Palm Reading the Sphinx

Maya's palms were sweating—not the cute, dewy glow from TikTok skincare routines, but the full-on, panic-mode slick that made holding your phone impossible. She wiped them on her dress for the third time, watching tiny rainbow lights dance across the backyard.

"You want yours read?" Chloe asked, dropping onto the lawn chair beside her. "Jasmine is, like, actually scary accurate. She predicted Kevin's breakup two weeks before it happened."

Maya hesitated. The palm-reading station had formed spontaneously around Jasmine, who sat cross-legged with a tarot deck and an expression that said she knew everyone's secrets and was judging them for them. But the real enigma of the party was Leo—the senior everyone called "the Sphinx" because he never spoke more than three words at a time and somehow made that feel incredibly cool.

"Fine," Maya said, because sometimes you just have to embrace the cringe.

Jasmine studied Maya's palm in the fairy lights' glow. "You're seeking something," she said dramatically. "Something you can't get from relationships or grades or whatever else everyone thinks matters." She traced the life line with practiced intensity. "You need your... vitamin."

"My what?" Maya asked, bewildered.

"Your vitamin." Jasmine lowered her voice. "The thing that actually makes you grow. Not the fake stuff."

The words hit Maya like they'd been waiting their whole life to be said. Because wasn't that exactly what she'd been feeling? That everything she was doing—the right classes, the right friends, the right posts—was just sugar when what she needed was something real.

She looked up and found the Sphinx watching her. Leo, standing by the snack table with his customary mysterious stillness. Their eyes met, and for the first time all night, he smiled—a tiny, knowing thing that said: I see you.

Later, under the constellation-littered sky, Leo handed her a vitamin C tablet from his pocket. "For your immune system," he said. "Jasmine talks a lot of nonsense, but she's right about one thing. We all need something real."

Maya's palm was still sweating. But as she took that vitamin, she realized maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe it meant she was finally ready to grow.