table, where it lands at the edge near me. Is this a hint? I pick it up and open it. I find lettuce in my teeth.
“I’ll be honest. Sam Cameron is cute, I’ll grant him that. But he is dull. D-U—” She drops the end of the sentence and adds a series of obnoxious snores. “Not my type. But I thought you two would be good together.”
“Thanks,” I say. “You really know how to increase my self-confidence.” I slide the mirror back, running my tongue over my teeth for good measure.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that you are…good. A good girl. And Sam is good. Two good kids. You kids make us proud,” she says in her best little-old-lady voice. “You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t sleep around, you hardly have any fun at all. Josh has some really hot friends that I could introduce you to. We could—”
“And Jesse?” I interrupt.
Dizzy pushes both our trays to the edge of the table, taking my fries away. She puts her hand on her stomach to indicate she is full. I reach out and pull my tray back toward me. “Jesse is very manipulative,” she says with authority. “Take this thing with Brit Gormley. Now, that’s interesting. I knew something was weird about the two of them together. Brit looks like a dumpy version of Lexus
. What did Jesse see in her? And then to stalk her? Jeez, I could see if she was like stripper-hot, but you wouldn’t ever think that, like, Brit would do much for a guy. Whatever. But I knew something was wrong because—hello! Girls that aren’t very cute don’t leave guys who are as hot as Jesse. This explains everything. She broke up with him because he was probably, like, beating her daily or something.”
She expects me to respond, but I don’t. Instead, I watch Kelly Payne walk in through the front door of the restaurant. She’s with Nate Gormley.
“Oh, man,” Dizzy says. “Look at those two. Speaking of predicted romance.” She makes gagging noises.
Kelly walks up to the counter while Nate grabs a handful of ketchup packets and heads to a table near us. He immediately sees Dizzy and me staring at him. “Hey,” he says to me, raising an index finger in greeting. I give him a half-smile. My tutoring work is over now that Nate is in classes with the other predicteds. Naturally, Temple forbade them all from watching Call-Me-Vic’s gory videos. They’re taking typing instead. Nate shakes his leg and taps his fingers on the tabletop as he waits for Kelly, who is clearly going to bring him food.
“Let’s go,” Dizzy hisses at me.
“I’m not done eating,” I respond.
Her eyes widen in alarm, and she whispers, “Daphne, come on. I don’t want to be here. Not with him. We don’t know what he’ll do.”
“You’re being silly,” I whisper back.
“No, I’m not being silly. Look what happened to January. We don’t know what these”—she searches for the right word—“people,” she finally spits out, “are capable of.”
The Predicteds Page 18