Riddle by the Pool

Marcus stood at the edge of the pool, clutching his phone like a lifeline. The Taylor family's backyard looked like something out of a magazine—if that magazine was called Rich People Monthly and featured an honest-to-god Egyptian sphinx statue spraying water into the pool.

"Yo, Marcus! You gonna stand there posing like a statue or actually jump in?" Leo called from the water, splashing water at Maya, who was climbing onto a pink flamingo float. Maya laughed, pushing her wet hair back, and Marcus felt his stomach do that thing it always did when she looked his way.

Varsity baseball tryouts were Monday. That was the thing gnawing at him, the reason he'd barely slept all weekend. His dad had dropped the whole this-is-your-year, son speech at dinner, because nothing kills a vibe like your dad reminding you that the team hasn't made playoffs since 2009 and you're supposedly the missing piece to that puzzle.

He adjusted his swim trunks and stood up straighter. The sphinx stared at him with stone eyes, and he found himself weirdly jealous of a statue. A sphinx didn't have to worry about striking out. A sphinx didn't overthink every text message to a girl.

"Marcus!" Maya waved from her flamingo. "Get in here! Leo keeps trying to flip me off this thing!"

He cannonballed in, surfacing to chlorine and sun and the sound of actual laughter, real laughter, not the fake stuff people did at school when someone made a joke that wasn't funny but the person telling it was popular.

Later, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, he found himself sitting next to Maya by the pool edge while everyone else raided the snack table inside.

"You've been distracted all day," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers. "What's up?"

"Baseball tryouts," he admitted. "Monday. And my dad's been hyping it up like it's the Olympics or something."

Maya nodded slowly. "You're stressing about it?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"But you've been playing since we were, like, eight. You're good."

"Maybe. But what if I'm not good enough? What if everyone's been lying to me?" He traced patterns on the concrete with his finger. "Sometimes I feel like I'm living inside a riddle I don't understand, and if I get it wrong, the whole thing falls apart."

Maya was quiet for a moment. Behind them, the sphinx kept spraying its endless arch of water into the pool.

"You know what a sphinx is, right?" she said finally. "It's a guardian. It protects things. It doesn't have to solve riddles—it just has to stand there and be itself."

Marcus looked at her, really looked at her, and for the first time all day, the tightness in his chest loosened.

"That's unexpectedly deep, Maya."

"I have layers, Marcus." She grinned, standing up and offering him a hand. "Come on. They're probably arguing over pizza toppings by now. And if you're lucky, Leo will challenge you to a chicken fight in the pool, and I can watch you both lose to me."

He took her hand, the chlorine and sun and the weight on his chest all feeling lighter somehow. Monday would come. Baseball would happen. But right now, he was exactly where he needed to be.