Riddle of the Cafeteria Sphinx

Maya shoved her tray across the scarred cafeteria table, trying to look casual. Which was impossible when you had bright **orange** hair and had just discovered **spinach** wedged between your front teeth.

"You've got something—" Leo started, but Maya was already digging through her backpack for a mirror. Her fingers brushed against her sketchbook instead. Pages filled with drawings of Him—the boy who sat by the windows, alone, like he was posing for an album cover nobody would ever hear.

Leo smirked. "Still stalking the Sphinx?"

"Shut up, he's not a Sphinx." But that's exactly what Maya had dubbed him in her head last September. He was unreadable, ancient-eyed, perpetually solving invisible riddles while everyone else worried about promposals and TikTok followers. He'd transferred in junior year and immediately established himself as That Guy Who Didn't Try But Still Managed To Be Infuriatingly Interesting.

The spinach situation resolved (she'd literally scraped it off with her fingernail, tragic), Maya realized the Sphinx was looking at her. Actually looking. Their eyes caught across the cafeteria, and her stomach did that thing where it forgot how to stomach.

He stood up.

Maya's brain short-circuited. Was he coming over? Should she act cool? Should she fake a phone call? Should she—

He stopped at her table."

"You dropped this." He held out a gel pen. The orange one. Her favorite.

"Oh. Thanks."

"I like your drawings." He nodded toward her sketchbook, now open to a page covered in cartoon sphinxes. "Especially the Egyptian ones."

Maya's face burned hotter than the time she'd worn a sweater to homecoming in August. "You saw those?"

"Hard not to. You draw in Mr. Harrison's class like, every day." A half-smile. "I'm Egyptian, by the way. My nana tells me riddle stories."

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"Relax, it's funny." He leaned in slightly. "Hey, what's the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?"

Maya blinked. "That's... that's the Riddle of the Sphinx. The answer is 'man,' because babies crawl, adults walk, and old people use canes."

His smile widened. "Exactly." He wrote something on a napkin—a phone number. "Call me. I know way better riddles."

Maya watched him walk away, orange hoodie bright against the beige walls. Leo let out a low whistle.

"Dude. The Sphinx just slid into your DMs. IRL."

Maya couldn't stop grinning. Sometimes riddles solved themselves.