Riddle Me This

The carnival lights blurred together like someone had smeared neon paint across the sky. Maya stood before the mechanical bull, her heart doing gymnastics that would've qualified for the Olympics.

"You got this, Maya!" Jason yelled from the side, his Snapback backward, that perfect smile working overtime. "Just eight seconds and you'll be legendary."

Legendary. Right. More like literally dead.

The ride operator—some guy with a name tag that said 'Zeus' because irony wasn't dead—gestured to the bull like he was presenting royalty. "This here's Lightning," he drawled. "She bucks harder than your ex's apologies."

Great. Even the mechanical bull had relationship trauma.

Maya's crew had gathered: Chloe recording everything for TikTok (obviously), Marcus looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else, and Jason—Jason, who she'd been lowkey obsessed with since seventh grade, currently watching her with those stupidly pretty eyes that made her forget how to human.

"If you fall, you have to do the Sphinx's riddle," Chloe said, pointing to the striped booth across the way where some guy dressed as the Sphinx sat surrounded by fog machines. "He hasn't been stumped in three years."

"What's the riddle?" Maya asked, already regretting everything.

"That's the thing—you don't know until you lose."

The bull beneath her shifted, mechanical muscles tensing. Maya gripped the handle so hard her knuckles turned white. The music thumped—some bass-heavy remix that vibrated through her chest.

"Three! Two! ONE!"

Lightning bucked like it had personal beef with gravity. Maya's body went sideways, then up, then somehow more sideways than should be physically possible. The world became a blur of neon and screams and her own heartbeat hammering in her ears.

She lasted six seconds.

Six seconds of glory before she went flying, landing in a pile that was definitely not her finest moment. But Jason was laughing. Not mean-laughing. That genuine, head-thrown-back laugh that made his nose crinkle in the cutest way.

"That was actually so sick," he said, helping her up. His hand lingered. "No joke."

Later, she stood before the Sphinx, dust still coating her favorite ripped jeans. The Sphinx dude lowered his sunglasses.

"The riddle," he intoned, like he was reading from an ancient scroll instead of his phone. "What breaks every time you say its name?"

Maya's brain short-circuited. But then she looked over at Jason, who was watching her with that soft expression again, and suddenly it clicked.

"Silence," she said.

The Sphinx's jaw dropped. The fog machine sputtered.

Behind her, her friends went absolutely feral.

Maya grinned, feeling lightning-flash real, standing there with carnival lights painting her skin like gold. Some legends weren't made in eight seconds. Some were made in six, followed by the perfect moment.