Riddles Behind Home Plate

The goldfish bowl sat on the bench like a glass-eyed judgment. Carmen had won it at the spring fair five minutes ago—some consolation prize for whiffing on the high striker—and now she was stuck carrying it while Javier watched from across the baseball diamond.

She wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't on the team. She was just the equipment manager's cousin, filling in because someone's appendix had exploded or whatever.

"Hey, new girl!" Javier waved. He was the varsity shortstop, had that golden-boy thing going on— effortless, like he'd been born with a glove already on his hand. "You gonna stand there all day holding that fish hostage?"

The baseball in her pocket felt like a secret. She'd practiced throwing against her bedroom wall until her mother had yelled through the door about the damage. Nobody knew. Nobody could know.

"He's not hostage," she called back, surprising herself. "He's my emotional support fish."

Javier laughed, actual crinkle-around-eyes laugh, and jogged over. "What's his name?"

"Sphinx."

"Sphinx? Like the riddle thing?"

"Like he knows everything but won't tell me anything," she said, and immediately wanted to dissolve into the dugout floor. Why did she say that?

But Javier didn't make fun of her. He leaned against the backstop, baseball cap tilted back, studying her like she was one of those impossible geometry proofs their math teacher loved to assign.

"You know," he said, "I had this goldfish once. Won it at a carnival just like that one. Named him Rookie. Died in three days, but for those three days, I talked to him about everything. My dad was sick, I was failing algebra, I couldn't hit a curveball to save my life. Rookie just swam around, doing his fish thing, but somehow it helped."

Carmen's fingers tightened around the bowl. "You? Failing algebra?"

"Don't sound so shocked. I'm not exactly the sphinx of secrets myself." He grinned, but there was something real underneath it. Something that looked a lot like what she felt every day, like she was faking her way through being a person. "Hey, you want to throw some?"

"I'm not really—"

"Come on. Sphinx can watch. He won't tell anyone."

And that was it, maybe—the beginning of something. Or at least the beginning of not feeling like she was underwater, holding her breath. The baseball in her pocket felt lighter. The goldfish in the bowl seemed to wink.

Some riddles don't need answers. Sometimes you just need someone who knows that you don't know everything either.