Riddle in the Pocket

Maya's iPhone buzzed in her pocket like a trapped hornet. Again. The group chat was exploding—everyone discussing who was hooking up with whom at Jackson's party last night. She'd stayed home to binge-watch Avatar instead, because social interactions required a level of performance she couldn't always summon.

"You coming to the game tonight?" Kai had texted her earlier. Her stomach did that annoying fluttery thing it always did when his name popped up on screen. Maya had been secretly lowkey spying on Kai's social media since seventh grade, watching him transform from awkward middle schooler to the kind of effortless cool that made her own skin feel too tight.

The real problem wasn't Kai though—it was the sphinx moth that had been haunting her backyard for three nights. Massive and dust-brown, it kept throwing itself against the back porch light, drawn to something it couldn't have, destroying itself in the process. Maya felt seen by that stupid insect, which was ridiculous because she was fifteen and emotionally stable and definitely not projecting her existential crisis onto a bug.

Her older sister Naomi called it "the sophomore sphinx"—that riddle-phase where you're trapped between who you were and who you're becoming, and nobody makes sense, especially not yourself. Naomi said everyone goes through it. But watching the moth crash into the glass again and again, Maya wasn't convinced some riddles were meant to be solved.

Her iPhone chimed. Kai: "some of us are grabbing boba after. u should come."

Maya watched the sphinx moth finally still itself, wings vibrating in the aftermath of collision. Something about the exhausted stillness of it made her fingers move across her screen before she could overthink it.

"bet. see u there."

Outside, the moth found its balance in the darkness. Maya grabbed her hoodie and headed for the door, leaving behind the girl who stayed home watching other people live, step by step, into whatever came next.