Scored

by Lauren McLaughlin

  And Imani was in no mood to enlighten them. “I can’t eat,” she said. She pushed back from the table and ran upstairs to her bedroom.

  Wrapping herself up in her grandmother’s handmade afghan, Imani sat on the bed and stared through her window at the purpling sky, a bank of covered speedboats hunkering down in the gloom. After a while, she was forced to conclude that her frustration at dinner had nothing to do with her parents. She had no complaints there. They were patient and loving and always did what they thought was best for her. It wasn’t their fault they’d grown up in a different world. She’d run upstairs because she couldn’t bear to answer their questions. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that Cady had already made the decision for her, that Cady had backed away gracefully so that Imani could save herself.

  And Imani had let her, which was less a decision than an act of paralysis. She had yet to determine whether this rose to the level of betrayal or if it was the result of a stalwart fitness finally stepping up to do what she should have done long ago. She only knew how it felt: sickening, sinking, like a flu of the mind.

  Imani had been rubbing her cuff’s tap screen on the afghan until it was buffed to a high gloss. The thing was dead now, already deactivated. She’d worn it one extra day because she couldn’t bear the naked feeling of cool air on her wrist. She took it off, noting the indentation on her skin, and placed it in the sock drawer next to the dead specs, trying not to think of them as emblems of her downfall.

  Digging around, she found her old cell, something she hadn’t used in years. She turned it on, surprised that its battery still held some charge. A few taps and she’d signed on to her family’s plan. She could get online, make calls, use the GPS, just as she could with the cuff; and just like the cuff, it would ping her location to Score Corp. In most ways, it was as good as having a cuff. But it meant she was no longer a highbie.

  The purple of twilight deepened to black, the covered speedboats dissolving into the background of marsh reeds. Several times, Imani almost called Cady, knowing the software would punish her for it. That she didn’t, that she remained in a state of indecision about her best friend, was a strange comfort to her. Cady might have made up her mind about what was best for Imani, but Imani had yet to make up her own mind.

  4. a destiny of worms

  EVERY MORNING, IMANI walked with Isiah down Marina Road to wait for the middle school bus. Usually, they’d kick a stone back and forth until it veered off into the marsh reeds, then he’d challenge her to a sprint. For years, Imani had let Isiah win at the last minute, but lately, despite still being eight inches shorter than her, he’d been winning on his own. Isiah was a jock, a star of the middle school hockey team, his dreams of “going pro” just beginning to mature into the more plausible, and therefore more hazardous, ambition of “playing in college.”

  That Thursday, Isiah walked more quickly than usual and refused to kick the stone Imani passed to him. Near the end of Marina Road, he took a running start, then skidded to a hockey stop on some wet leaves right at the lip of the Causeway.

  “Be careful!” Imani yelled.

  “Don’t talk to me,” he said.

  The nearest eyeball was above the stone elephant at Abruzzi Antiques, but it couldn’t see them. Isiah’s coverage began when he boarded the bus. Imani’s had always started when Frankenscooter passed the pawnshop on the Causeway.

  After a long sulky pause, Isiah said: “You can’t seriously be thinking of staying friends with her. She’s a lost cause. Everyone knows that.”

  “Everyone at the middle school?” Imani said. “Really? What other wisdom are they passing around in eighth grade?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Imani. If you let her take you down, you’re no better than her.”

  “Cady never cared that you were below us,” Imani reminded him. “She never complained about giving you rides to hockey when Mom and Dad were busy.”

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t a total slut back then.”

  That was how it was now. Nobody knew the true details of Cady’s relationship with Parker Gray. Imani didn’t even know them. All anyone knew was that Cady had squandered her score to date an unscored boy and that made her a slut. End of story. And now, in order to save herself, Imani was expected to join the mob of Cady haters. That was the score-positive choice. It was the fit thing to do.

  The bus appeared around the bend by the 7-Eleven, and Isiah stepped away from his sister. “Don’t talk to me, okay?”

