Scored

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “Yeah, I know,” Imani said. “Can I ask you a question, though?”

  “Always.”

  “Well, I was just wondering. You know when you said we should feel free to collaborate on it?”

  Mr. Carol nodded while popping a potato chip in his mouth.

  “Did you mean that the scored should collaborate with the unscored?” she asked.

  Mr. Carol swallowed. “Would you like to collaborate with an unscored?”

  Imani shook her head. “I just didn’t know what you meant, that’s all. I want to make sure I do what you want.”

  “I see. Imani, are you asking me to assign you to collaborate with an unscored?”

  The eyeball was directly behind his head, so there was no way it could read his lips, something Imani was certain he knew. She could answer yes or no to his question without implicating herself in any way.

  Mr. Carol put his bag of chips down, wiped his hands on his pants, and leaned forward. “Believe you me,” he said, “I would like nothing better than to order you to cross the scored-unscored divide to write these papers, but I’m pretty sure that would get me fired. There are places you can go. You know that, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The library, for one,” he said. “Not the school library but the one on the Causeway. God bless your local librarians for keeping at least that public space free of spies. And there are other places too. Certain cafés, bars. Safe zones. I’m just putting it out there. You know, in case you did want to collaborate with an unscored, which, of course, I’m not assigning, but … well … you know what I’m saying.”

  “Right.” Imani knew exactly what he was saying. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Hey, and don’t be so quiet in class tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  “Shoot. Did I assign reading over the weekend?”

  Imani shook her head.

  “I really do have to get my act together, don’t I?” Mr. Carol picked up the bag of chips and offered her one again.

  “No thanks,” she said.

  When Imani left him, there were still forty minutes of study period remaining, plenty of time to make her confession. But as she paced the empty hallways beneath eyeball after eyeball, with the note in her pocket and her confession ready for airing, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was another way of looking at things.

  6. homework

  THAT NIGHT, IMANI told her parents she was going to the library to meet up with her new gang. It was only a five-minute bike ride, and as she rode beneath the eyeballs, she concluded that there was nothing incriminating about the journey.

  The library itself was a different matter. Imani knew that the absence of eyeballs and the presence of unmonitored tablets were an open invitation to every lowbie who wanted to get away with something. They’d go there to download porn or make out in the stacks. It was a den of secret iniquity that even had its own code: “What happens at the library stays at the library.” Whether this code was actually followed, however, was doubtful. Most likely, the kids not committing flagrant fitness violations themselves could be found later reporting unfit activities to the nearest eyeball in the hope of improving their own scores. Lowbies were notoriously treacherous.

  Imani stood outside the entrance, her bike chained to the rack. There were no other bikes, just one scooter, and in the staff parking area, one small car. Imani had Diego’s note in her pocket, and there was an eyeball across the street—the one that would see her enter the library. If she entered. It wasn’t too late to change her mind. She could cross the street and make her confession right there.

  Or she could hear Diego out.

  Imani pushed the library doors open. Inside, it was shockingly quiet. Behind the curved main desk, a librarian stacked books, her silver hair pulled into a low ponytail. The rest of the empty room yawned in hollow, suffocated silence.

  “Can I help you with something?” the librarian asked.

  “Just here to browse,” Imani lied.

  It was hotter than it should have been. The back of Imani’s neck dampened beneath the weight of her braid. She unzipped her coat and walked into the low-ceilinged room. Books and papers littered the tables, but there was not a soul in sight. Above a water fountain, an ancient clock ticked clunkily.

  In the back, by the fire exit, a black leather jacket was slung over a chair, the only sign of other people. Imani moved toward it, carefully scanning for witnesses. The stacks to her right appeared empty, though she couldn’t be sure. There was a dance that night, so most likely everyone who would have been committing fitness violations at the library was committing them in the remaining blind spots around the school gym. Diego must have known the library would be empty.

  When Imani got to the table where the black jacket hung, she saw Diego a few feet away, leaning against the doorjamb of the fire exit. The door itself was propped open by a trash can, allowing fresh air in. Diego rested one foot on the opposite doorjamb while reading a small, yellowed paperback edition of 1984.

  Without taking his eyes off the book, he said: “You must really want it.” He wore a loose white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. His bangs were pushed behind his ears, revealing, for the first time, his right eye.

  “The scholarship, I mean.” He shook his hair free so that it fell back over half his face. Only then did he look at Imani. “You skipped the dance to be here.”

  “I don’t go to dances.”

  “Me neither. The music sucks.” He folded the page down in his book.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” Imani said. “I think they have bookmarks at the front desk.”

  “It’s my own copy,” he said. Then he stared at her with that one visible eye. “So.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “Should we go to the stacks?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He laughed. “I meant for privacy.”

  Imani looked around. As far as she could see it was just the two of them, plus one old librarian, who didn’t know her.

  Imani took off her coat and put it on the edge of the table. “Here’s fine.” She pulled out a chair and sat down, ensuring a sight line to the entrance.

