Scored

by Lauren McLaughlin

“Yes, but even before the score, there were gangs. There were jocks and geeks. There were popular kids and misfits. There were greasers and squares.”

  “Rich and poor.”

  Diego paused for a moment to absorb her comment, but he didn’t rise to it. “Exactly,” he said. “It’s in our nature.”

  “And we’re still doing it,” she reminded him. “Only now it’s scientific.”

  “No,” Diego said. “That’s where you’re wrong. Score gangs are a bug, not a feature. If used properly, the score can be a pattern interrupt that breaks groups down.”

  Pattern interrupt. Was this another phrase from that interview with the Potter-Kleins? she wondered. Had she fed him this line of inquiry herself? Diego grabbed the interview from her and flipped through the pages in search of something. “Here.” He read aloud. “ ‘The score was meant to empower the individual, but instead the opposite has happened. Score gangs have become a crutch, a way for kids to avoid making conscious decisions about their peer group. As such, they’ve become, at best, first element neutral. At worst, they actually limit mobility.’ ”

  “Wait,” she said. “So you’re saying—”

  “I’m not saying it. Sherry Potter is.”

  Imani read the section herself. According to Sherry Potter, you didn’t have to sit with the 60s just because you were a 60. The software didn’t care where you ate lunch. The gangs were never part of the Potter-Kleins’ original intent. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “Neither did I at first.”

  Imani hated gangs. They were the reason she’d made that pact with Cady. She couldn’t tolerate the idea that everyone she cared about could disappear from her life overnight. But she’d always assumed gangs were a necessary part of scored life. What if they weren’t?

  “So.” Diego leaned back against the edge of his bed. “Thoughts? Comments? Am I missing something?”

  Imani labored to find fault with his case. Though she considered it original and potentially groundbreaking, she couldn’t bear to see him looking so smug. By rights, he should have been wrong. Demonstrably and, if at all possible, laughably wrong. “It’s good,” she conceded.

  “Thank you.” Diego bowed.

  “But,” she said.

  “There’s a but?”

  Imani’s mind swirled.

  “No way,” he said. “This baby is rock solid. Everything bad about the score is the result of its misuse.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” she said.

  “For the purposes of this paper, I do.”

  Imani could see Diego’s competitive streak coming out, and she was only too happy to take her shot. “Fine,” she said. “I can agree that the score—if used properly—empowers the individual over the group. But you’re assuming that groups are inherently bad, which, of course, they’re not.”

  “Yes, they are,” he said. “As soon as you have groups, the individual is suppressed.”

  “Sometimes the individual needs to be suppressed.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You need to know that you really frighten me sometimes.”

  Imani laughed. “Your worldview is so narrow. You’re not thinking globally. You’re not thinking historically.”

  Diego stared at her blankly.

  “Let’s take the caste system of gender,” she said. “Take Saudi Arabia.”

  “No thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t try to be funny,” she said. “Anyway, how do you think women’s emancipation will be achieved there, if it ever is? Will each of them achieve it separately? As individuals?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Exactly. They have to work together. But what do you think would happen if gender were the kind of caste system that empowered the individual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if it were possible to work your way up from female to male?”

  Diego inclined his head. “That’s absurd.”

  “It’s called a thought experiment. If it were possible, do you think women would band together to fight for their freedom? Or would they beat each other down in an effort to rise up?”

  Diego’s expression darkened.

  “What I’m saying is that you’re right,” Imani continued. “The score does empower the individual over the group. Your closest friend today might be invisible to you tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been friends or how much you care about each other, you have to be willing to sacrifice anyone to get ahead. The only allegiance you’re rewarded for is allegiance to the score. Anil Hanesh knew that. We used to be friends. And now I don’t exist to him. That’s how he became a high ninety. That’s how the score elevates the individual above the group.”

  Diego shook his head vigorously. “That’s not what I’m arguing.”

  “Well, you can pretty it up any way you want,” Imani said. “The fact of the matter is that the score prevents long-term bonding between individuals by empowering them as individuals. Whereas with other caste systems, like slavery and female oppression, the individual is disempowered. And because there’s no way for the individual to work the system, they’re able to find common cause.”

  “I bet there were slaves who worked the system.”

  “They didn’t become white, though, did they?”

  The rhythm of their debate came to a halt as Diego fidgeted in discomfort, the way white people sometimes did when people of color brought up race. It was as if he presumed Imani was incorporating him into the general guilt pool for historical transgressions. She wasn’t, and she resented having her dominance of the debate sidetracked by such a generic display of white guilt.

  Diego recovered quickly enough, though. “Wait. So you’re saying that slavery and female oppression are better than the score because they disempower the individual?”

  “What I’m saying is that those caste systems can fall because they disempower the individual. Call it a bug, not a feature, if you want. But it’s why they can fall. And it’s why the score, unlike those other caste systems, will probably last forever.”

