Goldfish in the Sphinx's Hat

The summer before sophomore year, I worked at Fantasy World Carnival, which was basically just a parking lot behind the Walmart. My job was operating the goldfish toss — those tiny plastic bowls where you throw ping pong balls and win a fish that'll probably die in three days.

That's where I saw Marcus. He was wearing this vintage fedora, like straight out of a jazz club, and I was instantly obsessed. The hat screamed confidence. Meanwhile, I was in my smock, smelling like fried dough and desperation.

"Nice hat," I said, because my brain had apparently forgotten how to be cool.

He smiled. "Thanks. It's my grandfather's. I'm helping him with his dog today."

The dog in question was this ancient golden retriever lying nearby, looking like it had given up on life in 2019.

Then I saw it — Marcus had a sphinx tattoo on his forearm. Like, THE Sphinx. The riddle-cat thing from Egypt. On a fifteen-year-old. In our suburban parking lot carnival.

"That's... intense," I said, because again, words were hard.

"My mom's an Egyptologist," he said, like this explained everything. "The Sphinx is about mystery. Riddles. Not everything needs answers, you know?"

I didn't know. I was fifteen and I wanted answers for everything. Why did Chloe stop sitting with me at lunch? Why did my Instagram posts get zero likes while everyone else went viral? Why did I feel like everyone else had gotten the manual to high school and I was still trying to figure out which way was up?

Marcus won a goldfish. He named it Riddle.

"Wanna hang out sometime?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound chill while internally screaming.

The sphinx was right, I thought later, watching Riddle swim in tiny circles in its bowl. Some things didn't need answers — like why Marcus had been into my awkward ass, or why goldfish were happy in three inches of water. Sometimes you just had to let things be mysterious.

The hat, the sphinx, the dog, the goldfish — it all seemed random, but maybe that was the point. Maybe sophomore year would be less about solving riddles and more about just being okay with not knowing everything yet.

Riddle survived two weeks. That was basically a relationship record for me.