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obnoxious phase, but Imani didn’t blame him. She blamed middle school. She remembered her time there. A vicious, backstabbing snake pit.
    “So, Imani,” her mother began in her gentlest voice, “what’s the thinking now? Are you still going to be seeing Cady, or …”
    Her whole family was staring at Imani now.
    “I guess you need to do what’s right,” her father said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “What’s right for you, I mean.”
    Imani rarely discussed anything score-related with herparents. They were exactly one generation too old to understand. They might have had their own challenges growing up, like SATs and other standardized tests and something called No Child Left Behind. But they didn’t know what it was like to be watched and evaluated
all the time
. Imani’s parents had read the brochure and signed the consent back when she was eight years old. They understood the
reasons
for the score. They understood the opportunities it afforded, but they didn’t—and couldn’t—understand what it was like.
    And Imani was in no mood to enlighten them. “I can’t eat,” she said. She pushed back from the table and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
    Wrapping herself up in her grandmother’s handmade afghan, Imani sat on the bed and stared through her window at the purpling sky, a bank of covered speedboats hunkering down in the gloom. After a while, she was forced to conclude that her frustration at dinner had nothing to do with her parents. She had no complaints there. They were patient and loving and always did what they thought was best for her. It wasn’t their fault they’d grown up in a different world. She’d run upstairs because she couldn’t bear to answer their questions. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that Cady had already made the decision for her, that Cady had backed away gracefully so that Imani could save herself.
    And Imani had let her, which was less a decision than an act of paralysis. She had yet to determine whether this rose to the level of betrayal or if it was the result of a stalwart fitnessfinally stepping up to do what she should have done long ago. She only knew how it felt: sickening, sinking, like a flu of the mind.
    Imani had been rubbing her cuff’s tap screen on the afghan until it was buffed to a high gloss. The thing was dead now, already deactivated. She’d worn it one extra day because she couldn’t bear the naked feeling of cool air on her wrist. She took it off, noting the indentation on her skin, and placed it in the sock drawer next to the dead specs, trying not to think of them as emblems of her downfall.
    Digging around, she found her old cell, something she hadn’t used in years. She turned it on, surprised that its battery still held some charge. A few taps and she’d signed on to her family’s plan. She could get online, make calls, use the GPS, just as she could with the cuff; and just like the cuff, it would ping her location to Score Corp. In most ways, it was as good as having a cuff. But it meant she was no longer a highbie.
    The purple of twilight deepened to black, the covered speedboats dissolving into the background of marsh reeds. Several times, Imani
almost
called Cady, knowing the software would punish her for it. That she didn’t, that she remained in a state of indecision about her best friend, was a strange comfort to her. Cady might have made up
her
mind about what was best for Imani, but Imani had yet to make up her own mind.

4. a destiny of worms
    EVERY MORNING, IMANI walked with Isiah down Marina Road to wait for the middle school bus. Usually, they’d kick a stone back and forth until it veered off into the marsh reeds, then he’d challenge her to a sprint. For years, Imani had let Isiah win at the last minute, but lately, despite still being eight inches shorter than her, he’d been winning on his own. Isiah was a jock, a star of the middle school hockey team, his dreams of “going pro” just beginning to