Riddles at the Finish Line

Jordan was practically sprinting away from his problems—literally. Cross-country practice was the only place where the constant buzzing in his brain finally shut up. Well, until Coach decided their workout was "mental conditioning day" and assigned them each a "sphinx" partner.

"Your sphinx partner is the person who'll give you something to think about," Coach announced. Jordan groaned. Maya, the girl who sat in the back of AP English and never spoke, was already walking toward him.

Great. The human sphinx. Maya barely said two words all semester. She probably thought Jordan was just another jock bro.

"So," Maya said, twirling a strand of dark hair, "what's something you're running from?"

Jordan blinked. "What?"

"It's my riddle," she said. "Everyone's running from something. What's your thing?"

He almost made up something dumb. Almost. But something about her searching expression made the truth tumble out. "I'm failing bio. And my parents are gonna flip when they find out I can't keep my scholarship if my GPA drops."

Maya nodded slowly. "That sucks."

"Yeah. What about you? What's your sphinx riddle?"

She hesitated, then reached into her backpack and pulled out a Ziploc bag of what looked like fuzzy green sludge. "I bring smoothies for lunch every day. And I eat them in the bathroom so nobody sees."

Jordan laughed. "Wait, what?"

"It's spinach, kale, protein powder, and honestly, it looks like swamp water," Maya admitted. "But my mom's this hardcore nutritionist, and if she knew I was buying cafeteria pizza instead, she'd literally lose it. So I fake it."

"You're hiding in a bathroom to drink spinach smoothies?"

"It's not exactly hiding. It's strategic lunching." She cracked a tiny smile. "Anyway, we're both trapped in our own drama. Seems like we have something in common."

Jordan realized something: Maya wasn't the stuck-up silent genius he'd assumed. She was just as tired of pretending as he was. The human sphinx had just revealed herself.

"Hey," Jordan said, "tomorrow at lunch, don't hide in the bathroom. Bring your swamp smoothie to the table near the gym doors. I'll be there with my bio textbook. We can suffer together."

Maya actually smiled. "You're on. But if that smoothie explodes in my backpack again, I'm blaming you."

"Deal."

As they finished their cool-down laps, Jordan realized running away from problems wasn't the answer. Sometimes you just needed to find someone who'd run alongside you—even if they were drinking green sludge and failing bio.