Riddles by the Pool

Maya's fingers hovered over her cracked iPhone screen, the group chat scrolling with messages she'd already read twice. Summer pool party at Caleb's house. Everyone going. You coming?

She wasn't sure she wanted to go. Last time she'd felt invisible, watching her friend Chloe float effortlessly between social circles while Maya stayed glued to the snack table. But Chloe had been different lately—distant, like she'd unlocked some secret level of teenage hierarchy that Maya hadn't figured out yet.

"You coming or what?" Maya's mom yelled from downstairs. "Caleb's mom just texted."

Caleb's backyard was already chaotic when she arrived. The pool glittered with afternoon sun, bodies splashing and shouting. Chloe was there, holding court in the deep end, her wet hair slicked back like a mermaid who'd just remembered she was a queen. Maya slipped onto a lounge chair, phone in hand, her thumb automatically opening Instagram.

That's when she noticed the fox.

It was sitting at the edge of the woods beyond the fence, impossibly still, watching them with intelligent amber eyes. No one else saw it. Maya found herself moving toward it, leaving her phone behind on the chair.

The fox didn't run. Instead, it led her along the fence line to where Caleb's little sister sat cross-legged in the grass, surrounded by scattered papers. Lila, eight years old and completely absorbed in a book about ancient Egypt.

"You're going to ask me a riddle, aren't you?" Lila said without looking up. "That's what the sphinx did. She asked riddles and if you couldn't answer, you died."

Maya blinked. "What?"

Lila looked up, grinning. "The sphinx. I'm studying them. She was basically the original mean girl, but with wings and a riddle addiction." She tapped the page. "Want to hear one?"

Behind them, the party roared with laughter. Maya glanced back at her phone still sitting on the lounge chair, then at Chloe, now dripping wet and grinning with someone else. Something in Maya's chest loosened.

"Yeah," she said. "Hit me with your best shot."

The fox watched them both, then disappeared into the woods. Maya sat in the grass with Lila as the sun dipped lower, completely forgetting about the pool, her phone, and the version of herself she'd been trying so hard to become. For the first time all summer, she wasn't watching from the edges. She was exactly where she needed to be.