  As he walked past, Diego nearly brushed against her, then grabbed his black bag from a chair and dragged it across the table to the other end. He pulled out a curved state-of-the-art smart scroll, a massively expensive hookup.

  “Nice tech,” Imani said.

  “Stolen,” he said, then noting her expression added: “Kidding.”

  “Funny.”

  “All this tech is just a way station,” he said. “Before long, we’ll all have a chip in the brain. Actually, we won’t even need a brain. Score Corp will do our thinking for us.”

  “Is that your thesis?”

  He laughed, but to Imani it sounded joyless.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  Imani nodded.

  “Why is this okay for you? How are you justifying it?”

  “It was your idea.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got nothing to lose. I can hang out with the scored anytime I want. Not that I’d want to.”

  “Don’t worry. We don’t want to hang out with you either.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because I want that scholarship,” she said. “Why do you think?”

  “Well, you do have a reputation for self-destruction.”

  “I have a reputation?”

  “It’s a gossipy town,” he said.

  “What are you, from the dark ages or something?” Imani said. “I don’t have a reputation. I have a score.”

  “Hold on.” He snapped his scroll open, then raced his long fingers across it. “ ‘I don’t have a reputation. I have a score.’ Can I quote you?”

  Imani pushed her chair back and stood up.

  “Wait,” he said. “Before you storm out of here in protest, take this.”

&nbs
p; Imani remained standing, one hand on her coat and both eyes on the door, while he pulled a sheet of paper from his bag and slid it toward her. It was neatly designed, like something you’d find in a textbook.

  1) What advantages do you feel your scored status affords you?

  2) In what ways is it easier to be scored?

  3) In what ways is it harder to be scored?

  4) How is society improved by the score?

  Between each question, there were lined spaces for the answers.

  “Wait a minute,” Imani said. “Did you write this?”

  “Yeah.” Diego stood and slid into his leather jacket, revealing the faint traces of sweat marks under his arms. “Leave it on your desk in American history,” he said. “I’ll pick it up after class. And don’t worry, I’ll be sneaky.”

  “You’re giving me homework?”

  “If I like what you’ve written, I’ll be in touch.”

  Diego headed to the front door, nodding to the silver-haired librarian, who said his name as if they were old pals. A few moments later, a generic factory hum from a scooter started up, then faded northward, carving the route of his journey home.

  Imani was still standing at the end of the table, holding his homework assignment.

  “What an assho—”

  Imani never swore. It was a severe violation of impulse control. But she almost finished that sentence.

  Out loud.

  7. big ideas

  IMANI WOULD HAVE liked to spend the following Saturday in Cady’s garage, handing over tools while discussing Diego’s risky proposal. It wasn’t that Cady’s advice would have been trustworthy. Her ideas were formed in the steamy jungle of emotion rather than the cool laboratory of reason. But she would have listened. Cady was a world-class listener, attentive even while soldering a circuit board.

  Imani knew that her parents would not have understood. Their grasp of the world was based on an obsolete value system that was probably the root of Imani’s problems. Who else had gifted her with the dusty antique of loyalty, that “disempowering bond”?

  Isiah might have understood, but his advice would be worthless. Imani knew she was beyond the machinations of middle school fitness. She was at best in the realm of extreme subtlety. At worst, she was beginning a downward spiral that would deliver her, with mathematical finality, into her destiny of worms.

  Or worse.

  So with her options limited, Imani went clamming. The shores of Hogg Island were desolate early Saturday morning as she waited for the tide to recede. Frankenwhaler was beached at her side, the sun rising warm and bright over the plateau of Corona Point. She had only herself to speak to, and did so freely.

  There was much to consider. The risks of a secret collaboration with Diego were obvious. Not only was there the threat of discovery, there was also the prospect of carrying around the damning secret in full view of every eyeball in Somerton. Knowingly committing an unfit act was the essence of incongruity. What if the software inferred this violation of the third element from a persistently guilty expression? Could she fool it? Or would the attempt result in her score dropping even further? What nonmilitary options were there for a 52? Or a 42?

  On the other hand, the benefits of collaborating with Diego were obvious too. He was smart, as much as Imani hated to admit it, very smart. His anti-score sentiments were original and well sourced. Though she found his attitude grating, there was a good reason he was Mr. Carol’s favorite. Not that Imani derided her own gifts. She knew she wrote excellent essays, with a sharp grasp of point and counterpoint. She had excellent critical reasoning skills, as Mr. Carol himself had frequently told her. But she also knew what she lacked: a passion for the big ideas. She could turn almost anything into an exemplary essay, but to win the Otis Scholarship, she’d need more than that. She’d need a sense of purpose. She’d need the kind of passionate opposition to the score that Diego displayed so skillfully.