  There was a brief pause, then Diego’s mouth fell open. He wanted to disagree. Imani could see that. He was looking for some essential point she had overlooked. After a pause that seemed to drain the life from him, he stood up and went to his kitchen. He opened the small refrigerator and took out two bottles of beer. Imani stared in disbelief. Who kept beer in their bedroom? He opened them both with a bottle opener, had a sip from one, and pushed the other across the counter.

  “Uh, I don’t drink,” she said.

  He had another sip, then stared across the counter, not at her, and not through her, but rather as if she weren’t there anymore. A lesser version of herself would have derived some pleasure from the fact that she had driven Diego to drink with the sheer force of her argument. But what Imani really wanted was for him to disagree. Dissent was the background noise of their relationship. And, she realized now, something she actually enjoyed.

  “Hey, you know what we should do?” he asked, the pall of his expression brightening suddenly.

  Fight, she thought. Argue. Compete.

  “We should write one paper,” he said. “Together. We could begin with my idea, laying out the case for individualism through the score. Then we could show how, in a totally disgusting irony, it ends up crushing the individual in the end.”

  “Cheery,” she said.

  “It would get their attention. Especially if they knew it was a collaboration between a scored and an unscored.”

  It wasn’t a terrible idea, she thought. From the tense equilibrium of their sparring, strange and original ideas had already evolved. “But what about the money?” she asked.

  “You could have it,” he said. “I don’t need it.”

  Imani’s eyes wandered across the row of professional-grade appliances behind him, all with long European names. Of course he didn’t need the scholarship. A yard sale of the contents of that room could pay for a semester’s tuition.

&nbs
p; “So why do you care so much about this essay?” she asked. “I thought you wanted to win.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “To prove I can.”

  Imani stared at him, dumbfounded, then stood up and went to the window, which overlooked the swimming pool. What an infuriating answer, she thought. The Otis Scholarship was a lifeline for her, and Diego was treating it like a Boy Scout badge. “Do you know what I’m risking to be here?” she asked. She kept her back to him.

  “I figured you’d calculated the risks,” he said. “Look, if I win, I’ll give you the money. I was planning to do that from the beginning.”

  Imani turned from the window and faced him. “I would never take money from you,” she said. “Do you understand that? Never.”

  Diego held his hands out in front of him. “Okay, okay. Fine. I’m sorry.” He grabbed both beers and held one out for her.

  “I told you I don’t drink.”

  He sidled around the counter and walked toward her. “It’s not score negative,” he said. “I looked it up.”

  Imani sighed in frustration. “Its effects are almost always score negative,” she said.

  Diego shook his head. “Alcohol can be consumed in an environment of fitness as long as it’s done in moderation and without the intent to induce intoxication.” He stopped a few feet away from her. “I read that.”

  “Given that I don’t drink at all,” she said, “intoxication is inevitable.”

  Diego stood his ground, grinning his predatory grin. “Write the essay with me,” he said.

  “No.”

  “We’ll nail it,” he said. “My mother might even be able to get it published somewhere. She’s got connections. So does my dad, for that matter. He teaches political science at St. James.”

  “I don’t want your family connections,” she said. “I don’t want your beer, and I don’t want your fucking charity!”

  Diego blinked rapidly, and Imani turned away and looked out the window again. Leaves had accumulated in the valleys between air bubbles on the pool cover. Imani wondered whose job it was to clear them out. Probably some parent of a Somerton High student, she figured.

  For a long time, they both stood silently while the faucet continued its slow, intermittent drip. Then Imani heard Diego place the two bottles of beer on a coffee table.

  “Why do you need to hate me so much?” he asked quietly.

  She kept her back to him. “I don’t need anything from you.”

  Beyond the swimming pool and the broad expanse of lawn was the cliff. Imani tried to remember where the cliff steps were in relation to Diego’s house. Was there a shortcut? A way back that would not take her past Whimsy and the other named castles?

  “Imani?”

  She wouldn’t face him. She felt uncomfortable just being there.

  “I hope you win,” he said. “Whether it’s with me or against me. I’m not saying I won’t try to beat you. But I hope you win. I hope you get everything you want in life.”

  The window was dark enough to produce a crisp reflection of him, but Imani couldn’t read his expression, so she assumed he was mocking her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Then she contemplated the cliff steps, which would be even more dangerous on the descent.

  16. gum wrappers

  IT HAD BEEN warm that Tuesday afternoon, the kind of day May promised but rarely delivered. While Imani had been in her bedroom doing homework before her visit to Diego’s house, Cady and Parker had gone to the Taylors’ farm field. There were no eyeballs present. They went there to be alone. A maple tree shaded them from the sun, and the nearest road was obscured behind some gently rolling hills. But there had been nothing between them and a pair of sophomore 40s lying belly-down in some corn. They weren’t close enough to record sound, but their telephoto lens was sharp and their camera work, if not exactly professional, was steady and focused.

  By the time Cady and Parker were pulling their pants back on, the footage was already uploaded. By the time they left the farm field, it had been tagged, rated, and ranked. It went viral overnight.

  By Wednesday morning, those who weren’t describing the footage in detail were listening to those details. All tablets in the school library were occupied. Still images were slapped up in the boys’ rooms and scattered on the hallway floors.

