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  So that was what she did, pausing only to look back when she heard the door to Rita Mae’s open and shut.

  “Imani!” Diego shouted. He hadn’t put his coat on. “Where are you going?”

  She kept running. Halfway to the ice rink, near the vandalized eyeball, she heard footsteps behind her. She sped up, but Diego was fast, arriving at the ice rink moments before her and blocking her way.

  “What the fuck?” he said. The wind jostled his hair, revealing the surprising symmetry of his face.

  “Can you please move?” Imani said, out of breath.

  Diego hugged his thin black sweater against the cold. “Why did you run away?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Can you please move?”

  “No,” he said. “Not until you tell me why you changed your mind.”

  But Imani wasn’t sure why she’d changed her mind. It hadn’t been a rational choice. It had been something closer to physical. “It’s not safe there,” she said.

  “It’s completely safe. It’s Rita Mae’s.”

  “So?”

  “So my parents know her personally,” he said. “If any one of her customers ever ratted out a scored kid for being there, she’d kill them. Like, with her bare hands. It’s kind of the code there. Rita Mae’s is a safe zone. Trust me.”

  “There are no safe zones,” Imani said. “That’s a lowbie concept.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And one that constantly undermines them.”

  “Why?”

  “You really don’t get it,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s why you’re here, right?” he said. “To teach me. And incidentally, there are plenty of things you don’t get either.”

  “Well, let’s leave it that way.”

  Imani reached around him for the door handle, but he grabbed her wrist. She yanked her arm free and he let go instantly, but remained pressed against the door.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  She stared back at him, feeling hot despite the cold. She wanted to tell him she feared nothing, and certainly not him. But the truth was she feared everything. She feared being caught in that alley. She feared hiding things from the eyeballs. She feared taking this risk to collaborate with him and she feared not taking the risk. She feared the way Diego reminded her of those boys in the alley.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just changed my mind.”

  He stood his ground for a few seconds, then stepped away from the door. “Fine,” he said. “But you’ll never win that scholarship.”

  “Neither will you,” she said. Then she opened the door and left him in the cold.

  10. spies

  AT THE END of school the next day, Imani caught a glimpse of Ms. Wheeler through the glass wall of the reception area. She was crisp and stylish in her pale pink suit as she explained something apparently complicated to Mrs. Bronson. Imani had not yet forgiven Ms. Wheeler for dashing her hopes during their last meeting. But as she watched her bent over a tablet with Mrs. Bronson, discussing, perhaps, the fate of another student, Imani wondered if it was precisely that directness that she most needed right now. After all, you didn’t get ahead by avoiding the hard choices. She decided to exploit Ms. Wheeler’s open-door policy one more time.

  “I don’t understand,” Ms. Wheeler said when Imani followed her into her office. Ms. Wheeler signaled for Mrs. Bronson to leave them alone with a wave of the hand, which Mrs. Bronson did, reluctantly. Ms. Wheeler closed her office door, then looked at the note, which Imani had handed her. “He wants you to help him write this … this …” She looked at Imani, perplexed. “What is it exactly?”

  “It’s for our final essay in American history,” Imani explained. “Mr. Carol’s going to submit them to the Otis Institute for a scholarship.”

  “The Otis Institute? I’ve never heard of it.” Ms. Wheeler sat down, unfurled her tap pad, and began typing, the information flickering in her specs. “Oh, I see. It’s one of these educational advocacy groups. Tom Carol should not be withholding this information. This scholarship should be open to everyone.”

  “It is,” Imani said. “But I guess not many people know about it.”

  “And the subject he’s assigned is opposing the score?”

  “Only for the scored,” Imani said. “The unscored have to defend the score.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Mr. Carol thought it would make our essays stand out,” Imani explained.

