Scored (13 page)

Nathan leaned forward threateningly. “What are you afraid of, Martin?”

Taken aback by the direct confrontation, Martin shook his head and jowls in the exaggerated manner that Imani recognized from more recent news feeds. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he backtracked. “But I think a lot of people—”

“A lot of people were perfectly happy to subject their children to the SATs and to all manner of standardized tests,” Nathan interrupted. “Let’s look at the SAT. All it had to do was predict an incoming college freshman’s academic performance. Do you want to know how accurate those predictions really were? Seventeen percent.
Seventeen
percent! That means four out of five times, it was completely wrong. Yet colleges relied on it, and billions were spent keeping this unequivocal failure of a social experiment not merely alive but
central
to the lives of young people. Why? Because it had the illusion of neutrality, and of science.” He took a breather and looked at his wife.

“Yeah, but Nathan,” Sherry said, “the real reason it was kept alive is even worse.”

“What’s that?” Martin asked, his thick eyebrows furrowing.

“Because the SAT was easily gamed,” Sherry said. “If you
could afford one of those test-prep courses, you could just buy yourself a higher score. The SAT was a way for rich people to pretend their children were
gifted
, when, in fact, they were just privileged.”

“Exactly,” Nathan said.

“And how is the score different?” Martin asked.

“You can’t game it,” Sherry said.

“Why?” Martin asked.

“The software learns from the attempt,” she said. “It’s just more feedback to make it smarter.”

“How smart?” Martin asked.

“Smarter than us,” Nathan said, grinning. “And we’re pretty smart.”

Sherry gave Nathan another sidelong glare, then looked back at Martin. “The thing to remember about the score is that, at its heart, it’s not so much about
what you do
. It’s about
who you are.
”

“And there’s no test-prep course for that,” Nathan said.

“No,” Sherry added. “Just the hard work of honest self-improvement.”

“Is
that
what people are afraid of?” Nathan asked smugly.

Imani had headphones on, so she missed the bell when it rang. It was only the parade of students exiting the library that pulled her attention from the screen. With reluctance, she closed the window, and walked out of the library with Nathan Klein’s last words resonating in her mind:
Is
that
what people are afraid of?

Imani sat through English class, taking cursory notes, but
her thoughts remained with the Potter-Kleins. There wasn’t much for
her
to use from that interview, but it was a potential treasure trove for Diego.

Imani had never given much thought to the Potter-Kleins before. If asked, she would have said they were a couple of computer geeks. But now she saw that they were so much more: they were visionaries. And what was wrong with having a utopian vision for humanity? Only a cynic would criticize them for it. If technology could help the human race get closer to perfection, where was the harm in it? Were human beings so admirable in their natural state?

Imani replayed her favorite moment in her mind, when Nathan got all serious and said: “What are you afraid of, Martin?” It was a perfect line to use on Diego.

After English class, she found another note from him in her locker.

Imani pocketed the note, thrilled at the opportunity to fire that winning line at him.

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON
, when Imani emerged from the ice rink into the back alley, Diego was already there. He leaned against his scooter reading a paperback called
Conquer the Five Elements in Five Easy Steps
.

“Those books are a waste of time,” Imani said.

Diego shook his head as he flipped through the pages. “I don’t know. According to this, you’d have to go out of your way
not
to be a high ninety.” He snapped the book shut. “Take off your coat and shoes.”

“Excuse me?”

Diego opened the trunk of his scooter and pulled out a long black coat and some black lace-up boots. He handed them to Imani, who examined them with disdain.

“They’re my mother’s,” he said.

“Is your mother a vampire?”

“According to some.” Diego reached back into the trunk, then handed her a shiny black helmet. “With these on,” he said, “you could be anyone. Even a filthy unscored like me.”

Imani considered telling Diego that she’d already confessed their collaboration to the software so there was no need for the disguise. But she decided against it. If he thought she was taking a terrible risk to be with him, perhaps he’d be more likely to reveal sensitive information. She put on his mother’s coat and boots, then slid into the helmet.