  When the bus stopped across the street and unfurled its blinking red stop sign, he ran for it without even saying good-bye. Imani could see him sit next to his gang buddy, Max, a chubby boy with a mop of curly dark hair. As the bus pulled away, Max narrowed his eyes at Imani through the window.

  It was such a middle school reaction, Imani thought, and one that would never pass muster in the more diplomatic, if equally brutal, high school realm. Still, it was as clear a sign as any that Cady’s story had seeped into every crevice of Somerton. They were all connected by it, because the score connected them all. Isiah was only two removes from Cady, and he’d suffer for it. He’d suffer for his relationship to Imani. At 64, she was below him now. Even family could be a liability.

  As Imani watched the bus head down the Causeway with its load of lunchroom warriors, she was consumed by a desire to protect Isiah. He was too young, she thought, to begin the full-scale panic that came to those whose ambitions exceeded their options. But that panic would close in soon enough. At 85, Isiah was in the zone where things became tantalizingly possible, though by no means assured.

  Really, Imani thought, you might be better off being a lowbie. Or even an unscored. At least then, you knew you were doomed.

  Cady and Parker stayed out of school that day. In their absence, the cautionary tale of their liaison (variously seen as coercive, financial, and just plain crazy) blossomed into a full-blown Greek tragedy. Students whispered about it, sharing theories, offering possible explanations. They cast sideways glances at Imani, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes in fear. She was used to being watched by the eyeballs, but now she was under the fierce scrutiny of her peers, and it made her uncomfortable.

  It did not, however, make Connor Riley uncomfortable. The leader of her new gang was determined to use the situation to launch himself upward. At lunch that day, he gave Imani an ultimatum. “I hope you understand that it’s not just for our sake,” he said, “but for yours too. We need to know whether you plan to continue associating with—”

  “No.” Imani cut him off. “I don’t. Cady Fazio is out of my life.” Imani was keenly aware of the eyeball dangling above and to the right of Connor, as he was surely aware of the eyeball dangling above and to the left of her. Already, their exchange had the aroma of performance about it. And while Imani wisely avoided milking it for effect, Connor had obviously rehearsed a whole speech about how “forgiving” and even “magnanimous” he and the other 60s were prepared to be regarding Imani’s past unfit behavior. In an attempt to get at least some of it on the record, he managed to spit out the words “forgiving” and “magnanimous” with little explanatory context. Imani knew he’d be penalized for it.

  When Connor had finished, there was an uncomfortable pause; then Deon spoke, quietly and without ever looking up from his sandwich. “Magnanimous,” he said. “Characterized by a lofty and courageous spirit. Showing nobility and generosity of the mind.”

  The table fell silent for a moment, then Jayla shook her head and joined with Amber in rolling her eyes. Judging from the reactions of the rest of the gang—all variations on the eye roll or the shaken head—Imani got the impression that the quiet outburst was typical behavior for Deon. As Amber might have said, the boy had a severe rapport deficiency. And though Imani’s gang was making it clear that she was expected to despise him for it, his actions had precisely the opposite effect on her. As Deon nibbled his sandwich in ratlike mouthfuls, she found herself warming to him.

  At study period, Imani rushed to the s
chool library to claim one of the tablets bolted, against theft, to the long wooden table by the window. The bolts were optimistic at best, as the tablets had been out-of-date even when purchased and were insufficient for most media files. But as they constituted the only link to the outside world at school, each one was claimed before the late bell rang.

  The tablets were supposed to be used for homework, and since you had to sign in to use them, Score Corp could, and did, track usage. Despite this, lowbies could be relied upon to hack their way around the firewalls into the forbidden realms of porn, which occasionally flickered at the corners of Imani’s vision. She knew better than to let curiosity get the better of her, however. Her eyes never wandered from her own tablet’s screen. There were eyeballs dangling above, which would have caught that.

  Imani wasn’t doing homework, but she was doing research. Though Score Corp refused to reveal any information about its scoring algorithm, other than to insist that it got “smarter all the time,” scientists had arrived at the five key elements of fitness through reverse engineering. Specifically, they had studied behavioral patterns in risers and droppers. Like most scored, Imani knew the five elements by heart: peer group, impulse control, congruity, diligence, and rapport.

