Every year, the city of Meridian, Texas put on a Texas-sized Easter egg hunt for its children. Scattered over the landscape of City Park were thousands of pastel plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, chocolate candies, cheap toys, Bible verses, crayons, coupons for free ice cream and french fries at the local fast-food places, and all manner of other treasures.

The eggs peeked through the bright green spring grass, singing a siren song to dozens of children dressed in pastels and seersucker, in blue jeans and little plaid shirts with mother-of-pearl snaps and stitching on the pockets, in Mary Janes, sandals, and cowboy boots. Enormous grosgrain bows clipped to carefully braided and curled hair caught the breeze, with little straw and felt cowboy hats and baseball caps mixed in. Small, dimpled hands in every shade were clenched around the handles of containers that ranged from luxuriously beribboned baskets stuffed with bright green easter grass to wrinkled plastic Walmart bags.

However they were dressed, whatever they carried, all the children were champing at the bit at the park entrance, waiting for the signal that the Hunt had begun. Among them was six-year-old Andie Dahl, small but mighty, and mightily determined to fill his pink and white wicker basket to the brim. He was an Omega, and little even for his age and trait, but his father had brought him up on Mark Twain’s maxim that it ‘wasn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.’ Andie was about to show everyone what a teacup yorkie could do if he put his mind to it. He tightened his grip on the ribbon-wrapped handle of his basket, set his jaw, and crouched like an Olympic sprinter.

Suddenly, the Mayor, flanked by overheated aides in Easter Bunny and Easter Duckling suits, finished his welcoming speech and gave the signal Andie had been waiting for. He took off like a shot, deciding to leave the closest eggs for the babies and toddlers and instead aim for the eggs that were a little farther on, where the crowd would be thinner. Part of being small but mighty was being strategic about things.

Within about five minutes, Andie had managed to gather half a basket full of plastic eggs despite the chaos around him. He had proven himself an accomplished egg hunter, and now he could afford to be a little more choosy. He scanned the distant grass, a lone wolf in green and white seersucker shortalls with a colorful easter egg appliqué on the bib, accountable to no one. He had collected more pink eggs than any other color, as there seemed to be less competition for those, which was fine by him. Pink was his favorite color. He wanted one complete set of the colors to show for his efforts, though. He already had an orange, a yellow, and a blue… he lacked only purple and green… Green was harder to see in the grass, though, for obvious reasons. He looked again intently. There, about four yards distant, was a viridian gleam— a bright green egg camouflaged in slightly darker grass, dressed-up little bodies darting all around it like hummingbirds, but none seemed to see it. Locked onto his target, Andie ran for it… he stooped and grasped… his fingers closed around it, but a second set of fingers closed over his a split-second later, and then his head slammed into what felt like a stray boulder.

Andie fell backward unceremoniously onto his bottom, stars swimming before his eyes as the basket dropped on the ground beside him, spilling a cascade of pink eggs. The disputed green egg was secure in his hand, however. He was victorious. His free hand flew to his forehead, where a very different kind of egg was rapidly forming. Andie’s eyes watered, and his bottom lip was trembling, but when he saw what he had collided with, or rather whom, he was surprised out of his injured tears. Another boy, quite a bit larger than he was, was sitting on the ground, similarly stunned, also clutching his forehead. He, however, was empty-handed, and was much further down the road to despair than Andie was. His face was completely crumpled, and his mouth was open in the silent prologue to an impending mournful cry. Andie’s eyes widened. Had he hurt that big boy? He had not meant to.

The audible portion of the wail began, and took the form of, “m-m-m-myyyyyyyyyyy eggggggggggg!”

Andie looked over his shoulder, checking for parents who could mediate this dispute and explain the law of finders-keepers to the plaintiff, but there were none. Maybe that was a good thing, if the other boy was planning to tattle on him over an accident. They would have to settle this like men, then. Andie pulled himself together.

“W-wait. Don’t cry. You’re ok. You’re fine. Everything’s ok,” said Andie, parroting what his parents said to him whenever he took a big spill. He abandoned his spoils and crawled towards his competitor with the green egg still clutched in his palm. With a little splayed hand, he patted the other boy awkwardly but gently on the shoulder. “I hit my head, too, see? We have matching bumps.” He pushed his sweaty bangs up and away from his forehead with the heel of the hand that was wrapped around the plastic egg.

The other boy looked up at him with big, sad eyes. His long lashes were spiky from tears. Just that morning, Andie had learned the perils of holding a chocolate bunny in your hand for a little too long. The boy’s eyes were the same rich, glossy brown as the melting chocolate that had pooled in Andie’s palm. Andie’s chest felt a little funny and tight. “I didn’t mean to take your egg,” said Andie, surprising himself.