Diego straddled his scooter and waited for her to climb on behind him, but Imani hesitated.

“I’m a safe driver,” he said. “I’ve only crashed once. But it was the other guy’s fault.”

It wasn’t the scooter Imani was afraid of. She’d spent the past two years on the back of Cady’s, which was like being tethered to a gale force wind. It was the memory of Malachi Beene that frightened her. It was because of him that she’d sworn off
all
physical contact with boys. And now here was Diego, his long legs hugging the scooter, his straight back waiting for her to press herself against it. There was nothing inherently sexual about riding behind someone on a scooter, but she wished Diego had a car, something with a wide front seat, seat belts, and a lot of room between passenger and driver.

Imani took a moment to remind herself why she was there, why it was worth the risk. Then she approached the scooter and climbed on behind Diego. There was no rear bar to hang on to, just the rounded trunk, which she clung to awkwardly.

“You all right back there?” Diego asked.

“Just go,” she said.

Diego started down the alley. Imani scooted as far back as possible, leaving a gap between them wide enough for a third rider.

Diego was a much safer driver than Cady, who tended to treat all other vehicles as competitors or obstacles. They turned from the Causeway into the hinterlands of Somerton, past St. James College and the nature preserve. Dozens of eyeballs ticked by overhead, but with the long black coat and obliterating helmet, Imani was invisible to them, a thought that made her stomach flutter with both excitement and guilt.

The road to Chauncey Beach was mostly empty, curving gracefully beneath the canopy of budding trees. It was a five-mile ride to the end, and the parking lot was closed for the off-season, as marked by a handwritten sign bolted to a swing gate. Diego swerved easily around it, then headed toward the shuttered hamburger stand. Stuck like lollipops throughout the parking lot were a handful of light poles with eyeballs dangling from them.

“Hold on!” he shouted.

In imitation of Imani’s expert beaching of Frankenwhaler a few days earlier, he sped up and juddered his scooter over the lip of the boardwalk. Swaying roughly, Imani had no choice but to squeeze his hips with her knees. As the wooden planks jolted them upward, she refused to hold on to his waist, suspecting that such an indignity was precisely his intention.
Diego paused briefly at the top to tease her with a glimpse of the broad beach and glistening Atlantic, then he turned right and rode into the dunes.

Imani rarely ventured into the dunes herself. She preferred the waterline. She knew there were no eyeballs beyond a certain point, which meant lowbies went to the dunes to conduct themselves in the manner of lowbies. She wasn’t sure what Diego did there, and the prospect of learning this made her stomach flutter even more.

They descended into some trees, then followed the boardwalk over a network of streams. The interior of the dunes was surprisingly lush. Vines, bushes, and even some noisy insects fleshed out the parched surroundings into an unlikely Eden. They rode alone and unwatched through the shady network until a rise in the boardwalk brought them out of the trees and back to the bright white of the dunes. The ocean could be neither seen nor heard. After another ten minutes, the boardwalk ended abruptly. There, about fifteen scooters and a handful of bikes lay haphazardly in the sand as if spit up by the boardwalk itself.

Leaving his scooter among the others, Diego followed a riot of footprints up the side of a high dune. “Come on,” he said. “We have to climb.”

Imani followed him to the top, where he looked downward.

“Behold,” he said. “The pit.”

Down below, it was, indeed, a pit. About twenty yards by fifty yards and perimetered by high dunes, it had been carved
by the wind. At the bottom, about twenty kids milled about, some drinking beer, some tending to a small fire in the center.

Diego grabbed Imani’s hand while starting down the steep side. Imani pulled roughly away from him. He stopped his descent and faced her.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that it’s steep.”

“I’m okay,” she said. She dug her heels into the soft sand and descended the steep side on her own. Before long, the steepness forced her to run, then jump. Diego followed behind her at a respectable distance. Once at the bottom, she looked around at all of the unfamiliar faces. Diego walked up behind her.

