Scored (2 page)

“The lobsters are yours!” Imani shouted over the motor.

Cady smiled with the confidence she wore so well. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Imani LeMonde!”

“Back at you!”

They entered the narrows around the back of Goodwell’s
Fish House, and Imani slowed but continued to go faster than usual. The motor seemed happiest at forty-five—and what a noise! Ancient and analog, it sounded mechanical rather than electronic. Imani loved it!

They emerged from the narrows, and Imani opened the motor up again. There was a little bit of chop to the water, and every time they caught air, Cady squealed with delight. Imani banked and turned, threw the boat in reverse, and did a couple of doughnuts—just to give the new motor a workout before starting in on the traps.

Imani’s father kept the lobster commissioner’s boat in top shape year-round, and as payment the LeMondes got to keep three traps in the river, free of charge. Checking them was Imani’s responsibility. She’d been doing it since she was eleven. If things had ever gotten truly dire at the marina—which was always a threat—she felt certain she could feed her family on what she trapped, caught, and dug up. With most of the commercial enterprises gone, there was little competition for what was left.

The first two traps were empty, so Imani steered Frankenwhaler to Corona Point, a rocky cliff face battered by the turbulent waters of the channel. Imani kept the trap just outside the mouth, where it was safe from the rookie boaters who always underestimated the power of those currents. Rounding the trap, she put the boat in reverse and pulled up right alongside it. Cady reached over and hauled the trap up out of the water two-handed, just like Imani had taught her.

Imani always let Cady handle the lobsters because Cady
was so proud of the way she’d overcome her fear of them. There was a time when Cady hyperventilated just
watching
Imani handle the lobsters. To Imani, this was proof that you could override even the most primal of instincts if you tried hard enough.

Cady banded the lobsters expertly, stowed them in the cooler, then lay back and spread her arms along the edge of the boat. “I feel like we should be drinking a beer,” she said. “Isn’t that what lobstermen do?”

“Yup. Drink beer, swear, and complain about their wives. Want to anchor and float for a while?”

Cady squinted into the steel-blue water glimmering in the afternoon sun. “You know me,” she said. “I never want to go home. My parents are in permanent bitch mode.”

Imani dropped the anchor, then stretched out across from Cady. “It’s getting worse, huh?”

Cady shrugged, her eyes tracing the progress of a sailboat in the distance.

As sophomores, Imani and Cady had mapped out their futures together. They were still both 90s then, which meant Score Corp would cover tuition at any Massachusetts state school. Cady was going to study engineering while Imani pursued marine biology. Imani’s goal was to work for the Fish and Wildlife Department, restoring the local fisheries and clam beds. In her most unencumbered dreams, she envisioned running a fleet of boats with Cady as her engineer in chief (with the caveat that Cady could design state-of-the-art scooters on the side, of course).

“My mom’s
obsessed
with college,” Cady said. “But she didn’t go, so what’s the big deal if I don’t?”

Imani knew that Cady’s mother, who sold handmade clay pots at craft fairs, would have sold a lung to go to art school. But in those days, after the Second Depression wiped out so many universities, higher education became the province of the rich, as it had been originally. It was Score Corp that had reopened those doors for people like Cady and Imani.

“Yeah, but the thing is,” Imani said, “it’s hard to even get a decent
job
without a good score. I heard the police force just upped their minimum to eighty-five.”

“Like I’d want to be a cop?”

“I’m just saying.”

“I’ll go work for your dad,” Cady said. “He’d hire me, right?”

“Yeah. Because business is really booming at LeMonde Marina. So much so, in fact, that Dad was just talking about opening a side business in scooter repair and modification.”

“Perfect,” Cady said without a hitch. “Then I’m all set.” She watched the sailboat making its slow progress near the horizon.

Imani couldn’t tell if Cady’s blasé attitude toward the future was genuine or defensive. With jobs scarce and the score growing more ubiquitous all the time, businesses could be choosy. Why hire a 71 like Cady when you could hold out for an 89—a bona fide highbie just one life-altering point below the scholarship line.

