Egghead: Part 1

A Short Story in 4 Parts

Amanda was smarter than everyone. Almost everyone. It may have been her precocious tendencies that allowed her to think that way. Or maybe it was the fact that she knew what precocious meant while her fellow third graders were still mesmerized by picking their noses. Either way, she had little competition.

Except for Derek.

He was the stuff of nightmares for an eight-year-old trying to distinguish herself. Teachers doted on him. Other students adored him. He had that wavy brown hair that looked like it had been photoshopped onto him from a boy band poster. He wasn’t the blonde headliner, but rather the second-in-command who could actually sing and who secretly stole the hearts of audiences. She hated all of his being, and not just because Amanda wouldn’t have been able to buy her way into a girlband. She wasn’t self-conscious. She just hated the performativity of it all.

Derek catered to the masses, but, if their test scores were to be believed, he was also Amanda’s academic equal. She hated it, knowing that he only picked his nose to be popular. But then he’d ace the phonics test. He’d get all of his math problems right on the first try. He’d memorized all of the U.S. state capitals already. He’d almost be alluring if he wasn’t so short, comparatively. Or annoying. All the girls fell under his charm.

Amanda, however, to be clear, hated him.

She had shot up in inches but was still growing into everything else. Her dark hair was a mess and her teeth were crooked. Braces were on her horizon, as was a serious bout with acne and maybe some orthodox probably. It would be fine. She had personality and brains. Other students, however, didn’t really notice it. Derek, however, could walk and chew gum, it seemed, while she was choking on Bazooka Joe with every step. 

Whatever, she told herself.

She focused on her studies and grades.

As the school year progressed, Amanda was ecstatic to learn that they would be hatching chickens in class from eggs procured from Cobbleton’s Farm. There were so many farms around but Cobbleton’s specialized in poultry. Everyone knew it. It was something she had looked forward to all summer. She remembered, in second grade, hearing the chirps from the freshly hatched chicks that the third graders had cared for, and now it was her turn. All summer she had pilfered eggs from the refrigerator, warming them under her desk lamp, trying to hatch them to get ahead of the curve, but to no avail. Obviously the teachers at school knew something she didn’t, and now the secrets would be revealed. Amanda couldn’t wait.

It was a Friday when the teacher unveiled the incubator with the egg, a little yellow base with six eggs, covered in a plastic dome, and a light shining from the top to warm the eggs. It seemed rudimentary, and essentially identical to her setup at home, but the eggs were brown, not white. Perhaps this was what had foiled her attempts at home. In any case, Amanda would spend recesses and after school activities infatuated by the incubator, waiting, dreaming of the day when the eggs would finally crumble like some sort of plaster cast to reveal the fluffy little chicks inside.

But Derek. 

That imbecile. 

He would go up to the incubator each morning and tap on the plastic dome, yelling at the chicks to just hatch already. Amanda despised his performative nature and the way he riled up the other students. He whipped them into a frenzy, chanting, “Hatch! Hatch! Hatch!” as if Mother Nature would spring forth life on command, the way similar chants caused Alex Schmidt to burp in the cafeteria on hot dog day.

Idiots.

All of them.

One day, after a few weeks of careful, patient inspection, Amanda was innocently looking at the eggs, aware that, eventually, they would need to hatch, or else the teacher would have some very uncomfortable explaining to do. Amanda knew about death, however, and that not all eggs make babies. Her own parents explained that while making omelets when she was just five years old.

“What are you doing, Amanda?” Derek asked, arriving to class with his sandy camouflaged school bag that made no sense to Amanda. Was he hiding from the Iraqis? The Gulf War was over, she quipped to herself. 

“Just inspecting the eggs,” she said.

“You’re obsessed with those eggs,” he said. He rolled his little green eyes and pushed his boyband mop away from his forehead.

“So what?”

“So what? Well you’re just the definition of an egghead, that’s all,” he said.

“Grow up,” she retorted.

“Egghead. Egghead,” he taunted.

“Stop it, Derek,” she screamed. The other students caught wind.

“Egghead. Egghead,” he continued. The others joined in.

“Egghead. Egghead. Egghead,” they chanted in near-unison.

“Derek!” she pleaded.

“Egghead! Egghead! “Egghead” they continued.

“Derek, stop being such a cun–” she said. The students gasped, muffling the final hard “t” that punctuated her profanity.

“Amanda!” her teacher Mrs. Gransky shouted from the doorway where she appeared, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Where on Earth did you learn such vocabulary?”

It was just a word that Amanda’s mother had used – angrily, of course – when she found Amanda’s father doing gymnastics in the bedroom with Amanda’s Aunt Cheryl. Amanda wasn’t sure why Aunt Cheryl and her father were playing together while she and her mother were at the museum, or why Aunt Cheryl’s clothes were coming off, but Amanda’s mom was mad, and the word seemed to really encapsulate that, especially the way she bit into the hard “t” at the end. The chanting provoked the same reaction, but the teacher was livid.

Amanda was in trouble and Mrs. Gransky sent her to the principal’s office.

After a lengthy chastising, Amanda returned to the classroom, though no less peeved at Derek. The other children ignored her, aware that, perhaps, they had pushed her too far. Derek, she swore, mumbled audibly.

“Egghead.”

She didn’t care what the principal said. He was the worst thing in the world, even worse than the C-word – which was how the principal had discussed that particular vocabulary element. It sucked all the sting out of it, and Amanda decided it wasn’t worth adopting it.

The sun was low in the late winter sky as the school day began winding down. The teacher’s coffee ceased to animate her and her clothes were covered with chalk, signaling a full day of education. Amanda had almost forgotten all about the morning’s incident thanks to a healthy dose of fractions and a few lessons on history that particularly spoke to her – something about the Iroquois and the Lenni Lenape tribes that once lived in the area that the students lived in now.

Amanda felt momentarily revived when Derek stole her peace from her yet again.

“The eggs! They are hatching!” he screamed. 

In the back of the classroom, Derek had left his desk and wandered to the incubator – without reprimand, Amanda noted – and tapped forcefully on the plastic dome while one of the eggs stirred inside. Her heart sank thinking the first things those fluffy little chicks would see was Derek’s stupid face, his stupid voice the first thing they’d hear, his incessant tapping the first thing they’d feel. She got up and ran to the incubator to run interference, but twenty-five other third graders were pulled in by the curiosity of life’s miracle as if the incubator were an ice cream truck making the rounds on a summer evening.

Amanda pushed through, elbowing Monica Melrose in the face and shoving Alex Schmidt to the side.

The egg rumbled inconsistently as the fissures expanded their reach around the shell closest to her, and then, Amanda fell in love for the first time in her life.