12 
12 EGG FREE AT LAST
I WALKED INTO MR. SPELLMAN’S HISTORY class on Wednesday afternoon dreading the period. It was my least favorite class because I shared it with Eric and Jacob. They hadn’t interacted during class since my party, but they were about to be forced to. Soon.
“Class,” Mr. Spellman said. “I wanted to remind you all that after fall break, your group projects will begin.”
I looked at Jacob, then at Eric. They were both in the same group. Luckily, I wasn’t with them. If Mr. Spellman had assigned me to their project, I would have asked for a transfer. At least they wouldn’t have to start working together until after fall break. Maybe a week away would do everyone some good. We all needed some space from each other.
“Today, I want you all to get into your assigned groups and begin discussing about how you’re going to handle your project. Go ahead and gather your group members.”
I watched, frozen, as Eric and Jacob glanced at each other from their seats. Eric got up first and moved to join the other people in their group who had gotten together by one girl’s desk.
Jacob stood and walked over, keeping two people between him and Eric. I almost couldn’t breathe, watching them being forced to interact with each other and stand so close together. They hated each other and now they’d have to spend time on a group project. The odds of them being paired up together had been ridiculous. I’d almost fallen out of my seat when Mr. Spellman had announced the groups.
I looked up, surprised when I realized my group had huddled around my desk. I guess because I hadn’t moved, they’d all come to join me. The three people I didn’t know—two guys and a girl—scooted their desks closer to mine.
“Introductions first I guess?” asked a guy with black hair.
“Yeah, let’s,” said the girl. “I’m Diana.”
“Sasha,” I said.
“And I’m Oliver,” said the other guy.
Diana got out a notebook and wrote History Project across the top of the page. “Want to just toss around a bunch of ideas and see what we come up with?” she asked.
“That sounds good,” I said. I sat back in my chair and let them talk. I nodded along and pretended to listen as they talked about ideas for our project. I should have been offering suggestions, but I kept stealing glances over at Eric and Jacob. Their group was sitting at the far corner of the room and they weren’t even looking at each other.
“So, if we all brainstorm over break,” said Diana. “Then we’ll have way more ideas when we meet when classes start again.”
“Sounds good,” I heard myself say. This was one time when I was cool with sitting back and letting other people take control. Normally, I’d want to be in charge and let my type A personality take over. But I didn’t care that much. I just couldn’t stop watching Jacob and Eric.
When it was time for health class, I felt like I’d downed too many energy drinks. Witnessing the tension between Jacob and Eric had made me nervous during history, and I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling all day that something was up with Jacob. The more I watched him, the more I was convinced that something was wrong. He was fidgety and he seemed on edge every time I saw him.
I sat down in health class and looked away when Jacob walked into the room. I couldn’t keep looking at him for signs of whatever I imagined was going on—I was making myself crazy.
Paige walked into the classroom and took her seat. We smiled at each other. Ever since the awkwardness in the common room last night, we’d both gone out of our way to be friendlier to each other. I didn’t want to fight with Paige about something as stupid as Homecoming. I wanted to go into fall break with things good between us.
“Hi, class,” Ms. Utz said, walking into the room. “As you’re all aware, today you’ll turn in your reports and will relinquish custody of your egg. Unless, of course, you want to keep it.”
No one wanted that. We were all ready to hand over our egg, and be finished with this project. I’d hated it the second we’d been given the assignment, but Jacob had at least tried to make it fun by drawing a face on the egg. He’d been a great partner and he’d made it easy on me for us to work together.
Ms. Utz moved to the center of the front of the classroom and looked at us. “I’ve got a few questions for you all. Krista and Josh, what did you learn from this project?”
Krista looked down at her egg and then up at Ms. Utz. “Well, I learned that it was harder than I thought not to break the egg.”
Josh grinned. “We only broke it twice.”
That made Krista blush. “Only twice?”
The class laughed and so did Ms. Utz.
“So you realized that you needed to be more careful than you thought,” Ms. Utz said. “It may have taken you two tries, but at least you did figure it out.”
Krista and Josh nodded. Ms. Utz collected their journal and egg.
“Let’s hear from …” Ms. Utz’s eyes scanned the room. “Sasha and Jacob. What about you? What did this experience teach you?”
Jacob glanced over at me and I nodded, letting him go first.
“It was more difficult to coordinate schedules than I thought it would be,” Jacob said. “Finding times we both could meet wasn’t easy.”
“It was also hard to take the egg everywhere,” I said. “I always worried it would get broken or that I’d leave it somewhere.”
“I kept forgetting about it,” Jacob said. “I almost left it behind a zillion times. Now that the project’s over, I’ve finally gotten used to carrying it around.”
Ms. Utz smiled. “That figures, right? But you and Sasha made it work, you never broke your egg, and you did eventually learn to remember to take it with you.”
Jacob glanced at me and there was a weird look on his face. It disappeared when Utz collected the journal and egg from him. Ignore it, I told myself. It wasn’t up to me to figure out what was going on with Jacob. And maybe I was just seeing things that weren’t there. But even as I thought it, I knew I was lying to myself. Something was definitely up.