  Peer group had been her weakness, but she’d solved that problem by dumping Cady. What she needed to know was whether that would be enough to get her back over the scholarship line. Her fingers flew across the tablet’s tap pad, taking her on a journey studded with amazing riser stories and tragic dropper stories, but it all came to a crushing halt when she found this piece of data:

  Although there are many cases of scores dropping rapidly, even as much as sixty points in one month, there are very few examples of scores rising suddenly.

  Imani had heard of such a discrepancy but had never given it much thought. Her score had wavered between 92 and 97 for years, with no dramatic changes. Now, however, she had one month to rise twenty-six points and wondered if dumping Cady would be enough. As she jumped from site to site in search of an answer more optimistic than the ones she kept finding, her attention was drawn to the library’s main desk, where her principal, Ms. Wheeler, stood in quiet discussion with the head librarian.

  Ms. Wheeler was a cool and distant figure: young, pale, with short dark hair. She wore thick-rimmed silver specs that looked like the ones Score Corp gave to high 90s, but older, rounder. In assemblies and announcements, Ms. Wheeler often referred to her “open-door policy,” but Imani couldn’t imagine any students volunteering to visit her. Imani never had. There was something intimidating about Ms. Wheeler. Though her words said “Approach me,” her demeanor said the opposite. When she finished her conversation with the librarian, she noticed Imani staring at her, nodded coolly, then left.

  Feeling desperate rather than bold, Imani decided to test the open-door policy. When she arrived at the reception area, Ms. Wheeler had already disappeared inside her office, and Imani was met by Mrs. Bronson, who seemed to regard her presence there as an intrusion.

  “I’m here to see Ms. Wheeler?” Imani said.

  “Did she ask for you?”

  Imani shook her head, already wondering if she’d imagined the open-door policy. Ms. Wheeler’s actual door was closed.

  Mrs. Bronson poked her head into Ms. Wheeler’s office and said something inaudible. Peering around Mrs. Bronson’s ample frame, Ms. Wheeler regarded Imani through her specs, thought for a second, then waved her in.

  “Make it quick,” Mrs. Bronson warned. “She’s very busy.”

  When Imani entered her office, Ms. Wheeler told her to shut the door. “Imani, right?” she confirmed. “Imani LeMonde.” Ms. Wheeler unrolled a tap pad across her desk and began typing, her eyes glazing slightly as she read her specs’ flickering display. She wore peacock-blue nail polish, which Imani thought unusual for an adult, though from this close, she seemed younger than Imani had previously imagined—late twenties, perhaps. Imani could make nothing of the flashing lights obscuring Ms. Wheeler’s hazel eyes but assumed she was accessing her student file—her score, her past scores, her grade point average and disciplinary record.

  “Oh, yes,” Ms. Wheeler said. “You just took a big hit, score-wise.” She looked at Imani with the half-glazed eyes of someone peering through data. It had taken Imani weeks to acquire the skill, back when she’d been blessed with Score Corp’s specs. By the time she’d mastered it, they’d been deactivated.

  “You were friends with that Fazio girl, weren’t you?” Ms. Wheeler asked. “Even though you weren’t in the same gang.” Imani couldn’t pinpoint Ms. Wheeler’s expression. It seemed curious and slightly judgmental. “Sit down. Please.”

  Imani sat in a cream-colored chair facing Ms. Wheeler’s desk. Her office was neat, with only a few books lined up on a shelf and papers perfectly stacked on the corner of her desk. A small bud vase with a white carnation sat on the sill of the small window. On the wall to Ms. Wheeler’s left was a gilt picture frame containing her final score report.

  PATRINA WHEELER: 98.

  “Ninety-eight,” Imani said. “Wow. So are those …” She pointed toward Ms. Wheeler’s specs.

  “From Score Corp?” she said. “Yes. I’ve had them refurbished, of course, but the frames are the originals.”

  “Cool.”

  The corners of Ms. Wheeler’s mouth turned up while she continued to type, her eyes glazed by the data. When she’d finished what she was typing, she blinked away her display and looked at Imani with a dazzling smile. “It opened up the world for me,” she said. “We were a trial town too.”

