Scored

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “And Mr. Concini couldn’t count that section in her grade.”

  “Mr. Carol,” Imani said. “I have to agree with Clarissa. Asking us to disparage the score would be endangering us and also—”

  “Not true,” Diego interrupted.

  “Excuse me,” Imani said. She looked directly at him, which she usually avoided. “I was speaking.”

  Diego stared back with his blue eye, unintimidated.

  Regaining her composure, Imani turned away and faced Mr. Carol. “Anyway, it could also get you in trouble. You know like when you did that thing with the flag and the eyeball?”

  “Why, thank you, Imani,” Mr. Carol said. “I do appreciate your concern. But you’re off the mark here.” He wagged his finger at her. “And something tells me you know that. Score Corp does not punish academic inquiry. It’s”—out came the finger quotes—“ ‘score-pos.’ ”

  “Exactly,” Diego said.

  “What would you know?” Logan asked without looking at him.

  “More than you,” Diego said. “Most of the scored are completely ignorant about their own system.”

  “You’re ignorant,” Logan tossed back.

  “Well argued,” Diego replied.

  “All right, all right,” Mr. Carol said. “Look, people, I can’t force you to write about any particular topic for the Otis Scholarship. If you want to write about the Second Depression or the Federalist Papers or any other run-of-the-mill topic, go for it. But for this class, the final paper will be what I say it is. I have tenure, so I can do that sort of thing. And incidentally, I happen to know a few people on the board at Otis, and I happen to know that they are very, shall we say, open to nontraditional thinking. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

  “Are you saying you have inside information?” Imani asked.

  “Only what I’ve just told you. And no, I’m not on the board, so don’t get all conspiracy theory on me or anything. Now, while the scored are writing in opposition to the score, I want the unscored to take up its defense. Its rigorous defense.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” Rachel said.

  Diego laughed quietly. “That’s brilliant.”

  Rachel turned on him, eyes flashing. “Are you insane?” she said. “How are we supposed to defend the score? It’s blatantly discriminatory.”

  “Well,” Mr. Carol said, “that’s a great argument for one of your scored classmates to use. Your job, however, is to argue the other side.”

  “There is no other side,” she said.

  “There’s always another side,” Diego said.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Carol said. “I’m glad someone appreciates my vision. How are you coming with those questions?”

  Diego ripped a page from his notebook and handed it to him.

  Mr. Carol read it while nodding approvingly. “Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting.”

  Diego sat back and glanced smugly around the room. Only one of his eyes was visible through his hair, and Imani wouldn’t look at him directly, but she could have sworn he was seeking her out.

  The scores were posted after American history, and the fallout was immediate. Thessaly Morris was crying into her locker, having obviously fallen sharply from the 90s. She was a junior, though, so there was still time to work her way back up. A couple of freshman boys high-fived each other, having ascended in tandem.

  Imani walked past both the library and the principal’s office, but the crowds there were so thick and the anxiety so pungent that she kept walking. She dreaded that first moment of discovery, when she found her name on the list and saw the two digits right next to it. Even imagining it sent her stomach into free fall. She preferred waiting for her gang to tell her at lunch. At least that way she wasn’t alone with the news.

  She was one of the last stragglers into the lunchroom, and instead of going directly to her table of senior 90s, she hung back and watched her fellow students reconfigure themselves. There were no outbursts, no tearful good-byes. By the end of the year, even the freshmen knew the drill. You went where the score sheet told you to go. You introduced yourself to your new gang, and you sat down. Whatever pain you felt about leaving your former gang behind, you buried it. Whatever jealousy you felt toward the ones ascending, you buried that too. The only tables that never changed were the unscored tables all the way in the back by the teachers’ lounge. Sometimes Imani envied them.