“You should at least take a break from Gray’s Auto,” Imani said. “You’ve been spending a lot of time there, and their kids are unscored. Doesn’t one of them actually work there?”

Cady nodded and turned her gaze to the channel, whose
southern shore frothed against the algae-stained rocks of Corona Point.

“Parker Gray, right?” Imani prompted. “I think he was in my gym class last year. Blond hair? Crooked teeth?”

“His teeth are fine.”

“That’s not the point. By working there, you’re associating with him. Maybe that’s why your score keeps dropping.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend he doesn’t exist? Pretend he’s invisible?”

“Yes,” Imani said. “They
are
invisible. That’s what being unscored means. Can’t you barter for parts at some other auto shop?”

A look of apprehension flickered across Cady’s face, which she attempted to hide by squinting into the sun. “Maybe,” she said, her tone dropping, a signal that they should change the subject.

Imani could have pushed, but they had agreed long ago to banish score talk from the river, a ban they usually obeyed. Score talk had a tendency to creep in, especially now, with only a few months left of senior year and their final scores looming.

Imani took a deep breath of salty air and made a determined effort to realign her thoughts. There at the mouth of the channel, beneath the towering cliff face of Corona Point, the world was putting on a brilliant show. Seagulls were diving and the salt air was sticking to her skin. There was not an eyeball in sight, and though her cuff was constantly pinging her location to Score Corp, it was neither score negative nor score positive to be where she was. On the high plateau of Corona Point, the
stone facade of one of the mansions was just visible between two pine trees.

There were around twenty mansions on Corona Point. The whole area was private and gated. None of the kids went to Somerton High, and none of the parents kept their boats at LeMonde Marina. They kept them in Waverly, so that they wouldn’t have to rub elbows with the few remaining clammers and lobstermen in the area.

Cady followed Imani’s gaze up the cliff face to the plateau. “None of
them
are scored,” she said.

“They don’t have to be,” Imani said. “They can buy admission to any college in the world.”

“What a racket.”

“You sound like my dad,” Imani said. She knew such inequities existed, but she also knew that before long the score would be universal. That was what everyone was saying. When that happened,
if
that happened, it wouldn’t matter how rich you were. If you didn’t have a score, you wouldn’t get anywhere in life. You’d be just as doomed as the other unscored, like Parker Gray and his ilk.

For a long while, Imani and Cady faced west, where the distant mound of Hogg Island swallowed the sun in a long slow gulp.

“Man, will you look at that sky?” Cady said. “Will you just look at that shit?”

There
was
something magical about it. How the electric blue deepened and turned steely. Eventually, it would redden in a final burst of color before the darkness swallowed it all.

“Hey, Imani?”

“What?”

“I’d understand completely if you wanted to dump me.”

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. You know you have to consider it. Before it’s too late.”

“No score talk on the river,” Imani said.

“We were
twelve
when we made that pact,” Cady reminded her.

Their separate place, their unwatched territory, had been breached, as all things inevitably were, by the score.

It would be dark soon, but that hardly mattered. There were still three hours until low tide, and as long as there was water in the river, Imani could get them home. She could do it blind if she had to.

“Cady,” she said after a long pause, “there are two things in this world I will never give up. Not for my score or for anything else.”

“
Two
things?”

“Yes.”

Cady paused for a moment to think about it, then said, “Oh, right.”

That was the hallmark of true friendship: the things you didn’t have to say. None of Imani’s fellow 90s would know what she was talking about, because they didn’t understand her the way Cady did.

The two things Imani would never give up were Cady and the river.

SOMERTON HIGH WAS
a squat one-story off the Causeway, studded with clumsy additions in mismatched brick. It had begun life as a clam-processing plant, and when it was low tide in the nearby salt marshes, you could smell that past.

Cady dropped Imani off at the front entrance, a metal double door with three concrete steps leading up to it, then drove around to the back to park her scooter. They wouldn’t speak or acknowledge each other for the rest of the day.

