Riddles in the Chlorine

Pool water does something to your brain. Maybe it's the chemicals, maybe it's the way sound gets all muffled and underwater everything feels like a different planet. But that's where I met her — the Sphinx of sophomore year.

I was drowning in my own head again, which is funny because I'd been on the swim team since seventh grade. But somehow doing laps at 6 AM while everyone else is sleeping doesn't translate to NOT panicking when you're supposed to be social at pool parties.

She was sitting on the edge, feet in the water, watching me like I was some kind of specimen.

"You're thinking too loud," she said.

I nearly swallowed water. "Excuse me?"

"The Sphinx," she said, like that explained everything. "That's what people call me. Because I ask questions and never explain myself. Also, I'm mysterious and possibly immortal."

Her name was actually Riley. She had this way of looking at you that felt like she knew something you didn't.

"Why are you here?" she asked. "At this party, I mean. You've been swimming laps for forty-five minutes. Everyone else is playing beer pong in the basement."

I told her about baseball tryouts next week. How I needed to get cut because then I'd have an excuse to quit, because my dad wanted me to play but I hated it, and I was basically a coward who couldn't just say no.

"That's not a riddle," she said. "That's just being fifteen."

Then she told me about her older brother, the actual human **bull** of a person who'd been the star pitcher until he tore his rotator cuff and now worked at the bait shop and drank too much. About how her parents were getting divorced but nobody was allowed to talk about it. About how she felt like she was carrying all of it, like trying to **bear** the weight of a building that was already collapsing.

"We're all just pretending," she said. "The trick is finding people who know what you're pretending through."

We skipped the party. Walked to the baseball field behind the school and sat on the bleachers under those weird lights that make everything look yellow and ghostly.

"I'm not trying out," I said, and it felt like breaking something and like being free all at once.

"Good," she said. "You were gonna get hit in the face with a fastball anyway. You flinch too much."

I laughed. She didn't.

"I'm not kidding," she said. "But also, that's okay. We've all got stuff. My brother says the only difference between courage and stupidity is whether it works out."

"Does he say that before or after the drinking?"

"Both. Doesn't make it less true."

The air smelled like cut grass and that specific metallic smell of baseball dirt. I realized I wasn't panicked anymore. Maybe this was what people meant by friends — not people who liked you, but people who saw through you and didn't run away.

"Hey," I said. "You never answered your own riddle. Why are YOU here?"

She smiled, and it was this tiny, real thing that made something behind my ribs do flips.

"I'm here," she said, "because I needed someone to see me without pretending. And you looked like you needed someone to call BS on your whole act."

We sat there until the lights automatically shut off at midnight, leaving us in the dark with crickets and the weight of everything we hadn't said yet.

Sometimes the riddles answer themselves. Sometimes you just need someone to ask the right ones.