  She noticed right away that Anil Hanesh was missing from her gang’s table. Scanning the lunchroom, she spotted him sitting with Chiara Hislop and Alejandro Vidal. His hard work had paid off. In a few days, he’d receive his specs from Score Corp and a handful of letters from Ivy League schools, welcoming him, at their expense, to the ranks of the superelite, pending the maintenance of his high score.

  Imani knew she would never speak to him again. Good-bye, Anil, she thought. It was nice never knowing you. Imani didn’t see Cady anywhere, but Cady often spent lunch period alone in the courtyard rather than with her gang. She felt no bond with the 70s, and they were happy to ignore her, assuming, perhaps, that she’d continue to drop.

  As Imani walked to the table of senior 90s where she’d eaten lunch for the past year, Annabelle Kropski’s mouth dropped open. Jason Friberg and Itziar Gomez started whispering to each other, and Logan stared at her in surprise before recovering and looking away.

  “What?” Imani said. “What happened?”

  Annabelle got up and left. The others stayed but refused to face her. Imani found herself staring at the back of Logan’s head.

  There was only one explanation for their behavior.

  “Don’t make a scene,” Logan whispered, without moving. “Do the right thing, Imani.”

  It took what seemed like an hour but could only have been seconds to realize what had happened. By then, as if directed by an outside force, Imani was running from the lunchroom.

  The hallways were empty except for a few teachers heading belatedly to the lounge. When Imani arrived at the glassed-in reception area of the principal’s office, two underclassmen girls were celebrating their good fortune, unable to pull their eyes from the brand-new digits that represented hope and bright prospects. Imani sidled up to the glass and ran her eyes down the list, a gasp escaping when she found her name.

  LeMonde, Imani: 64

  “Sixty-four!” she cried.

  The two girls backed away, leaving Imani to stare at her name and those two unfathomable numbers. What had she done? What had she not done? To fall so far so fast, surely she had to have done something. She pressed her face close to the glass and traced the invisible line from her name to her score. There was no mistaking it. She was a 64.

  Below the scholarship line. Far below.

  “I thought if I didn’t tell you, it wouldn’t hurt your score.”

  In her shock, Imani didn’t recognize the voice. But when she turned, she saw Cady standing there, eyes red, one hand kneading the other. Imani scrolled down the alphabetical list for “Fazio, Cady.” Next to her name was the number 27.

  “Oh my God,” Imani said.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What did you do?”

  From behind the fake wood countertop of the reception area, Mrs. Bronson spotted them, wasting no time in coming out to order them either to class or to lunch, as this was not “social hour.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cady said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  An eyeball above the door captured them loitering. Fractions of points were being shaved off their scores. Imani motioned for Cady to follow her back to the lunchroom.

  “Just so you know,” Cady said, “I love him.”

  Imani stopped walking. “What? Who?”

  They were at the lunchroom’s double doors, and the entire student body seemed to be aware of their presence.

  “I thought I could protect you,” Cady said, “if I didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me what, Cady?”

  Cady’s lip began to quiver. “I love him,�
� she said. “I can’t help it. I just—” She turned and ran down the hallway, each eyeball capturing her flight.

  3. the 60s

  “HERE’S WHAT I heard,” Amber Frampton said the next day at lunch. “I heard she slept with Parker Gray repeatedly just to get parts for that retardo scooter of hers.”

  Imani knew that was a lie and that the word “retardo” was both offensive and score negative.

  “And then,” Amber continued, “they, like, fell in love or whatever. But basically, yeah, she whored herself out for her scooter.”

  Amber Frampton: 66. Core strengths: congruity and peer group. Core weaknesses: impulse control, diligence, and rapport.

  Amber had introduced herself that way when Imani first sat down. Imani was in the 60s now. Her old gang were strangers to her. She’d have to eat lunch with Amber every day. She’d have to endure politely while Amber popped her gum and flicked her red curls over her shoulder, all the while disparaging anyone who wasn’t in her gang—the lowbies for being stupid and the highbies for being stuck-up.

