Riddles in the Deep End

Maya stood at the edge of the pool clutching her iphone like a lifeline, thumbing through notifications she'd already checked twelve times. The sophomore kickoff party raged around her—laughter, splashing, someone blasting Doja Cat from a waterproof speaker—and she felt like she'd walked into the wrong movie.

"You coming in or what?" called Jason, the junior she'd been crushing on since orientation. He treaded water near the diving board, grin bright against the twilight.

"Yeah, just... warming up," Maya lied. She'd been "warming up" for twenty minutes. Her phone buzzed again—a text from her best friend: 'U still alive??'

Then she saw it. A massive orange cat perched on the pool fence, watching everything with these unnervingly knowing amber eyes. It reminded her of the sphinx she'd studied in World Mythology last spring—something ancient and judgmental, posing impossible riddles. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man, but right now, the riddle was: how do you exist when everyone else is effortlessly cool and you're standing on the pool deck in a swimsuit that felt three sizes too small?

The cat meowed, almost like it was daring her.

"Screw it," Maya muttered. She shoved her phone onto a chair and jumped.

The shock of cold water knocked the breath out of her. She came up sputting, hair plastered to her face, dignity somewhere back on dry land. But Jason was laughing—actually laughing, not mean-laughing—and suddenly she was swimming toward him, toward the noise and the splash wars and someone yelling about chicken fights.

The sphinx-cat on the fence seemed to nod, satisfied with her answer to the riddle of being fifteen: you just jump.