Riddles in the Deep End

The papaya-colored sunset painted the sky as Maya stood at the edge of the Hernandez's pool, clutching her towel like a lifeline. She'd been **running** from this moment all summer—Jordan's annual pool party, where somehow everyone else knew exactly how to be sixteen while she was still figuring out the basics.

Across the deck, Jordan floated on an inflatable shaped like the Great **Sphinx** of Giza,因为它 his dad's weird phase where he decorated everything with Egyptian mythology. The plastic sphinx's painted eyes seemed to mock Maya from its perch on the water.

"Hey! You coming in or what?" Jordan called, splashing water. Alex was already **swimming** laps like they were training for the Olympics, because of course Alex was good at everything.

Maya's palms were sweating. She couldn't swim. Not really—not like the others, who'd all been on swim team since kindergarten. Every time she tried to admit it, the words got stuck in her throat like swallowed pool water.

"In a minute!" she managed, voice cracking.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her mom: *Remember what your grandmother said—palm reading runs in the family. Trust your gut.* Yeah, because mystical fortune-telling wisdom would definitely help with this.

She looked down at her hands. The lines on her left **palm** were supposed to mean something about destiny or whatever. All she saw were the marks from digging her nails in whenever she got nervous.

The sphinx inflatable drifted closer. Jordan slid off and treaded water. "Maya, you good? You've been standing there forever."

Something about the way they said it—not mocking, just concerned—made the truth spill out. "I can't really swim. Like, not well. I didn't want to look dumb."

Jordan blinked. Then they laughed—but not at her. "Dude, last year I slipped getting out of this pool and face-planted in front of EVERYONE. I still have the scar on my knee."

"Seriously?"

"Cross my heart." Jordan pointed at the sphinx. "This whole Egyptian theme? It's because I said the pool needed more 'mystery and majesty.' I was going for poetry. I got a plastic sphinx."

Maya's shoulders dropped three inches. "So you're not, like, perfect at everything?"

"Literally never in my life." Alex surfaced beside them. "What are we talking about?"

"Maya's gonna learn to swim tonight," Jordan announced. "We're starting in the shallow end. No judgment zone."

"Hard same," Alex said. "I still use a noodle sometimes."

By the time the papaya sunset faded to purple, Maya was doggy-paddling alongside the sphinx, tired but not terrified. Some things you couldn't run from. But sometimes, if you stopped running, you found out you weren't alone in the deep end after all.