  “Uh-huh.” Ms. Wheeler continued typing for a few seconds, then blinked away the flickering lights from her specs and turned her full gaze on Imani. “Do you want to know the most dangerous word in education?”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Tenure.’ ” Ms. Wheeler picked up the note and squinted at it. “Such small handwriting.”

  “So the eyeballs couldn’t read it.”

  “Of course.” Ms. Wheeler nodded. “So. Diego Landis. He’s an excellent student. I’ll give him that. Especially for an unscored.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Imani said.

  “Enrolled here his junior year, and was promptly suspended for defacing an eyeball and getting into a shoving match with Brian Pilsner.”

  “I remember that,” Imani said.

  “Claimed he was set up,” Ms. Wheeler said. “He’s got quite a disciplinary record, actually.” She resumed typing. “Disrupting class, some graffiti.” She brightened at the word. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  Ms. Wheeler had offered one hundred dollars to anyone with information about the graffiti artists responsible for “Free the unscored,” but so far no one had been officially accused.

  “I’ve had my eye on him,” Ms. Wheeler continued. “He’s been quiet lately. Hasn’t caused any trouble since”—her fingers tapped—“February.” She blinked away her specs’ display and looked at Imani with a furrowed brow. “Did you want to make an official complaint about him?”

  “A complaint?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Imani stalled.

  “Wait a minute,” Ms. Wheeler leaned forward. “You’re not here because you want to accept Diego’s proposal, are you?”

  When Imani failed to answer, Ms. Wheeler leaned back in her chair and removed her specs. “Oh, I see,” she said. “You want that scholarship, don’t you? That Otis thing.”

  Imani wanted that scholarship more than she’d ever wanted anything. “I think I could win it,” she said. “I think I have a shot.”

  Ms. Wheeler laughed gently. “And I thought you were here to report Diego Landis for harassment.”

  “Well, he does have a sort of harassing personality,” Imani conceded. “But I think he could actually help me. He’s pretty smart, especially about anti-score stuff.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that.” Ms. Wheeler lifted a pile of papers from her desk and produced a tablet. “Do you know why he’s so smart about anti-score stuff?” She made a few taps, then turned the tablet around to show Imani. On the screen was an article from the Boston Globe about a Somerton lawyer engaged in a legal battle with the school system. There was a photo of Ms. Wheeler next to a woman who was identified in the caption as Dena Landis.

  “Is that—”

  “Diego’s mother,” Ms. Wheeler said. “She’s a lawyer. And a good one too. Do you have any idea how much she and her little band of opt-outs cost this school in legal fees last year?”

  Imani shook her head.

  “Two hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Claims of harassment, unequal treatment, unlawful surveillance. The state’s making local school districts cover those costs now. Imagine that. We had to lay off staff to pay for it.”

  “Like that history teacher?”

  “And a French teacher and an art teacher. Yes. And don’t think it’s over. Dena Landis is connected. Every creeper group in the country is in her corner. I know what her strategy is too. The nuisance
lawsuit. She’s trying to break our bank. She wants to make it fiscally impossible for us to keep fighting her.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Old money,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Deep pockets. They live on Corona Point, you know?”

  Imani’s mouth dropped open. She’d always known there was something unique about Diego, something that separated him from the other unscored at Somerton High. But she’d never figured him for a Corona Pointer.

  “These people have no respect for people like you and me,” Ms. Wheeler went on. “They have theirs, and they don’t want anyone else to have a shot. Sure, she talks a good game about protecting public education for opt-outs like her son, but you know what I think?” Ms. Wheeler leaned over the desk, her eyes flashing. “I think she enrolled her son here just so they’d have grounds to sue.”

  “Really?”

  “I think Diego’s a spy, if you want to know the truth.”

  “A spy?”

  Ms. Wheeler nodded silently, as if she’d just shared a confidence. Imani felt honored by it. She doubted Ms. Wheeler was so forthcoming with any other students.

