Poolside Sphinx

I was fifteen and still didn't know how to swim. Try explaining that at a pool party where everyone else is doing cannonballs and looking like they stepped out of a TikTok.

The popular kids — the ones who made everything look effortless — splashed around while I sat poolside with my knees pulled to my chest, nursing a lukewarm soda that I'd been nursing for an hour.

"You're literally the sphinx," Mia said, flopping down beside me and shaking chlorine droplets from her curls. "Riddling yourself out of having fun."

I rolled my eyes so hard I almost saw my brain. "Not all of us can be fish, okay?"

"It's not about being a fish. It's about not being scared of water."

Easy for her to say. Mia had been swimming since she was three. Me? I'd taken lessons until I was ten and quit because the instructor made me cry.

Then HE walked over.

Leo. The Sphinx of sophomore year. That's what people called him because he barely spoke, just sat in class with this unreadable expression, like he was solving problems none of us knew existed. Girls whispered he was deep. Guys said he was stuck up. I'd been lowkey obsessed with him since September, watching him from across classrooms like some kind of amateur spy, gathering intel on nothing.

"You're not swimming?" he asked. His voice was quiet.

I panicked. "I'm... I'm good. Just chilling."

Lie. I was terrified.

"Cool." He sat down on the other side of me, not too close, not too far.

We sat there while someone's phone blasted a song that'd been overplayed since last semester. I could feel myself sweating and it wasn't from the sun.

"I don't know how," I blurted, because keeping it inside felt worse than saying it.

Leo turned. "What?"

"Swim. I never learned."

He didn't laugh. Didn't look surprised or pitying or any of the things I braced myself for.

"Me either," he said.

Wait. WHAT.

"But you're... you."

"What does that mean?"

"You're Leo. You're the Sphinx. You sit in class looking like you're figuring out the secrets of the universe."

He actually laughed. It changed his whole face. "I'm not thinking about the universe. I'm thinking about how I have no idea what's going on. Ever."

I stared at him. The Sphinx wasn't mysterious. He was just like me.

"Why do people call you that anyway?"

"Because I don't talk much. But honestly? I just don't know what to say. Most of the time I feel like everyone else got a manual I missed."

My chest felt weird. Not tight anymore. Just... full.

"So what do we do?" I asked. "Sit here and be sphinxes together?"

"Or..." He stood up and held out a hand. "We could learn. Together."

The pool suddenly didn't look so scary.

"What if we look dumb?"

"Then we look dumb together."

I took his hand.

We spent the next hour in the shallow end, both of us flailing and learning to float and probably looking ridiculous. I caught Mia watching us with this soft smile, and later she'd whisper that we were being cute, which I'd deny even though my face burned.

But in the water, with Leo's hand steadying me while I learned to trust my buoyancy, I felt something shift. I wasn't the girl who couldn't swim. I wasn't the girl crushing on the mysterious Sphinx from afar.

I was just Maya. Learning. Flailing. Figuring it out.

Maybe that was the riddle all along. The answer wasn't swimming. It was letting someone see you drown a little so they could help you stay afloat.

Later that night, my phone buzzed. A message from a number I didn't recognize but somehow knew.

Leo: same time next week?

I typed back: only if you promise not to let me drown

Leo: I'll be the one drowning too

I fell asleep smiling. Some sphinxes didn't ask riddles. They just figured out the answers beside you.