Poolside Riddle

The baseball cap pulled low over my eyes was basically a security blanket. Like, if I couldn't see everyone judging me, maybe they weren't. Total logic, right?

"You're literally doing it again," Maya said, flopping onto the lawn chair next to mine. She'd been my best friend since sixth grade, which meant she could read my mind and it was annoying.

"Doing what?" I mumbled, adjusting the hat brim.

"Hiding under that hat like it's a force field against social interaction."

She wasn't wrong. The community pool was packed with seniors from our school, and I'd spent the last hour mentally reciting the reasons I shouldn't just leave. Which was ridiculous, because I'd been wanting to come to Jordan's party for weeks.

Then I spotted it. Behind the pool, half-hidden in the garden area, was this weird stone statue. A sphinx. Like, an actual Egyptian-style sphinx, weathered and cracked, completely random in suburban California.

"What is THAT?" I pointed.

Maya followed my gaze. "Oh, the old lady who lived here before they built the pool was obsessed with Egypt or something. It's been there forever."

The water shimmered blue in the distance, laughter and splashing everywhere. But I kept staring at that sphinx. Something about its cracked face, the mystery of why some random statue ended up watching over teenagers in swimwear.

"Let's go check it out," I said, suddenly brave.

"Seriously? You want to look at the creepy statue instead of maybe talking to Jordan?"

"Yes."

We crept around the pool's edge, trying to be inconspicuous. The sphinx was bigger up close, its wings spread behind it, that enigmatic smile frozen in stone. I reached out to touch it, and something shifted inside me. Like, this thing had seen hundreds of summers, thousands of awkward teenagers, and it didn't care.

"You know," Maya said, "sphinxes were all about riddles. Secrets."

I adjusted my hat, then took it off completely. The sun hit my face.

"Maybe the riddle is why we make everything so complicated," I said.

Maya grinned. "Deep. Also, Jordan's been looking for you for like, twenty minutes."

The sphinx watched as we walked back toward the water, toward noise and people and whatever happened next. My hat stayed in my hand.