“Are they all unscored?” she whispered.

Diego nodded.

She didn’t recognize any of them from Somerton High. “How do you know them?” she asked.

“A software program forces us to be friends,” he said.

“Ha-ha,” she said flatly.

“Actually, most of them are from my old school.” He waved to a cluster of girls sitting on a felled tree, roasting marsh-mallows in the fire. One of them, a tall girl with dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail, came over to greet them.

“Hey, Diego,” she said. “Who’s your friend?” Without waiting for an answer, she extended her hand to Imani with a dazzling smile that reminded her of Ms. Wheeler. “I’m Erica.”

Imani had spent most of her life avoiding the unscored. When she hesitated, the girl dropped her hand and let her eyes wander down Imani’s strange outfit.

“It’s a disguise,” Diego said. “She doesn’t usually dress like that.”

“Oh my God. You’re
scored
?” Erica whispered the word “scored,” but in a way that managed to make it louder. “No, no, no. That’s great. I’m
so
glad you came.” Her face filled with kindness and a hint of pity that made Imani uncomfortable. “You’re, like, completely welcome here,” she said.

“Thanks, Erica,” Diego said. He guided Imani away. “Don’t mind her,” he said under his breath. “She gets all excited when she meets the scored.”

“Why?” Imani asked.

“She thinks she can rescue them or something,” Diego mumbled, as if he were embarrassed.

Erica returned to her cluster of friends but continued gesturing toward Imani with an aura of good intentions that felt patronizing.

“I didn’t realize I needed rescuing,” Imani said.

Diego sat on a felled tree near the fire. “You wouldn’t, though, would you?”

Imani sat next to him. After the exchange with Erica—she’d never met a
friendly
unscored—she took comfort in the protocol of insults she and Diego had established. “So what is this?” She glanced around at the assortment of strangers, some with longish hair like Diego’s, some in the sloppy style of the local rich kids. “A secret hideout?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We come here to engage in antisocial behavior while plotting the downfall of society.”

“I thought society had already fallen.”

“It’s sick,” he said. “But it’s still standing.”

“And what’s your strategy to bring it down?”

“You’ll see,” he said. “Now, can we cut the crap, please, and get down to business? I need a thesis for
my
paper. I gave you yours.”

“Fine,” Imani said. She was equally eager to begin extracting information from him. “Why don’t you explore the philosophy behind the score?”

“What? Total mind control and world domination?” Diego asked.

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘a more perfect humanity through technology.’ ”

Diego leaned away from her. “Are you kidding me?”

“What? You don’t think that’s a worthy goal?”

Diego narrowed his eyes at her in an expression that seemed to say,
You are vastly strange and a little scary
. It was, of course, intended as an insult, but Imani didn’t mind it. She enjoyed being unfathomable to Diego. As he continued to stare at her, she prepared to unleash Nathan Klein’s line on him.

But Diego stole the moment. “It’s code,” he said.

Imani was thrown off. “What’s code?”

“ ‘A more perfect humanity through technology,’ ” he said. “It’s code for eliminating the unscored.”

“Says who?”

“We’re a glitch in their program,” he said. “What Score Corp wants is to make the entire human race as predictable and controllable as machines.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Imani scoffed.

“You’re calling me ridiculous?” His face was totally flat.

“How about paranoid?” Imani amended.

Diego chuckled dismissively, then poked at the sand with a stick.

“Oh, come on,” Imani prodded. “You’re saying the whole point of the score is to oppress
you
? Don’t you think that’s a little self-centered?”

Diego threw his head back and squinted against the sun, a mocking smile on his face. “You’re so naive.”

“And you’re an overblown twit!”

“Whoa!” He faced her, still smiling. “
Twit?
Really?” He picked up the tiny stick and broke it in half. “Did you get that from your thesaurus?”

Imani looked away, annoyed.

“Or is that what you’re stuck with because the software prohibits swearing?” Diego asked.

“It fits,” Imani said. “And the software doesn’t
prohibit
swearing.”