Everything inside Somerton High was gray—the lockers, the walls, the floors, even the air. Everything, that is, except for the eyeballs, which dangled at ten-foot intervals from the ceiling. It was a dreary place in the best of circumstances, but on
the first Tuesday of each month, when new scores were posted, dreary became ominous.

There were 763 kids at Somerton High, and most of them were scared. Beneath the gaze of the eyeballs, they sized each other up, wondering if they were safe in their gangs, if they dared hope for ascension, or if they were about to be demoted. Whatever their behavior had been for the previous four weeks, the monthly reckoning was at hand.

So as to avoid inadvertent contamination, Imani’s gang, the senior 90s, had decided not to acknowledge each other on first Tuesdays until the new scores were posted. It had been Anil’s idea, but they’d all agreed that it was mature and showed a serious commitment to self-improvement.

Imani passed Anil every morning on the way to her locker. On most days, he’d smile as warmly as he was capable of smiling and offer a few polite words of greeting. But on first Tuesdays, he didn’t give her so much as a glance. Anil Hanesh was going places. At 96, he was one point away from ascension to that most exalted gang of all—the high 90s. There were only two high 90s at Somerton High: Chiara Hislop (98) and Alejandro Vidal (97). Anil wanted to be their lunch mate so badly it had come to define him. The last thing he needed was a 92 with an “unfortunate friend” jeopardizing his chances.

Imani constantly told herself not to take such things personally—either on her own behalf or on Cady’s. It was nothing but the execution of an agreement she’d gone along with. It was sober, clear-eyed fitness at its best.

*  *  *

The first two classes were write-offs for most students. It was nearly impossible to concentrate on your teacher when the real grade was floating through the ether, shaped like either a bullet or a kiss. Most teachers knew this and didn’t bother introducing anything important until after the scores were posted, which was sometime between nine and eleven.

Imani spent first-period Spanish staring emptily at Mr. Malta’s smartboard, with its scroll of verbs in their neatly ordered conjugations. She was not paying attention, which was in violation of the fourth element of fitness, diligence, as well as the second element, impulse control. What she should have been doing was role modeling Chiara Hislop, who sat two desks over.

Chiara was undistracted as she watched the smartboard, her face a picture of serenity. She wore the gold-rimmed data specs given by Score Corp to those who scored 97 or above. The specs provided optical Web access and allowed Score Corp to spy even more intimately on its highest scorers. Imani still had her specs from that one glorious month in eighth grade when she’d crept up to 97. When she’d dropped back to 96 four weeks later, Score Corp had deactivated them. They sat in her sock drawer at home.

Chiara was going to Harvard in the fall, on a full scholarship, provided she maintained her high score. Score Corp would have paid for her to attend any state school in Massachusetts, but Harvard had a special fund for high 90s. Chiara was a true scored success story, having risen from a low of 40 to 98 in four years. Her parents, long ago laid off by the last
remaining fish-packing plant in Somerton, had sold her story to a writer in New York. As long as she didn’t screw up between now and June, Chiara Hislop, the pride of Somerton, would become a role model for thousands, perhaps millions.

Above Mr. Malta’s head, the clock inched forward as the class grew restless. Imani was not the only one committing impulse control and diligence violations. Waves of anxious distraction—the
snick
of tapping feet, the fabric scrape of fidgets—crept from the back of the room. When the bell finally rang, the class leapt, almost as one, for the door. Only Chiara remained calm, gathering her books before walking with extreme composure to the hallway. Imani tried to mimic Chiara’s demeanor and pace but soon found her feet rushing forward in the swiftly moving current of Somerton High’s lesser students.

To combat cheating and distraction, all mobile hookups—cuffs, specs, cells, tablets, smart scrolls, gloves, etc.—were automatically deactivated on school property by sensors located throughout. The only way to learn your new score was to go online at one of the library tablets or check outside the principal’s office, where Mrs. Bronson, the school secretary, taped an alphabetized list up to the glass. A desperate crowd bulged at each location, but to no avail. The scores weren’t posted yet. Mrs. Bronson shooed everyone away but wouldn’t say when the scores would be up because she didn’t know—something she had to remind them of every single month.