Scripted by Maya Rock

that’s what you want.”
    â€œDoes what I want matter?” I bend down to unlock my bike, grab the handlebars, and begin walking it downhill, since Scoop doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave.
    â€œIt’s the only thing that matters,” Scoop counters quickly.
    â€œHow’d you get so confident?” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. It must be the ratings thing. If what I wanted always coincided with what the Audience wanted, life might seem easy for me too.
    â€œI think it’s all the extraordinary fruit we have here on Bliss Island.” He smiles again, his hazel eyes dazzling in the afternoon sun, and I imagine the Audience swooning.
    â€œNo, really, how did you?” I insist. I want what he has, what Lia has. That way of going through life at ease. Fearless. Scoop raises his eyebrows, puzzled, like it’s something so taken for granted that he can’t begin to explain. But he tries to answer my question, voice tentative.
    â€œI guess—I’m not afraid of people, a lot?” His long face tightens, and for once, the smile disappears. “Do you remember my aunt, the fifth-grade history teacher?”
    â€œYes, of course,” I say, my voice softening at the memory. She passed away a couple of seasons ago. The only funeral I’ve ever been to.
    â€œAunt Dana used to question
everything.
She and my dad would get into huge debates. Like which lollipop flavor lasts longest or what the highest point on the island is—or more important things, like how to discipline children. She’d never just let him win. She’d research day and night until she got the answer, to prove she was right.”
    â€œShe was pretty plus ten,” I say, averting my eyes, feeling awkward talking about someone who’s, well, dead.
    â€œI always wanted to be like her.” His lips twitch as if he’s trying to stop himself from saying something. We reach the bottom of the hill and turn right, in the opposite direction from a bunch of kids going downtown to hang out. “Maybe the question is, how did you get so
un
confident?”
    Where to begin? Asking about my father on-mic when I was five and having my mother freak out? Never seeming to be able to choose the right things, like friends, or boyfriends, or apprenticeships? Landing on the E.L. as soon as I turned sixteen? It just seems like I do everything wrong.
    â€œDisappointments.” I swerve my bike around a deep crevice in the sidewalk. “I just wish there was more than one slot, so Revere and I could both get the apprenticeship.”
    â€œYeah, sometimes the rules seem unfair,” Scoop agrees, kicking a pebble down the hill ahead of us. “You can get anyassigned, though, if you really don’t want to be at Fincher’s.”
    â€œI know.” We quiet down as we pass crickets, their noses and mouths swaddled in surgeon’s masks as they douse grass with green paint. When we’re a safe distance away, Scoop whispers, “My aunt discovered that the Patriot—”
    I knew he wasn’t done talking about this.
I don’t want to hear it. Whatever her discovery was, his aunt was only a Character, and my information came from a Real, someone who actually knows about the world outside of Bliss Island.
    I’m shaking my head and stepping back just as a voice calls out behind us, “Nettie, how’d it go?” I turn around. Lia, sprinting down the hill, her braid bouncing behind her.
    â€œWhat’d Mr. Black say?” she asks as she catches up with us. “Hi, Scoop,” Lia tosses off, then pivots to me. “What happened? What’d he say?”
    Scoop takes one look at her, her eyes practically feverish with excitement, and decides to take off. “I’m going to catch the Tram. See you later.”
    â€œWell? Well?” Lia grabs my arm.
    Best to just get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
    â€œMr. Black said