  It was Wednesday, and Imani had neither seen nor heard from Cady since she’d dropped her bomb. Cady hadn’t picked Imani up that morning for school, hadn’t driven Imani home the day before, and wasn’t answering her cell. Imani pieced the story together from the gossip whipping around the school like rubbish in a windstorm. Already, a cautionary tale was forming about the hazards of proximity to the unscored, with Cady portrayed alternately as hapless victim and shameless slut, and Parker Gray portrayed always as the Evil Unscored Seducer Who’d Ruined Cady Fazio for Good.

  “The thing is, Imani, we are concerned about your association with Cady Fazio.” At 68, Connor Riley was the new leader of the gang, the former leader having ascended to the 70s.

  All eight of Imani’s new gang members stared at her. Connor, Amber, a cornrowed girl named Jayla, a nerdy-looking kid whose name, she thought, was Deon, and four others she’d never met and never noticed.

  “What were you even doing with Cady Fazio in the first place?” Amber asked. “She was, like, two gangs below you.”

  Next to Amber, Deon looked both confused and intrigued by the concept, his open mouth revealing double rows of silver braces.

  “We had a pact,” Imani said.

  “What kind of a pact?” Connor wanted to know.

  “A friendship pact.”

  “But she wasn’t in your gang,” he said.

  “I know,” Imani said. “That was the point of the pact.”

  “Um, Imani,” Amber said. “Of the five key elements of fitness, peer group is number one in importance.”

  “I’m aware,” she said.

  “So …”

  “So we had a pact,” Imani said, hoping to close the subject.

  “Look, Imani,” Connor said. “We’re happy to have you at our table. It’s just that we all hope you make the fit decision.”

  Translation: dump Cady, get a big score boost, then, through the magic of association, drag them all up in time for graduation.

  Connor was working Imani, and she was in no mood to be worked. Her life had fallen apart the previous day. Her whole future had collapsed under the weight of a love she hadn’t even known existed.

  “I’m going to the library,” she said. She looked at Deon as she said it, because he seemed the least anxious to use her for his own advantage. They’d had classes together in the past. He was smart, but morbidly shy.

  When Imani got up to leave, Amber shook her head and got straight to the task of critiquing her. Over her shoulder, Imani could see Connor watching her walk away, his eyes narrowed to probelike slits. Imani knew she was a last-ditch opportunity for him to breach 70, but only if she dumped Cady Fazio.

  And if Imani didn’t dump Cady now, with everything she knew, next month she’d drop even lower.

  * * *

  When Imani got home from school that day, Cady was pacing the first dock, her hand tracing the rail of Will Delbardo’s whaler.

  “If you want me to leave, I will,” Cady said. “I can ride up to the eyeball at Abruzzi Antiques and tell it that you ordered me off your property.”

  “It would know you’re lying.”

  “Not if you actually ordered me off your property.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  Cady sighed. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “I just can’t believe you kept this from me.”

  “I did it to protect you.”

  Frankenscooter was parked next to the smaller of the two boat trailers, and Imani noticed the heavy bags strapped to it. Cady turned to look at them. “Yeah,” she said. “They kicked me out.”

  Cady’s parents had been threatening to kick her out for six months, but Imani had never dreamed they’d do it. She could tell Cady was doing her best to keep her expression neutral, but there was need in her eyes. What Imani should have said next was You can stay with us.

  They had a pact. It was as simple as that. And the pact was not conditional. They were friends, not peers, and what did that even mean if they weren’t there for each other in a time of need?

  But Imani didn’t say those words, or any others, and the sinister pause that sprung up in their absence seemed to come from someplace alien, some newly discovered fold in the fabric of reality. Had it always been there, or was Imani creating it with her silence?

  It was Cady who guided them out of it with an attempt at looking on the bright side. “So Parker’s aunt has this huge house in Donverse, and she said I can have the spare bedroom if I help her paint.”