  “Really?”

  “Wakachee, Florida,” she said, leaning back in her cream leather chair. “It made Somerton look like Beverly Hills.”

  Imani had trouble imagining Ms. Wheeler as a teenager. She seemed so polished. But now that Imani had conjured the image, she couldn’t resist fleshing it out with details. She pictured Ms. Wheeler sitting on the hood of a car in her school’s parking lot while eyeballs dangled from palm trees and sun-burnt asphalt mirage-wavered in the distance. Perhaps Ms. Wheeler had been the Chiara Hislop of Wakachee, Florida.

  “So how can I help you, Imani?”

  “Um, well,” she said. “I was thinking of what you said last week at morning announcements. You know, about how we should see you as an ally, and that you were here to help us, not only academically but—”

  “In score-related matters as well,” Ms. Wheeler filled in. “Yes. I remember. No one’s taken me up on that. You’re the first.”

  Imani couldn’t stop thinking about Wakachee, Florida. Why, she puzzled, would Ms. Wheeler go from a broken-down Florida swamp town (she pictured Wakachee this way now, full of mangroves and mosquitoes) to a broken-down Massachusetts clam town (full of marsh reeds and mosquitoes). With a final score of 98, she could have gone anywhere.

  “Imani,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Imani detected the hint of a southern accent, something she hadn’t noticed before. “Um, sure,” she replied.

  “I’m just curious. What was it that kept you and Cady together?” Ms. Wheeler’s fingers flew across the tap pad as her specs lit up with data unreadable to Imani. “I see that she’d been dropping for a while. Weren’t you concerned?”

  “I guess,” she said. “But you see, we had this—” She stopped herself. Her reasoning, which in the past had seemed so solid, now seemed faulty, even childish.

  “Yes?” Ms. Wheeler pressed.

  “We had a pact,” Imani said flatly.

  “A pact?” Ms. Wheeler shook her head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “That we’d stay friends,” Imani said. “No matter what.”

  “No matter your scores?” Ms. Wheeler’s eyes widened.

  Imani nodded. It was clear to her that Ms. Wheeler understood the risky nature of her friendship with Cady in a way that Imani’s parents never had. Imani’s parents thought it was “sweet” and “heartwarming” that the girls stay
ed faithful to each other while their classmates shifted from gang to gang. How naive they seemed to Imani now.

  Ms. Wheeler sighed and leaned back into the thick cushion of her cream-colored chair. “Loyalty. Interesting. You know, people used to think highly of that trait.”

  People like her parents, Imani thought.

  “Of course, now we know better,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Loyalty is a trap, Imani. A disempowering bond. People should earn your respect. Every day.”

  “I’ve severed all ties with Cady Fazio.”

  Imani had not intended to sound so defensive.

  “Good. That’s great.” Ms. Wheeler smiled approvingly. “And how are you getting on with your new gang?”

  It was only then that Imani noticed the absence of eyeballs in Ms. Wheeler’s office. She thought about all the things she could tell her. She could reveal how much she loathed her new gang, or all the mean, unfit thoughts she’d had about Amber Frampton. In the end, however, she opted for diplomacy, because she found that she wanted Ms. Wheeler to like her.

  “I’m still getting to know them,” she said.

  “Of course. It does take time, doesn’t it? Now …” Ms. Wheeler resumed typing. “I see you’ve been accepted to UMass, pending financial ability and, of course, score maintenance. You’re planning to major in … marine biology?” Ms. Wheeler stopped typing and peered at Imani through her flashing specs. “Really? Marine biology?”

  Imani nodded.

  “Not just biology?”

  “I want to work on the water,” Imani said. “I want to help restore the fisheries and clam beds.”

  “Oh, I see.” Ms. Wheeler nodded deeply. “You want to stay in Somerton.”

  “Definitely.”

  “You want to stay and make a difference,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Good for you. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get out of Wakachee. I wanted to see snow.”

  “That’s funny,” Imani said. “Everyone around here complains about the snow.”