Riddle Under the Summer Stars

The summer humidity was brutal, but Kai's palm was sweating for a totally different reason. He was actually hanging out with Maya—the girl who'd been sitting two rows ahead in homeroom since freshman year—alone. At the county fair. On a Saturday night.

They'd bonded over being the only two people who actually laughed when Mr. Henderson's physics demo failed catastrophically. Now they were wandering past food stands smelling like funnel cake and desperation.

"I dare you," Maya said, stopping at the carnival game booth with the plastic goldfish swimming in tiny circles. "Win me one."

"You know these are rigged, right?" Kai said, but he was already reaching for his wallet.

Five dollars later, he somehow managed to land a ping-pong ball in a bowl. The worker handed him a clear plastic bag containing an unimpressive orange fish that looked done with life.

"His name is Cornelius," Maya declared, holding up the bag like it was a prize. "And he's our son now. Co-parenting starts today."

Kai almost choked on his own spit. "What?"

"Kidding. Sort of." She grinned, and Kai's stomach did that terrifying flippy thing it always did around her lately.

They ended up at the old haunted house attraction, which was basically just someone's garage painted black with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck everywhere. But there was a riddle written on a fake sphinx prop at the entrance:

I have cities but no houses. I have mountains but no trees. I have water but no fish. What am I?

Maya stared at it, furrowing her brow. "Maps?"

"Yeah, maps," Kai said. "Nice."

She looked at him differently then. "You're actually smart, huh? Like, for real."

The moment felt heavy, like the air before a storm. Kai thought about what it meant to really be someone's friend—how you could know someone for years and suddenly realize there was so much more beneath the surface.

"I try," he said, voice quieter than intended.

Maya stepped closer, her arm brushing his. The goldfish bag swayed between them like a weird orange pendulum. "Hey, Kai?"

"Yeah?"

"This isn't terrible. Hanging with you, I mean. Not terrible at all."

The carnival lights blurred in the distance. Somewhere nearby, someone won a giant teddy bear and the crowd went wild. But in that moment, everything felt perfect and terrifying and exactly like something he didn't want to end.

"Not terrible," Kai agreed, and for once, his palm wasn't sweating anymore.