Riddle at the Deep End

Maya stood at the edge of the community **pool**, her whistle hanging heavy around her neck. It was her first summer job, and she'd spent the morning mentally rehearsing her authoritative guard voice while secretly obsessing over whether her **hair** had frizzed in the humidity. Naturally curly and already rebelling against her attempts to tame it, it was now doing that thing where it formed a halo of defined chaos around her head.

"Hey, new girl," called Jason from the diving board. "What's the deal with the old **sphinx** thing back there?"

Maya followed his gesture to the far corner of the pool area, where a crumbling concrete sphinx statue sat partially obscured by overgrown hedges. Its face was weathered away, but it still stood frozen in that eternal riddle-guard pose, one paw stretched forward like it was about to ask a question nobody knew how to answer anymore.

"Nobody knows," she admitted, feeling suddenly exposed. "I think it was here before the pool was even built."

Jason did a perfect cannonball, sending **water** cascading over the edge. Maya's shift wasn't supposed to involve answering riddles—just blowing the whistle when people ran or dove in shallow areas. But as the day wore on, she found herself returning to the sphinx, tracing its weathered paw with her fingertips, imagining what mysteries it had witnessed over decades of teenage summers: first crushes, last days before college, secrets shared between best friends while treading water at the deep end.

By closing time, as she gathered discarded towels and empty Gatorade bottles, Maya caught her reflection in the glass door of the pool office. Her hair was absolutely wild, a glorious crown of frizz and curl that refused to be contained. And maybe—just maybe—that was okay. The sphinx had stood there through everything without changing, but here she was, changing every day, figuring herself out.

She touched her hair, then touched the sphinx's paw one more time.

"Your riddle's easy," she whispered. "Just be okay with not having all the answers yet."

The sphinx said nothing, but Maya swore she saw it smile.