  Ms. Wheeler sat back in her chair and regarded Imani. “I have to say I think it’s very interesting that Diego’s turned his attention to you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a perfect case study now. A fast dropper. That’s probably why he picked you. Maybe you’ll end up as the star of Dena Landis’s next case against the score.”

  The thought sickened Imani. “I don’t want to be a case study,” she said.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I should spy on him,” Imani said.

  Ms. Wheeler grew serious. “What do you mean by that?”

  Imani wasn’t sure what she’d meant by it. But now that she’d blurted it out, it took shape as a viable plan. “What if I asked him questions about his mother and her work?”

  “Do you think he’d answer you?”

  “It was his idea to collaborate in the first place. We’re supposed to be teaching each other about our point of view. Look.”

  Imani took out Diego’s “homework” assignment from her bag and handed it to her. Ms. Wheeler took her time reading it.

  “Nice language,” Ms. Wheeler said. “I like your answers, though. ‘Without the score, we would be living in an unstable aristocracy.’ Very insightful. But I don’t understand. It looks to me like you’ve already accepted his proposal.”

  “Well, I did, but …”

  “But what?”

  “But I changed my mind.”

  Ms. Wheeler slumped slightly in her chair. “I see.”

  “I thought it was worth the risk,” Imani explained. “But the thing is, if I don’t win the scholarship and I get caught with Diego—”

  “You’ll drop like a stone,” Ms. Wheeler said.

  “Exactly.”

  There was a pause as Ms. Wheeler stared at the note, swiveling gently in her cream leather chair. “If only there were some score-positive way to accept Diego’s proposal,” she said. “Some justification that the software would view in a positive light.”

  “Yeah, but the unscored are off-limits,” Imani said. “That’s the first element. That’s peer group.”

  “True.” Ms. Wheeler resumed swiveling. “But it’s not as if you’d be doing it for fun.”

  “God, no.”

  “It’s not as if you’d be dating him.”

  Imani laughed sharply. The idea of dating Diego Landis was too ridiculous to ponder, especially now that she knew where he came from, and what he was doing at Somerton High. “Wait a minute,” Imani said. “Wouldn’t it mean something that I was obtaining useful information about a creeper lawyer who’s fighting against the score?”

  Ms. Wheeler stopped swiveling. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s like you said. I wouldn’t be associating with Diego Landis for fun. I’d be doing it for …” Imani looked up at the ceiling as she searched for the right words.

  “For the sake of the score?” Ms. Wheeler offered.

  “Yeah,” Imani said. “Exactly. To protect the score against its enemies. That has to count for something, right?”

  Ms. Wheeler bit her lip. “The software is smarter than us,” she said. “It knows our motives even when we don’t.”

  “And this would be a fit motive,” Imani insisted. “Wouldn’t it?”

  Ms. Wheeler sank back into the thick cushiony leather of her chair and swiveled gently. It was her own nervous habit, Imani realized, her principal’s version of shining her tap screen. “This is uncharted territory, Imani.”

  “But it could work, right?”

  Ms. Wheeler stared right through her, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said.

  It was considerably less than the assurance Imani was hoping for, but it was something.

  “One problem, though,” Ms. Wheeler said. “Won’t Diego suspect something if you agree to openly collaborate with him?”

  Imani paused to think about this. “I’ll sneak around with him. It was his suggestion to be discreet.”

  “And how will the software interpret that?”

  Imani sighed. There were too many tangles in this growing web.

  “Of course,” Ms. Wheeler said, “you could make a preemptive confession. Tell an eyeball what you’re planning to do beforehand. Lay it all on the line so the software knows what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”

  Now it was Imani’s turn to bite her lip. The idea of speaking directly to an eyeball continued to frighten her. “I guess I could do that,” she said.

  “You’d have to be completely honest,” Ms. Wheeler warned.

  “I could do that,” Imani whispered.

  “Otherwise it’s gaming.”

  “I wouldn’t be gaming,” she said.

