Poolside Sphinx

The backyard shimmered with enough blue to drown in—literally. I stood at the edge of Katie's above-ground pool, my toes curled against the hot concrete, while half our grade splashed around like they'd invented fun. **Swimming** had never been my thing. Call it texture issues, call it anxiety, call it whatever you want—just don't call me into that **water**.

"You coming in or what?" Katie yelled, doing something that looked like a failed backflip. "Don't be boring, Maya."

Boring. The word hit harder than it should've, especially with Jake watching from his pool float, looking like he'd been Photoshopped into existence.

I mumbled something about checking my phone and retreated to the patio, where my lifeline dangled—a charging **cable** snaking from the outlet to the deck chair. My phone was at 3%, which felt metaphorical.

That's when I found it: behind the tangle of pool equipment and forgotten pool noodles, someone had abandoned a concrete garden **sphinx**. Half its face had chipped away, giving it a permanently skeptical expression. It stared at me like it knew.

"What's your riddle?" I muttered, dropping onto the chair. "Why can't I just be normal?"

The sphinx said nothing, obviously, because I was losing it.

"Hey."

Jake. standing there, dripping wet, holding a red plastic cup. He gestured to the sphinx. "Weird thing to have at a pool party, right?"

"Yeah."

"My grandma had one of those," he said, sitting on the edge of the chair. "Used to say life was just a bunch of riddles we pretend we understand."

We sat there for a minute while behind us, someone did a cannonball that soaked everyone within ten feet. The air smelled like chlorine and sunscreen and the particular electric tension of not knowing what to say.

"So," Jake said, "what's your deal? With pools, I mean."

I looked at the **goldfish** darting around in a bowl on the nearby table—someone's forgotten party favor, swimming in endless stupid circles. "Maybe I just don't like feeling like I'm drowning in the shallow end."

Jake laughed, and something in my chest did that thing where it forgets how to work properly. "Deep," he said. "But also, same."

"Wait—you're not swimming either?"

"Nah." He nudged his cup toward the pool. "I'm more of a sit-on-the-edge-and-watch-everyone-else-pretend-to-have-fun type."

The sphinx seemed satisfied. The goldfish did another lap. And somewhere between the chlorine and the risk of doing something embarrassingly real, I realized that none of us actually knew what we were doing—not Katie with her perfect cannonballs, not Jake with his effortless vibe, and definitely not me with my overthinking everything.

"Wanna just sit here?" I asked. "Until our phones die or whatever?"

Jake smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."