Riddles by the Router

The cable modem lay in three pieces on my bedroom floor, a digital tragedy that meant no WiFi, no streaming, and definitely no FaceTime with Maya tonight. I'd promised to help her study for finals, but now I was stranded in analog hell.

"Dude, you need to get out anyway," said Jace, sprawled across my beanbag chair, failing utterly at looking cool while holding my orange cat like a baby. "There's that beach party behind the Sphinx resort. Actual people. Actual fun."

The Sphinx was this old hotel shaped like the Egyptian monument, except lopsided and definitely not sacred. It was where the private school kids hung out—people who said "summer home" instead of "vacation" and whose lives seemed curated by Instagram filters.

"I can't just show up," I muttered. "I don't even know if—"

"If what? If you're allowed? Bro, you're seventeen. You don't need a hall pass."

So there I was, standing under a fake palm tree that shed plastic fronds every time the wind blew, clutching a warm soda like it was my only friend. The beach buzzed with laughter and bass, everyone moving with that easy confidence I'd never mastered.

Then Maya walked out of the Sphinx's sliding doors, hair windblown, wearing that oversized jacket she stole from her brother. She spotted me, waved, and my stomach did that embarrassing flip thing.

"Your cable's out too?" she asked, sitting cross-legged in the sand beside me. "I've been trying to DM you all day."

"Yeah, router situation. Kind of a disaster."

"Perfect," she said, grinning. "Now we can actually talk instead of just sending memes."

We sat there while the party raged behind us, talking about everything and nothing—how we were both terrified of college applications, how her parents expected her to become a doctor like her sister, how I had no idea what I even wanted. The palm tree dropped another plastic frond onto my shoulder, and Maya laughed so hard she snorted soda.

"You know," she said, brushing sand from my knee, "sometimes things breaking is exactly what's supposed to happen."

I looked at her, really looked at her, and thought about broken cables and fake palm trees and riddles I never knew how to solve until suddenly, somehow, I did.