Scored (18 page)

“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.

“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.

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 intimacy.

“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.

“Anyway,” Ms. Wheeler said, “I think you’ve forgotten about the incident at Chauncey Beach?”

“You mean the fire in the dunes?” she said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“You said yourself they were trying to draw out the authorities.”

“That was just a guess!”

Ms. Wheeler held up her palms. “Look. Who knows what they were doing back there? The point is that these people think they’re above the law. And we’re going to demonstrate that they’re not.” She leaned back in her leather chair. “You’re not worried about Diego Landis, are you? Has he gotten to you?”

Imani wasn’t sure what Ms. Wheeler meant by that, but she knew she didn’t want to be responsible for Diego’s
arrest
. That was never part of the deal.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him anyway,” Ms. Wheeler said. “At best, he’ll spend a day or two in jail. This is just for show. But it’ll keep Dena Landis occupied for a while. You see, we’re usually on the back foot with these people. They act. We react. We never know what they’re going to throw at us, so we’re never prepared. It’s a smart strategy, so I’ve borrowed it. I’m going to throw everything at them at once. An expulsion,
an arrest, and an emergency town referendum to ban all unscored from Somerton High.” Ms. Wheeler’s eyes seemed to glow with the idea.

Imani was speechless. She’d never seen Ms. Wheeler like this before.

“I’ve already gotten the town council’s support for it,” Ms. Wheeler continued. “They’re in total agreement that something has to be done. We can’t just stand by idly while the unscored victimize our children. Cady Fazio was a seventy before she met Parker Gray. A
seventy.
”

“I know,” Imani said flatly.

“She could have worked in retail, health services. At seventy, there are real possibilities. And now look at her.” Ms. Wheeler shook her head in pity.

But Imani was unconvinced by the display. Only last week, Ms. Wheeler had congratulated her for “discarding” Cady. Did she now expect Imani to believe that Cady mattered?

“Of course, none of this should concern you,” Ms. Wheeler said. “You should be focusing on yourself, and your own fitness. That’s the important thing. You’ll see. You’ll be over that scholarship line before you know it.” She flashed Imani her radiant smile, then unfurled her tap pad and began typing.

“But—” Imani cut herself off. She was going to remind Ms. Wheeler that getting over the scholarship line was out of the question, a fact that had necessitated the whole scheme with Diego Landis in the first place. But the ease with which Ms. Wheeler had forgotten those details, which in the past would have made Imani feel small, made her angry. Now that Ms.
Wheeler had gotten what she needed, she was dismissing Imani with generic reassurances. She was treating Imani like a detail to be smoothed over, a gum wrapper to be discarded.

Ms. Wheeler didn’t look up when Imani stood and opened the door to leave.

“Close it on the way out, will you?” Ms. Wheeler said.

Imani left the door open. There were still ten minutes left of lunch, but she didn’t return to the lunchroom. She went straight to her locker, grabbed her coat and backpack, and left.