  It wasn’t the first time a pair of Somerton High students had disgraced themselves online. Amateur porn was the lifeblood of the Internet, and always had been. But this was different. “Farm Field Follies,” a.k.a. “Farm Field F*&k Fest,” was a cautionary tale about a former 90 throwing it all away to have sex with an unscored in public. The fact that Cady had already been a 70 when she’d begun dating Parker wasn’t discussed, nor was the fact that they had never intended for their act to be public. Minus these complicating details, Cady’s descent was like the story of Chiara Hislop in reverse. Such stories were the narrative backbone of the score.

  At lunch that day, Imani’s gang kept staring at her, as if she were involved somehow, or at least mildly contaminated by the incident. Imani ignored them. She had nothing to say on the topic that hadn’t already been said a hundred times, and she wasn’t the least bit interested in her gang’s analysis of it. She’d heard about it herself in homeroom, but had refused to look at the footage out of respect for Cady.

  “So?” Connor said eventually. “Did you hear, or what?”

  Imani looked at him as if he were an idiot. It was impossible not to have heard. At that very moment, some junior lowbies at a nearby table were reenacting a portion of the footage. Hastily printed still images were scattered all over the lunchroom floor. Then it occurred to Imani that Connor might have been speaking of something new. Was it possible that Cady had found the time to engage in another scandalous act?

  “Heard what?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  Amber couldn’t wait. “Ms. Wheeler was waiting for them at the back entrance. She told them to turn around and go right back home. Expelled!”

  “She can’t expel them,” Imani said.

  “Oh my God,” Amber said. “Have you seen that video?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “I … no, but … somebody described it to me.”

  “Well, then you know it didn’t take place on school property,” Imani said.

  “So?” Amber said.

  “So you can’t expel someone for having sex in a farm field.”

  “There was the graffiti too,” Amber said. “Don’t forget about that.”

  “There’s no proof they did that,” Imani said.

  “I thought there were witnesses,” Jayla said.

  “Yeah,” Imani said. “The same jerks who spied on them in that farm field. The same forties, incidentally, who filmed them, then uploaded the footage for everyone to see.”

  “Why are you defending them?” Connor asked, his eyes flicking to the eyeball above Imani’s head.

  “Well gamed, Connor,” Imani said. “But I think the software is smart enough to know the difference between defending an unfit act and defending someone’s right to an education. You can’t expel someone for having sex. It’s probably not even legal. Deon, what are you doing?”

  Deon had reached for something under the table, and now his large brown eyes bulged. When Jayla leaned across the table to have a look, her hands folded protectively over her face.

  “Deon, you should put that down,” Jayla said.

  But Deon could not tear his eyes away. Eventually, Connor grabbed the paper from Deon’s hands, looked at the image with clinical coolness, then turned it facedown on the table.

  There it sat, white and square, its image shielded from view. No one said a word, and no one looked away. But while the others merely stared at it, grimly committed to leaving it facedown (though wanting to turn it over), Deon seemed transformed by it. No one was more sheltered than Deon; no one had less intimacy with his fellow human beings. Now he had glimpsed the ultimate inti
macy.

  “I have to go,” Imani said. She got up and tossed the rest of her sandwich on the way to the exit.

  Ms. Wheeler was surprised to see Imani, but she invited her into her office. “I take it you’ve heard about Cady,” she said. “Shut the door and sit down.”

  Imani closed the door but remained standing. “I don’t understand how you can expel them,” she said, struggling to restrain her anger. “Is that even legal?”

  “Things aren’t always so black-and-white, Imani.” Ms. Wheeler maintained her pleasant demeanor, but Imani could tell she was insulted by the question. “Sometimes the best strategy is to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks.” She paused. “Aren’t you going to sit?”

  Imani shook her head.

  “You’re upset,” she said. “You still care about Cady. You realize, of course, that’s not going to help your score.”

  “I just don’t understand how you can expel them for something they did in private.”

  “The lawyers will work all of that out.” Ms. Wheeler flicked her hand as if at a bloom of flies. “They’re both being represented by Dena Landis.”

  “They are?”

  Ms. Wheeler nodded, a glimmer of self-satisfied joy on her face. “We’ve had to schedule an emergency meeting for tomorrow night. Parents, teachers, lawyers, press. They’ll all be there.”

  “Press?” Imani asked.

  “Dena Landis rarely appears without a phalanx of journalists.” Ms. Wheeler rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried. Actually, I’m hoping to have something on her son in time for the meeting.” Her lips curled into a smile. “Thanks to you. The press will eat that up, don’t you think? Dena Landis’s own son arrested.”

  “Arrested?” Imani pulled out a chair and sat down. “For what? You’re not talking about the Chaos Foundation meeting tonight, are you? Don’t they have to be committing a crime first? Isn’t there a right to free assembly?”

  “Well, aren’t you an informed citizen,” Ms. Wheeler said, arching an eyebrow. “I suppose you’ve learned these phrases in Mr. Carol’s class.”

  Imani had, but that seemed beside the point.