Scored (17 page)

Imani set off down the road beneath the dark canopy of trees, passing “Cliff Haven,” “Moonrise,” and the ludicrously understated “Mooney Hut.” Eventually, she found some driveways with actual numbers on them and was able to follow them to number three, a house with no name. Its driveway was unpaved, and the trees and bushes on either side were overgrown. The driveway brought Imani to a stone mansion, three stories high. It was one of the older homes, smaller than the others, better integrated into its natural environment, but still basically a castle. The house was dark except for two rooms—one on the first floor and one on the third.

Imani walked around the side just to see what was there. She found a covered swimming pool, a trampoline, a stone
barbecue, a wrought iron table with matching chairs, and a croquet game that had stopped mid-play. Underneath a gigantic deck was Diego’s black scooter. Imani heard nothing at first, but as she returned to the front of the house, she noticed the tinkling of piano playing. At the stone walkway that led to the front door, a motion-triggered light came on.

The piano music stopped. Imani froze and had a quick debate with herself over staying versus fleeing, which was interrupted by the front door opening. She took a deep breath and tried to appear unintimidated by her surroundings.

“You showed up,” Diego said. He was barefoot, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. “Did you take the cliff steps?”

“Yes,” Imani said. “And I almost died three times. I should sue you.”

“Good luck,” Diego said, grinning. “My mother’s a lawyer.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said.

He held the door open and she went in.

The interior of the house was crisply modern, with heavy, dark wooden furniture and large unframed paintings on the walls. In his cavernous kitchen, outfitted with gleaming professional-grade appliances, Diego offered Imani a soda, which she declined with a shake of the head. He led her through an even more gargantuan living room, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls and a grand piano in the center of it. Piano music was spread out on the stand, the bench, and the floor.

“My parents are out,” Diego said. “But I dragged some of my mom’s boxes into my room.”

He didn’t wait for Imani to say anything, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she followed him up a wide spiral staircase, edged with stacks of books.

“You guys read a lot, huh?” she asked.

“That’s my dad. My mom put a moratorium on bookshelves to try to stop him, so now he just leaves them around the house.”

They skipped the second floor, where, Diego explained, his “pack rat” father kept the rest of his books, going straight up to the third.

In keeping with the scale of the house, Diego’s room was more of an apartment than a bedroom. Not only did he have his own bathroom, he had his own
kitchen
.

“Wow,” Imani said. “Do you have to pay rent?”

He laughed politely, then pointed to the foot of his bed, where three cardboard boxes interrupted the pattern of a Persian rug. He had sheet music framed on the walls.

“My mom doesn’t know I took these, so we have to make sure everything goes back in order.” Diego sat cross-legged in front of the boxes. “If we can figure out the order. I don’t think it’s alphabetical.”

Imani sat opposite him, noting the tight weave and subtle sheen of the rug. The LeMondes had a “Persian” rug in their living room too. It was from Kmart, and you could see the digitized edges of the design screen-printed onto it.

“You know my mother’s semi-famous, right?” Diego asked.

Imani shrugged. Her own mother was not semi-famous, although she did win a clam chowder contest once and got to
meet one of the Red Sox players. In the news coverage, you could sort of see her in the background, behind the reporter and the Red Sox player.

“You should interview her,” he said. “People are always doing that. She’s incredibly busy, but I think she’d find the time. But if you ask dumb questions, she’ll walk out. She does that.”

“I wouldn’t ask dumb questions.”

“She’d probably make allowances for your age anyway.” He grabbed a stack of papers that were stapled together and sitting on top of one of the boxes. “I thought this might be useful. It’s from an interview Sherry Potter gave just a few months before she disappeared.” He flipped through the pages until he found the relevant paragraph, then read aloud: “ ‘The focus on peer group is sound and based on very good data. I’m not denying that. But what we’ve done, I’m afraid, is to create a kind of caste system.’ ” He paused to look up at Imani meaningfully. “ ‘And it’s been … well, shocking, to put it mildly, to see how obediently kids have organized themselves into it. You have to understand that was
never our intent.
’” He pointed out those final three words to Imani, then handed her the stack of pages. “Useful?” he asked.

Imani flipped to the front page. The interview was from
Neuroscience Quarterly
and went on for about twenty pages. “Potentially,” Imani said.

“Some people think score gangs are the reason Sherry Potter bugged out and went underground,” Diego said. “Later on, she compares the whole system to
Brave New World
. But you probably haven’t read that, have you?”

She hadn’t. “Don’t tell me.” She sighed with faux boredom. “It used to be required reading?”

“Ask your parents.”

“Whatever.” Imani started skimming the interview. It did seem to be full of evidence in support of her thesis that the score created a type of caste system. “That’s strange,” she said. “I don’t see the phrase ‘meritocracy with borders’ anywhere.” She shook the pages as if the phrase might fall out.

“Semantics,” Diego said with a dismissive wave. “The important thing is the
type
of caste system it is, which is why for
my
essay I’m going to compare the score to other caste systems.”

Imani looked at him in horror. “But that’s
my
idea.”

“I figured,” he said. “I’m taking the opposite position.” He grinned at her. “You want to hear my thesis?”

Imani fumed silently for a few seconds, then pretended not to care. “Can I stop you from telling me?”

“Don’t try to be funny.”

Imani felt her anger rising. “Don’t try to be superior.”

“Okay,” he laughed. “Anyway, what I’m going to argue is that—”

“Because you’re
not
superior to me,” Imani broke in, anger getting the better of her. She took a breath and softened her tone. “Regardless of what you may think.”

“How do you know what I think?” Diego’s blue eye zeroed in on her.

Imani held his gaze, determined to prove that she was not intimidated, either by his attitude or his wealth. They didn’t move, they didn’t even blink, until a single drip from the faucet
broke the standoff. When Imani looked away, Diego marked her defeat with a chuckle. “Please continue,” he said. “You were about to prove my point.”

She surveyed his kitchen to avoid looking at him. “Was I?” she asked.

“Brilliantly too.”

“Oh, please enlighten me.”

“Fine,” Diego said. “I’m going to argue that human beings have a natural tendency to rank themselves.”

“So?” Imani scoffed.

“So.”
He mimicked her tone. “We can say all we want about equality, but we don’t believe in it. We believe in superiority and inferiority. It’s in our nature to rank ourselves into status groups.”

“Exactly,” Imani said. “Like score gangs.”

“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.