The Prodigies [First Draft]

One

It was recess for Kindergarten at Cute Cuddly Care. The young children were running around and squealing for no reason while the teachers made a little group and gossiped about their worst behaved students. A green wire fence acted as a barrier from the outside world, consolidating the children's narrowed perception of reality. They all lived in realms of never-ending buckets of candy, butterfly chases, and the dreaded cooties. The girls skipped rope during recess while the boys played soccer. All the girls sang when it was their turn to jump, a short and sweet song:

I like coffee; I like tea.

I'd like someone to jump with me!

One, two, three, switch places!

Four, five, six, switch places!

Seven, eight, nine....

The jumper chose a friend to jump with and swapped jumping places whenever they said, "Switch places!" Oh, how much fun the girls had! Well, most of them. There was one girl who always sat under the shade of the huge maple in the far-left corner of the playground. No one played with her. In fact, most girls made fun of her. They started their own gossip about her (though they were too young to identify it as anything but tittle-tattle) and how stupid they thought she was because she would never do anything but read or write. Her name was Kendall but, as no one else had ever bothered to ask, she preferred Kenny.

"Come on, class!" Miss Liliana called as she, the Kindergarten-2 teacher, rang the bell. Kendall was in Kindergarten-1 as well as some of the girls who skipped rope and most of the boys who played soccer. She got up and brushed off the dirt on her jeans that one of the boys had purposefully kicked her way before. Then, pulling at both of her brown pigtails to tighten the hair ties holding them together, she walked off to the K1 line.

"Kick mud on her next time. My mommy says it's harder to get off of clothes," a boy whispered.

"Why would she come to school looking like that?" another girl asked. "Who wears pigtails anymore? We're Kindergarteners, not babies!"

"She's not very smart," someone else snickered. "She reads all day, but she still doesn't know enough words to speak!"

"She sat and wrote. Again. She's boring," another person commented.

Maybe they don't know, Kenny thought to herself as she walked past. Maybe they don't know what they're doing. Maybe they don't understand how derogatory their remarks are. As the whispers continued, Kenny's grip around her notebook and No. 2 pencil tightened. She told herself she didn't care, but their words always got to her. She was only five after all. Her lips pressed into a tight line as she stepped to the back of the line. The class moved inside.

Cute Cuddly Care was what all the adults tended to call a public daycare—which, in all honesty, was simply a snarky way for parents to tell their richer counterparts that there was no need to pay a private school for their children to receive a pre-primary education. By nature of its classic brick walls, wooden doors, and old desks, however, many people believed CCC was a public elementary. The classrooms did have their pictures, vocabulary words, and art projects to show that the institution was for younger children. The K1 classroom held a nice blue rug in the back of the room with books strewn over it, too. That was the reading corner, and there were three short bookshelves full of skinny books to go along with it.

The class practically stomped through the hallway, rubber shoes squeaking, with their fingers to their lips as a reminder not to talk. Kenny put her finger to her lips with the rest of the class which only roused snickers from her other classmates.

"Look at that! The mute is putting her finger to her lips!"

"What is she doing? She doesn't even talk!"