Scored Read online

  Also by Lauren McLaughlin

  Cycler

  (Re)cycler

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Lauren McLaughlin

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Cliff Nielsen

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McLaughlin, Lauren.

  Scored / by Lauren McLaughlin.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the not-so-distant future, teenaged Imani must struggle within a world where a monolithic corporation assigns young people a score that will determine the

  rest of their lives.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89873-0

  [1. Science fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M2238Sc 2011 [Fic]–dc22 2010028113

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Adelina

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. A Gang Apart

  2. First Tuesday

  3. The 60s

  4. A Destiny of Worms

  5. The Proposal

  6. Homework

  7. Big Ideas

  8. Together

  9. The f Word

  10. Spies

  11. Clamdigger

  12. A More Perfect Humanity

  13. Twit

  14. “We”

  15. Sherry Potter

  16. Gum Wrappers

  17. The River of Unknowing

  18. Stone Creatures

  19. The Free Fall Café

  20. Something Like Friends

  21. Undertow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1. a gang apart

  SOMERTON WAS POOR, but it was also scored, and had been for twenty-one years. It was a trial town, having signed on when Score Corp was still beta testing the software and offering its services for free—including the smart-cams, or “eyeballs,” as the kids called them. Shiny black spheres two inches in diameter, they dangled like Christmas ornaments from streetlights and tree branches. They weren’t hidden; that wasn’t the idea. You were supposed to know they were there, and behave accordingly.

  Now the eyeballs watched Imani LeMonde as she walked home from school. It was unseasonably cold for May. The stream of traffic on the Causeway spit icy water at her ankles. Despite the chill, Imani paused for a moment to gaze at her family’s marina behind Farnham’s Clam Shack. It was the off-season, so only the working boats were moored there—a handful of lobster boats and worn-out tugs clinging to a living in the depleted waters of the North Shore.

  Imani’s own secondhand whaler was hidden behind Bill Reynolds’s tug. A dozen other boats perched on blocks in the lot for her father to tune up in time for opening day. They belonged to the “recreational” boaters—rich guys from other towns who clogged up the river with their sleek, pointless speedboats, and sandbarred with laughable predictability. Imani would have liked to take some pleasure in the dwindling numbers of these yahoos mooring at her marina every season, but with the clam beds in decline and the lobsters growing scarce, those yahoos were the LeMondes’ bread and butter.

  As Imani walked down the Causeway beneath the dangling eyeballs, she couldn’t be sure the software wouldn’t discern such uncharitable thoughts. It was unfathomably smart. The eyeballs were not equipped with audio, but the software could read lips, analyze facial expressions, and identify a person based on gait. Just by walking down the Causeway and thinking anything at all, Imani was feeding it the data it required to produce her score. But Imani also wore the cuff, which measured her pulse rate and pinged her location to the software every second of every day, in case she wandered out of the eyeballs’ range. The cuff was a gift from Score Corp—her reward for scoring above 80. It was made of a dull black metal that snapped around her wrist and protruded slightly from her sleeve. It had lightning-fast connectivity and free unlimited data. Imani used it in place of a cell. It was one of the things that visibly differentiated the high scorers from the low. Its shiny tap screen was layered with fingerprints, and Imani had a nervous habit of wiping it clean on her pants leg, which she did now, realizing only after the fact that the software would know exactly what to make of the gesture—even if she did not.

  When Imani reached the hard-packed sand of Marina Road, the traffic noise of the Causeway gave way to the quiet rustling of marsh reeds. Imani stopped for a moment to savor the sound. There were no eyeballs here. Marina Road was private, owned by her family for four generations.

  Imani knew the score existed to help people like her, that without it her prospects would be dim indeed. Jobs were scarce around Somerton, and her family’s marina could barely keep them afloat. The score was “the great equalizer,” and Imani knew that as a “highbie” she was poised to benefit at the highest level. But she always breathed easier when she arrived at those marsh reeds. They marked the boundary of a separate place, an unwatched territory.

  While she gazed upward at the swooping arcs of some seagulls squawking over a disputed find, a mechanical growl intruded on the natural soundscape. Low, insistent, and louder than necessary, it was easily distinguished from the factory-installed hum of other vehicles. This growl was a custom job. Imani stepped back out onto the Causeway and spotted the growl’s source rounding the bend by the 7-Eleven.

  Frankenscooter.

  The thing was a wreck, a death machine, a mutant scooter pieced together from the salvaged parts of broken Hondas—matte black in places, dented chrome in others, all of the welding announcing itself like proud scars. Its motor—also pieced together from scavenged parts—was too powerful for its cobbled-together frame. But the thing could move, which was exactly how Imani’s best friend, Cady Fazio, liked it.