  “No,” Imani said, too late. “You can—”

  “Really,” Cady said, shaking her head. “It’s cool. Anyway, I just came over to see how you were.”

  Imani stalled. She wanted to go back to the moment when she might have asked Cady to stay with her. Or back even further, to the point when she might have stopped Cady from falling in love.

  “But what exactly have you and Parker—”

  “Imani, the less you know the better.”

  “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Don’t,” Cady said. “It’s better for your score if you don’t.”

  Imani sighed. “But what about you? Twenty-seven is so—”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Just get back over that line.” She fastened her helmet and swung her leg over the scooter. “You’re the brainy one. You have to go to college.” She walked Frankenscooter backward until it was pointed toward Marina Road. “So do whatever it takes, okay? Promise me that?”

  Imani could only nod.

  “And don’t look like that,” Cady said. “I’ll see you in a month. You’ll survive, I promise.”

  “But—”

  “Whatever it takes,” Cady said. “I mean it.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She squeezed the accelerator and growled away, quietly at first, then with growing ferocity. Frankenscooter left a wake in the marsh reeds as she sped down Marina Road. There was a break in the growl as she paused at the end to wait for the traffic on the Causeway to clear. Then she roared off, way above the speed limit, beneath the gaze of every eyeball between there and Donverse.

  “It’s a real shame, that’s what it is,” Mr. LeMonde said at dinner that night. “A damn shame. Such a nice girl too. And a fine mechanic. A fine mechanic.”

  Her mother had made spaghetti and meatballs, which was Imani’s favorite meal. Three meatballs sat uneaten atop the heap of spaghetti Imani had been pushing joylessly around her plate.

  Across the table, Imani’s fourteen-year-old brother, Isiah, slurped up a long strand of spaghetti and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He’d scored 85 the previous day, one point higher than the last month. “What I don’t get is why anyone would throw their life away for some—”

  “For some what?” Imani interrupted. “For some unscored piece of trash?”

  “Yeah,” her brother said. “Exactly.”

  Their mother plopped a pitcher of extra sauce in
front of him. “Isiah,” she said. “Let’s not use language like that.”

  “She said it. Not me.” He poured more sauce on his already dripping spaghetti.

  “I was being ironic,” Imani said.

  “I just think it’s a damn shame,” their father repeated. “What kind of a job’s she going to get with a score like that?”

  “Dad,” Isiah said. “You’re not supposed to swear in front of us.”

  It was sweltering in the dining room because that was where the wood-burning stove, which they’d had to fire up again because of the cold spell, sat. The rest of the house was varying degrees of cool, tepid, and frigid, but the dining room was tropical. It was inviting and cozy at the beginning of dinner, but about halfway through they ended up stripped down to their T-shirts and grumpy from the heat. That point had already been passed.

  “Elon,” Imani’s mother said, “save the curse words for me.”

  “Naw, I like to cash those in at the VFW.” He winked at his wife. “Sorry, Isiah. I shall speak more proper in the future.”

  “Properly,” Isiah corrected with an eye roll only a middle schooler could pull off.

  Isiah was entering a truly obnoxious phase, but Imani didn’t blame him. She blamed middle school. She remembered her time there. A vicious, backstabbing snake pit.

  “So, Imani,” her mother began in her gentlest voice, “what’s the thinking now? Are you still going to be seeing Cady, or …”

  Her whole family was staring at Imani now.

  “I guess you need to do what’s right,” her father said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “What’s right for you, I mean.”

  Imani rarely discussed anything score-related with her parents. They were exactly one generation too old to understand. They might have had their own challenges growing up, like SATs and other standardized tests and something called No Child Left Behind. But they didn’t know what it was like to be watched and evaluated all the time. Imani’s parents had read the brochure and signed the consent back when she was eight years old. They understood the reasons for the score. They understood the opportunities it afforded, but they didn’t—and couldn’t—understand what it was like.