  As the tide receded, the damp sand began to bubble. Imani got to work, filling her mesh bag with the oversized clams her mother would turn into a thick, creamy chowder. If she’d been born twenty years earlier, perhaps Imani would have settled into a life working those shores, as her mother’s family had done for generations, before most of the commercial clam operations closed down. She paused to gaze across the channel. Sometimes she found it hard to believe that such rich surroundings could be so bereft of life, that beneath her beloved blue was a tragedy still unfolding. How had people let it happen? If Imani had a sense of purpose for anything, it was for this: the river, the islands, the ocean beyond, and the interplay of commerce and nature that she knew from her parents’ musings had once been Somerton’s backbone—before it was a trial town, before it needed to be a trial town. There was a time when Somerton had taken care of itself.

  Imani’s clam fork stuck out of the sand where she squatted. Her bag was full, the sun was high, and there was just enough water in the river to carry her home.

  Mrs. LeMonde was on her knees in the kitchen, making room on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for a new box of night crawlers. Her faded black cargo pants had frayed irreparably at the ankles. Her mother only bought new clothes when the old ones disintegrated.

  Imani lifted her clam bag into the sink, and her mother stood to inspect the haul. Mrs. LeMonde loved nothing more than to spend all day in the kitchen with a sink full of fresh catch.

  “Anyone else out there?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  Stuffing her hair behind her ears, Mrs. LeMonde turned on the faucet and got to work. She looked beautiful to Imani, her auburn hair messy with waves and shot through with silver, her freckled skin crinkling around the eyes. She belonged there, in the house and at the marina, in the bait shop and in her own destiny of worms. But Imani knew that her mother’s way of life could disintegrate, like those cargo pants, at any minute. A few more recreational boaters opting for Waverly, another lobsterman calling it a day, and the marina was done for. The problem with Somerton was that it produced great fishermen, clammers, lobstermen, and boat mechanics. But no one had tended to the foundation. No one was taking care of the river itself.

  “Something on your mind?” her mother asked.

  “Nope.”

  Her mother laughed. “Of course not. You know, I had secrets once too.”

  Imani would have liked to hear those secrets someday, but not now. She had work to do. She was going to college in the fall. No matter what it took.

  * * *

  Though it galled Imani that Diego believed she had to prove her worth to him, she was willing to play along. This would not entail any attempt to be his friend, however. She would use his ideas, as he would use hers. There would be no more to it than that. She settled down on her bed and got to work.

  The first three questions were easy. After a few drafts, she came up with the following answers:

  1) What advantages do you feel your scored status affords you?

  Answer: In addition to the obvious advantages, such as access to a college education and to the better jobs, there’s the opportunity to achieve the contentedness of constant self-improvement. Whereas the unscored must accept what they are and muddle through life permanently flawed, the scored receive monthly feedback from an impartial and highly intelligent source, which empowers us to change.

  2) In what ways is it easier to be scored?

  Answer: In no way. In fact, it’s much harder to be scored.

  3) In what ways is it harder to be scored?

  Answer: In every way. We are under constant pressure to maintain or improve our scores. It is much easier to drop than it is to rise. Our peer groups change suddenly, and we are punished for attempting friendship outside of gang boundaries. We are forced to walk the line between observable fitness and punishable gamesmanship. And we can never relax until the last score is in.

  So far so good, Imani thought. But when she got to question 4—How is society improved by the score?—she spent a lot of time starin
g through her window. To identify how the score had improved society, you had to consider what society would be like without it. But she had never lived in that society. From her parents’ stories, she knew that it had been no picnic, that a prolonged depression had wrung out the nation and made places like Somerton almost unlivable. She knew about the high unemployment rate, and the concentration of wealth that still made her father spit fire about “the man.” It wasn’t as if the score had fixed all of those things—yet. Wealth was still highly concentrated, as the millionaire crust of Corona Point attested, but the score was spreading. It was becoming “ubiquitous,” to borrow a favorite term of the creepers. And it wasn’t free anymore. Somerton, Wakachee, and the handful of other trial towns had been test cases for Score Corp. In other towns, Imani knew, you had to pay for the privilege of being scored.

  And people did pay, by the millions. That had to mean something.

  Imani recalled an assignment Mr. Carol had given them earlier in the year. He frequently asked them to examine current events in order to highlight historical principles, and this time he’d assigned the Somerton pages of WickedNews, an online clearinghouse of local news for the North Shore area. There, on the Education Forum, the parents of Somerton had been waging a debate about barring all unscored students from the school system. Mr. Carol had asked his students to uncover constitutional principles at stake, but Imani had found few.

  She called up WickedNews on her cell and scanned through the debate again. The letters were full of venom, bad grammar, and personal attacks. The unscored parents, or “opt-outs,” as they preferred to be called, were vastly outnumbered, fielding only four dogs in the fight, whereas the scored letters were often signed by twenty or more parents. Though the letter writers displayed that selfishness common to parents (a selfishness that extends exactly one degree outward, to incorporate one’s own children but no one else’s), they also frequently insisted that whatever was in their child’s interest was in society’s interest too. For the most part, this amounted to the parents of the unscored fearing a surveillance state and mind control, while the parents of the scored insisted they were heralding a new age of mental health and meritocracy. There were links aplenty in support of each position.