That egg was his, fair and square, according to the laws of the Hunt. It didn’t seem that important to have a green egg right now, though. He was sure there were more hidden out there. It wasn’t even a color he liked that well. He’d rather have a purple one, if he was honest. “Here, take it.” Andie held out the egg.

“I cain’t take your egg,” said the boy with a miniature Texas drawl, shaking his headful of dark curls, but his eyes were covetous as they looked at Andie’s plastic treasure. “It wouldn’t be right. You keep it.”

“No, it’s alright. I’d rather have a purple egg anyways. They’re prettier,” said Andie pragmatically.

“I have three purple eggs. You wanna trade?” the boy said, having hit upon a workaround that would allow him to get what he wanted while still displaying the gallantry expected of a young Alphan citizen of Meridian who had been Raised Right.

“Sure!” said Andie, and once again pushed the hand holding the green egg towards the other boy.

“What’s your name, anyhow?”

“Jacob Walker Rivera and I’m six and three-quarters. Everyone calls me Jake. ‘Cept my uncle Jim. He calls me J.R. He’s who brung me today.”

“My name’s Andie Dahl. I’ll be six this summer,” said Andie and smiled at him, proudly displaying the gaping hole where his left front tooth had been until last week.

“Your last name is Doll? You look just like a baby doll. You got big blue eyes and curled-up yellow hair like a doll,” Jake observed thoughtfully.

“No, it’s Dahl. D-a-h-l. It’s Danish. From Dane-mark. And I don’t look like a doll either.”

Jake studied him quietly for a moment, looking ready to argue the point, but then suddenly looked past Andie with a ferocious scowl. “Hey now!” he bellowed indignantly. “Don’t you touch those! Those are his! They just now came out of his basket when he fell down,” Jake yelled angrily, scrambling up from the ground and flying by Andie.

Andie turned, confused, and saw a third little boy moving in on the eggs that had spilled from his basket when he’d dropped it during the collision. Jake was standing over the pile of pink eggs, defending them as if they were the treasure of the Sierra Madre, little fists clenched, head injury forgotten. “Don’t you got any sense?” Jake hollered at his adversary. “Or manners? Get on out of here and go find your own, Ryder Shaw, you little chicken snake!”

The other boy shrugged and headed off to find less well-defended eggs. Jake squatted to carefully pile the loose eggs back into the fancy basket and then carried it back to Andie with the littlest bit of a strut. He offered it to him like Hercules handing over the Erymanthian Boar. “Here you go.”

Andie took it with a shy smile and then leaned over to drop the green egg into the reusable HEB shopping bag Jake was using to hold his eggs. “There you go.” Andie stood up and dusted off his little seersucker-clad rump so he wouldn’t get fussed at for spoiling his church clothes. “Bye now,” he said and offered a little wave, thinking about resuming the hunt for an unclaimed green egg. Maybe under the sage shrubs over there? Most of the kids were still looking for eggs out on the open ground.

“Wait up!” insisted Jake, grabbing his shopping bag off the ground and digging through it until he found the three purple eggs. He offered them to Andie. “You forgot your purple eggs! Here, these are yours.”

“Oh! I only gave you one egg, though,” said Andie in the spirit of fairness, brows furrowed. He didn’t want to be considered a ‘little chicken snake,’ too.

“Well, one is for the trade, and one is because you were sweet to me, and one is because you’re pretty as can be,” said Jake with a prototype of the ‘Aw, shucks’ smile that would one day ruffle the feathers of every person at Meridian High School who was susceptible to male charms, including a few teachers who were old enough to know better than to be persuaded to accept homework after its due date. If Jake had been allowed to wear his own miniature cowboy hat to church that day, he’d have tipped it.

Andie blushed. “Oh. Thank you for the eggs, then,” said Andie, who had also been Raised Right. “We could look for more green eggs together if you want. Maybe find one for me? Get you a new purple one, too? So you have ‘em all? Maybe over in the sage bushes? I bet they hid some under there, but none of the other kids have checked yet.”

“That’s real smart. Shoot, yeah, I want to. Let’s go,” Jake said. Without another word, he reached down and took the quick little hand that had snatched up his green egg in the first place. Holding it firmly in his own hand, he towed Andie off to hunt under the white-dusted leaves of some Texas sage.

It would be more than a decade before the day came when Jake stopped holding that small hand every chance he got, and more than a decade after that before he finally got a chance to hold it again.