Midnight Cable Run

The cable scratched against my windowsill—third time this week. I'd rigged this whole setup: phone charger cable braided with actual rope, sturdy enough to hold my weight as I shimmied down the side of the house. Worth it for the midnight meetups with the crew.

Tonight was different though. Maya had been dropping hints all week about wanting to talk. Just us. My stomach did that stupid fluttery thing whenever she looked at me in chem lab.

I hit the grass and started jogging toward the old arcade where we always met. That's when I saw it—a fox, just chilling by the dumpster. It looked at me with these amber eyes, totally unbothered, like *nice sneak-out skills, noob*.

"What are you looking at?" I whispered. The fox twitched its ear and bolted.

Maya was already at our spot behind the abandoned building, sitting on a crate. She was wearing that oversized hoodie she stole from her brother, the one with the sphinx patch on the pocket. A sphinx. Riddles and secrets and ancient knowledge you had to earn.

"Hey," she said, not looking up.

"Hey."

We sat there for a minute, just breathing in the night air. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm went off.

"So..." she started, then stopped. My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. The sphinx moment. The riddle I had to solve.

"Are we gonna talk about what happened at Jordan's party?" she finally asked.

Oh. THAT. When I'd accidentally told everyone she still slept with a stuffed unicorn. Middle school chaos, resurrected from the dead.

"Maya, I didn't mean—"

"I know," she cut me off. "But like... you didn't exactly deny it either."

I kicked at a pebble. "Because it's kind of cute?"

She looked up then, and I swear I saw a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "You think my unicorn is cute?"

"I think YOU'RE cute," I said, before my brain could veto the statement.

The silence stretched. And stretched. I started mentally calculating how fast I could scramble back up my cable before I died of embarrassment.

Then Maya laughed. Actually laughed.

"You're such an idiot," she said, but she was smiling now. "Wanna walk to the gas station? I'm craving those gross slushies nobody else likes."

"Only if I can pick the flavor."

"Deal."

As we walked, I spotted the fox again, watching from across the street. *Nice one*, it seemed to say. *You survived the sphinx. Barely.*