Riddle at the Deep End

My hair was supposed to be beachy waves. Instead, after what I'd now officially dubbed The Great Salon Disaster of sophomore year, it looked more like someone had taken a lawnmower to a poodle. I spent the entire first week of summer break hiding inside until Maya literally dragged me out.

"You're not spending July being emo in your room," she'd said, shoving a swimsuit at me. "We're going to the community pool. Jason's gonna be there."

Jason. The guy I'd been lowkey obsessed with since April. So there I was, standing at the edge of the pool in my oversized T-shirt, feeling like every single person was staring at my disaster hair—which, honestly, they probably weren't, because that's the thing about being sixteen: the whole world revolves around you until it doesn't.

I swallowed a vitamin D gummy from the stash in my bag because apparently sunlight wasn't enough and my mom was convinced I had a deficiency. I was chewing furiously when HE appeared.

He wasn't Jason. He was someone else entirely, stretched out on one of those plastic lounge chairs like he owned the place, reading a book with a cover so cracked I couldn't read the title. Dark curls that fell over his eyes, skin the color of toasted pecans, this air of knowing something nobody else did.

"You look like you're about to bolt," he said, not even looking up from his page.

"What? No. I'm totally chill. This is my chill face."

That's when it happened. He finally looked at me, and I swear to god his eyes were this piercing amber that made my stomach do something genuinely embarrassing. He smiled, just a little.

"You're the sphinx," I blurted out. "You're just sitting there being all mysterious and sphinx-like."

"The sphinx had a riddle," he said, closing his book. "What's yours?"

"My what?"

"Your question. The thing you're actually here to figure out. Because you're not here for the pool. You're here because you're scared of something."

He gestured at my hair. I instinctively reached up to cover it, then stopped. Because he wasn't making fun of me. He was just... seeing me.

"Everyone's gonna laugh at me," I whispered, and it sounded so stupid out loud.

"Or they won't," he said, standing up. "Or they will, and you'll survive. Or they won't notice because they're all too busy worrying about their own stuff. The riddle's not about them anyway. It's about whether you're gonna stay on the edge or jump in."

He dove into the deep end without another word, surfacing near the other side.

I took a breath, pulled off my T-shirt, and jumped.

The water was freezing and perfect and Maya was right there already squealing and I didn't die. When I climbed out later, sphinx-boy was gone. But I caught Jason's eye across the pool and he smiled.

Some riddles answer themselves.