Riddles in the Aquarium

Maya's phone buzzed with texts from the group chat. *Party at Jake's tonight. You coming?* She stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Parties weren't really her thing. The noise, the people having to perform chill when she felt everything so intensely it was exhausting.

"You're overthinking again," she muttered to her **goldfish**, Bubbles, who swam in lazy circles around his tiny castle. "At least you get to just float around looking peaceful. Nobody expects you to be interesting."

Her phone buzzed again. *Please come? It'll be lame without you.* That was Leo, who'd somehow become her person over the past few months of AP Bio lab partners and shared Spotify playlists.

Fine. She'd go. For Leo.

Jake's house was already packed when she arrived. The bass shook the floorboards, and someone had definitely already puked in the bathroom. Maya grabbed a soda and wedged herself into a corner, watching the social dynamics play out like some complicated experiment she hadn't studied for.

Then she saw her. The girl everyone called "the **sphinx**"—Ellie, who transferred to their school three months ago and never spoke, just watched everything with these ancient, knowing eyes. Ellie stood apart from the crowd, sipping something from a red cup, observing the chaos like it was all beneath her.

Before Maya could overthink it, she found herself walking over.

"You doing okay?" Maya asked. Smooth. Real smooth.

Ellie's lips curved into something almost like a smile. "I was about to ask you the same thing. You look like you're solving for X on a math test while everyone else is just vibing."

Maya laughed. "That's actually exactly how I feel."

"Ellie raised her cup. "To being the weirdos who think too much."

"To the weirdos," Maya agreed.

They spent the next hour talking about everything and nothing— Ellie's conspiracy theories about why the school cafeteria never served real cheese, Maya's obsession with vintage video games she'd never actually played, their mutual agreement that TikTok was destroying attention spans while secretly being addicted to it.

"You know what?" Ellie said finally. "You're not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know. Someone more... basic?"

"Wow, thanks."

Ellie laughed, and it was this real, unguarded sound that made something in Maya's chest feel weirdly warm. "I mean it as a compliment. You're smart but you're not annoying about it. That's rare."

Their conversation was interrupted by Jake's little sister, who was apparently on a mission to be the most annoying person alive. "My **fox** ran away again! Has anyone seen Copper? He's probably hiding somewhere stupid!"

Maya and Ellie exchanged a look and immediately went outside to help search, leaving behind the pulsing music and performative socializing for the quiet suburban streets, flashlights cutting through the darkness as they looked for a escape artist fox and somehow found something better: a friendship that didn't feel like a performance at all.