Riddle of the Dugout

The first time I saw the Great Sphinx emoji pop up on Maya's Instagram story, I knew I was in trouble. Like, actually screwed.

We'd been flirting for weeks - subtle stuff, you know? Shared memes in class, sitting together at lunch even though our friend groups were basically oil and water. But this? The sphinx emoji was her thing. The sign she only dropped when she wanted to ask someone something real. Something important.

Problem was, I had zero idea what that something might be.

"Dude, you're overthinking," Jordan said, tossing me my glove. "She probably just thinks Egyptian mythology is cool."

"She literally hates history," I shot back. "It's a test, J. A riddle."

We were at baseball practice, and I was playing worse than usual. Coach kept yelling at me to focus, but my brain was stuck decoding sphinx-related possibilities. Was she asking me to prom? Did she want to know if I liked her? Was I supposed to ask HER something? The uncertainty was eating me alive.

Then there was the whole vitamin situation.

My mom, in her infinite wisdom, had decided I wasn't getting enough nutrients because baseball season made me "skip meals." So she'd bought these massive, neon-orange gummy vitamins that tasted like someone had tried to make candy out of actual disappointment. I was supposed to take two daily, but I kept forgetting, and now she'd put the bottle literally on my nightstand where I'd see it every morning. Passive-aggressive parenting at its finest.

"You good?" Jordan asked later, as we sat in the dugout during a water break.

"Maya posted a sphinx emoji," I confessed, because sometimes you just gotta spill.

Jordan's eyes went wide. "Bro. The sphinx emoji? For real?"

"That's what I said!"

"Okay, okay, think," Jordan said, suddenly very invested. "The sphinx asked riddles, right? What if she's playing a game? Like, you gotta figure out what she's trying to say, and then-"

"And then what?" I groaned. "This isn't mythology, J. This is real life, and I'm terrible at both."

That night, I stared at my ceiling, the vitamin bottle mocking me from my nightstand. My phone buzzed - another story from Maya. This time, it was just her cat, looking judgmental as always, with the caption: "some mysteries aren't meant to be solved 🙄 sphinx"

Oh.

OH.

The cat. Her cat was named Sphinx. (Yes, really. Her sister was going through an ancient Egypt phase when they got him.) That's all it was. Just her cat, being annoying.

I laughed so hard I almost fell out of bed. The next day, I finally took those stupid vitamins, because I figured I needed all the brain power I could get.

And yeah, I did eventually ask Maya to hang out. She said yes. No riddles required.

Sometimes the sphinx doesn't ask anything at all. Sometimes it's just a cat with a weird name, and you've been overthinking everything because you're sixteen and everything feels like a sign.

Though I still don't know what those vitamins are actually supposed to do. Whatever. They taste like oranges and I'll take it.