  “Well.” Ms. Wheeler leaned forward with a friendly and conspiratorial smile. “You’d be gaming Diego Landis.”

  “True,” Imani said.

  “And his mother,” Ms. Wheeler added.

  But this, Imani thought, was an unexpected bonus.

  There were seventeen eyeballs between school and home, but Imani waited until she got to Marina Road. Then she ran across to Abruzzi Antiques, an establishment so unpatronized it was more hobby than business. The OPEN sign hung in the door, but the elderly Mrs. Abruzzi was nowhere to be seen. In the disused parking lot were an ancient phone booth and a menagerie of crumbling seagull-fouled garden sculptures. Standing like a guard at the foot of a street lamp from which hung an eyeball was a cement elephant about four feet high. Dropping her backpack, Imani climbed onto the elephant’s back and stood up. This brought her closer to an eyeball than she’d ever been before. Its shiny black surface reflected the sun so perfectly it hurt her eyes.

  “Hi,” Imani said to it, then paused, enslaved by the conventions of dialogue. “I guess I don’t have to introduce myself because you already know who I am, right? I’m Imani LeMonde?” She knew something was tracking her words, something far away in a central processing station, some nonphysical thing made of ones and zeroes. It read her lips and formed a judgment sounder than any she could form. “So I’m here to confess something I’m about to do,” she said. “And I want to be completely honest with you. I’m going to be spending time with an unscored named Diego Landis. It’s not because I like him or anything. I actually find him …” Imani’s gaze drifted upward as she searched for the right words. “Annoying,” she said. “And foulmouthed. So there will be swearing. I mean, I won’t be swearing, but he will. Anyway, my original reason for doing this was research for a paper. There’s a scholarship given by the Otis Institute, which I’m sure you can look up or whatever. And then I learned that Diego is the son of a creeper lawyer who has been suing the school. So I thought that I could use my connection with Diego to learn about his mother’s plans to fight … well, to fight you.”

  Imani stared at the small black ball, which seemed suddenly fragil
e.

  “They want to destroy you,” she said, “because they don’t believe in upward mobility and all the things you’ve promised.” She swallowed, knowing the software would process the gesture according to its own superior logic. “But I do,” she said.

  She wasn’t gaming. She did believe in the things the score promised. At least, she thought she did. She’d never found any reason not to believe in them.

  When she climbed down from the stone elephant, she came face to face with an armless mermaid. The pitted thing had been through blizzards, heat waves, and callous movers only to wind up in that parking lot in Somerton. Still, as it gazed beyond the pizza shop toward the ocean, which would always elude it, somehow it managed to look hopeful.

  11. clamdigger

  THE NEXT DAY, Imani waited until the break before final period, then slipped a note into Diego’s locker with an invitation to meet her in person. A junior 80 saw her and would probably rat her out for it. But it wouldn’t matter, because Imani had already ratted herself out.

  That afternoon, a few hours after high tide, Imani took Frankenwhaler up the river to a small strip of beach belonging to the Wentworths, a couple who went bowling with her parents once a week. Their ramshackle house was obscured by overgrown trees that were rapidly swallowing what was left of their beach. A three-wheeled ATV sat catty-corner to a shredded badminton net, and strewn about like seaweed was an assortment of plastic toys that belonged to their grandchild.

  It was cool and overcast, no shadows anywhere, the sky a uniform gray. Imani pulled on a sweater and waited. It felt strange to be picking up someone other than Cady. She wondered if Cady missed their afternoons on the river or if she preferred spending her time with Parker.

  In the distance, she heard a low hum. It was nothing like Frankenscooter’s, but Imani could feel her heart beat anyway. As the sound grew, she tidied up the boat, folding the blanket and wiping down the bench. Eventually, a black scooter appeared between two trees, jolted over a big root, then skidded onto the sand. Without stopping, it came across the beach, swerved around two baby dolls, then stopped abruptly next to the ATV.