Riddles in the Bathroom Mirror

The bathroom mirror at Jordan's party showed everything I didn't want to see: frizzy **hair** that refused to cooperate, a constellation of fresh pimples across my forehead, and the kind of anxiety that made my hands shake like I'd chugged three espresso shots.

"You good in there?" Jordan's voice called through the door. "People need to pee!"

"Coming!" I splashed cold water on my face and checked my **iphone**—12:47 AM, three notifications from my mom asking when I'd be home, zero from the girl I'd been crushing on for six months.

My phone was at 4%. The charging **cable** I'd brought was tangled in a knot that seemed personally offended by my existence.

The party thumped downstairs. I could hear laughter and shouted conversations and people becoming versions of themselves they'd never met before. That's what sixteen felt like most of the time—a costume party where everyone else had been given their outfits and I was still standing there in my underwear.

I slid down the wall to sit on the bathmat. This is it, I thought. The peak of my teenage existence. Alone in a stranger's bathroom while my social life happened without me.

Then something brushed against my ankle.

I jumped. A cat—one of those ancient, judgmental creatures with fur like storm clouds—had somehow gotten into the bathroom. It regarded me with eyes that seemed to know exactly how uncool I was.

"You too?" I whispered.

The cat's name tag said **Sphinx**.

Of course it did. Because the universe loved a good punchline at my expense.

Sphinx settled beside me, purring like a tiny motorboat. And there was something about this creature's complete indifference to social hierarchies that made my chest loosen. She didn't care about followers or cool points or whether I said the right thing. She just wanted warmth.

"Okay," I said. "Okay."

I stood up, grabbed my phone with its dying battery and my dignity with its equally dim prospects, and opened the door.

Outside, Maya was leaning against the wall, scrolling through her own phone. She looked up and smiled.

"Hey," she said. "I was wondering where you disappeared to."

"Bathroom crisis," I said. "There's a cat in there."

"Jordan's cat?" Her face lit up. "That's Sphinx. She's the best part of every party."

"Yeah," I said, feeling something unclench in my chest. "Yeah, she kind of is."

"Want to go find snacks and pet her properly?"

"Absolutely."

And just like that, the riddle solved itself: sometimes you don't need to be the person everyone notices. You just need to find the other people in the bathroom, waiting for the cat.