  Cady and Imani should not have been friends. Imani’s score was 92. Cady’s was 71, and dropping. That put them in different score gangs. But they’d made a pact back in middle school, when they were both 90s, that, no matter what their scores, they’d always stick together. Even though this was a major peer group violation, they’d stuck to it. They practiced all the rituals of avoidance while at school, but privately, they were a gang apart.

  Cady neither slowed down nor signaled for the turn onto Marina Road, an infraction caught by the eyeball above the stone elephant at Abruzzi Antiques. Imani could almost picture it shooting the evidence back to Score Corp for a quick lowering of Cady’s score.

  And, by association, of Imani’s.

  Cady angled Frankenscooter toward her favorite spot, then sped up and lurched over the hard shoulder of Marina Road, catching air for a moment before fishtailing around Imani in a sandy blur of secondhand leather and beat-up metal.

  “I’ve got the goods,” Cady said. “Get on.”

  Imani obeyed, and Cady drove down the long sandy strip of Marina Road, the growl of the motor growing more ferocious as they gained speed.

  It was only on the back of Frankenscooter or at the helm of her boat that Imani felt truly free. With the wind slapping her face, she reveled in the thrill of motion. That her cuff wa
s pinging the speed infraction to the software, which was shaving off fractions of points, was something she could worry about later.

  At Imani’s slip, they had her boat’s motor tilted out of the water so that Cady could examine its innards.

  “Please don’t break her,” Imani said.

  Cady laughed, then pushed her stick-straight, wheat-colored hair out of her eyes. Cady was always messing with her hair, tucking it behind her ears or pulling it into a messy ponytail.

  In the hair lottery, Imani had wound up with her father’s loose Afro, which she kept pulled back in a long braid to avoid fussing. Her fourteen-year-old brother, Isiah, had gotten their mother’s auburn waves, which he buzzed to a quarter of an inch, and Imani had inherited her mother’s freckles—just a sprinkling over the bridge of her nose.

  “There is so much wrong with this motor,” Cady said. “No offense to your dad.”

  Imani’s father had built her boat, a salvage job like Cady’s scooter. For that reason, they called her Frankenwhaler.

  Cady pulled a circuit board out and replaced it with a slightly larger one. Imani knew little about motors. Her father was the mechanic in the family. Cady had learned most of what she knew by tagging alongside him while he worked, handing him tools and running errands until she’d become something like an unpaid helper. When Cady’s interest had turned to scooters, she’d moved on to Gray’s Auto, assisting the mechanics there in exchange for free parts. Bartering of that sort was common in Somerton. Spare cash was less so.

  “You doing the traps today?” Cady asked.

  “If you ever manage to put my motor back together.”

  Mr. LeMonde’s pickup truck pulled into the lot.

  “You should begin thinking of ways to thank me for this,” Cady said with a cocky smile.

  Imani had already been thinking of it. She was going to give Cady the catch of the day if the new motor worked out.

  Imani’s father got out of the truck and waved to her and Cady, then, unable to resist another mechanic’s work, came over to inspect. “You are aware there’s a speed limit,” he said. “Right, Miss Fazio?”

  Cady kept her nose in the motor. “Not on open water, there isn’t.”

  Joining them on the dock, Mr. LeMonde crouched down for a closer look, his dark brown hands so spotted with oil they looked like camouflage. Imani’s father and Cady spoke a private language of circuit boards and electronics, of timers and transmissions, all of which were well outside of Imani’s core strengths. According to the testing done by Score Corp when she was eight years old, Imani was not mechanically inclined. Her strengths were elsewhere: in the humanities and pure science. Imani had no doubt that the software was smarter than her, but she had no intention of pursuing the humanities. She got enough of that particular species in school. She preferred fish and crustaceans and had long ago decided on a career in marine biology.

  When Cady finished her tinkering, Imani dropped the motor back in the water, waited for Cady to take her place at the bow, then shoved off. Imani could feel the difference in the motor immediately. It was livelier and even sounded different—like a gasoline motor from old movies.

  “Don’t go crazy out there,” her father called as they reversed out of the slip. “Mind the shallows.”

  “I know the shallows,” Imani called back.

  She took it nice and slow out of the marina and into the mouth of the Somerton River. When they passed Farnham’s Clam Shack, an elderly couple sharing a clam plate waved from behind the seagull-stained window. The girls waved back. Once they were clear of the couple, and seeing no other boats, Imani put the motor to the test. In no time at all, it shot straight up to forty miles per hour, which had been the absolute limit before. Imani pushed it further, and before long, they were doing forty-seven, then forty-eight, which, in the confines of the river, with the tide going out and the mud banks looming on either side, felt like sixty.

  Cady sat at the bow with the wind in her face, and when she turned to look at Imani for confirmation of her talent, her hair wrapped around her like a squid’s tentacles. She always forgot to bring a hair band, and Imani always kept an extra one in her coat pocket, which she handed to Cady now.

  “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.