Riddle in the Cafeteria

I felt like a total **spy**, lurking behind my chemistry textbook while watching Tyler laugh at some junior's joke across the cafeteria. He had this kind of electric energy that made the whole room feel charged, like **lightning** was about to strike any second.

"You're being super obvious," Maya said, sliding onto the bench across from me. She tapped my tray. "You gonna eat that?"

I looked down at my lunch. A sad, wilted salad with **spinach** leaves that had seen better days. "Be my guest."

Maya picked at it while I went back to my covert operation. Tyler was so effortlessly cool, while I was still figuring out who the hell I was supposed to be. Freshman year was supposed to be this big transformation, but mostly I just felt like the same awkward middle schooler in a bigger building.

"Okay, here's the thing," Maya said, suddenly serious. She leaned in like she was about to drop some major wisdom. "You're treating this like a riddle. You know, like the **sphinx**. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"What?" I blinked at her. "That's literally the most random thing you've ever said."

"It's about change, dummy. The answer is 'man' — crawling as a baby, walking as an adult, with a cane when you're old. You're in the crawling stage of high school. Everyone is. Stop trying to skip to the walking part."

I stared at her, then back at Tyler, who was currently wiping chocolate milk off his chin with the sleeve of his hoodie. He wasn't effortlessly cool. He was just a guy being messy and real.

Maya was right. I'd built Tyler up into this perfect figure, this social benchmark I'd never reach. But he was just figuring it out too, probably worried about different stuff but still figuring.

"You're actually deep," I said. "Weird, but deep."

She winked. "I know what I know. Now go say something normal to him before lunch ends and you regret it for the rest of your life."

I stood up, my heart doing this nervous flutter thing, and walked across the cafeteria. No more spying from the sidelines. Time to figure out who I was on my own terms.