Riddle at Sunset Lake

Maya stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her iPhone like a lifeline. The screen reflected her nervous expression—seventeen and still terrified of everything. Her friends Jordan and Taylor were already in the water, laughing at some inside joke she'd missed while scrolling through Instagram again.

"You coming in or what?" Jordan called. "The water's perfect!"

The orange slice floating in Maya's glass of juice looked ridiculously cheerful. She sighed, setting the phone down on the pool deck. This was supposed to be the last pool party before senior year, and she was still the same quiet girl who'd barely spoken since freshman year.

Then she saw it—the camp's wooden sign shaped like a sphinx, its painted face somehow knowing. Below it, someone had posted a handwritten riddle: "I have a face but no eyes, hands but no arms. What am I?"

A riddle. At a pool party. Weird.

But something about it pulled at her. Maya loved riddles, loved puzzles—the one thing she was actually good at. She approached the sign, her orange juice glass forgotten.

"A clock," she whispered, then louder. "It's a clock!"

"What?" Taylor swam over, dripping wet. "You okay, Maya?"

"The riddle. The answer is a clock." Maya surprised herself—her voice didn't shake.

Jordan doggy-paddled over. "Wait, you solved that? I've been staring at it for like ten minutes."

"It's obvious when you think about it." Suddenly, Maya was animated, explaining the logic, watching their expressions shift from confusion to respect.

"You're really smart," Taylor said. "Like, actually smart, not just school-smart."

Something inside Maya shifted. She wasn't just the quiet girl anymore. She was the riddle-solver, the person who saw patterns others missed.

She jumped into the water, phone safely up on the deck. The cool water wrapped around her like a new skin. This year would be different. She'd make sure of it.

After all, she'd already solved one riddle today. How hard could the rest be?