Riddles in the Pool Water

The papaya incident was NOT how I wanted to start my first day at Camp Pacific, but there I was—sticky, embarrassed, and desperately trying to play it cool while smoothing pink fruit pulp off my tie-dye tank top.

"You good, new girl?"

I looked up. And up. Marcus stood there, padel racket slung over his shoulder like he owned the place. Which, judging by the way everyone kept glancing over, he basically did. His hair was that perfect messy-curl situation that probably took twenty minutes to make look accidental.

"Peachy," I said. "Literally."

He laughed. "I'm Marcus. Welcome to the pyramid."

"The what?"

"The social pyramid," he said, too casually. "Top tier's the padel players. Then the volleyball crew. Then everyone else. You're ... climbing."

I should've rolled my eyes. Should've walked away. But his smile was doing something to my brain.

"Teach me," I said. "Padel."

Three days later, I was still terrible. Marcus was patient, though. But the real mystery wasn't my backhand—it was his sister, Sasha. Everyone called her The Sphinx. She sat by the pool every morning, unreadable as a mythological riddle, sketching in a leather notebook.

"What's her deal?" I asked after Marcus destroyed me for the twentieth time.

His face closed up. "She doesn't talk. Much."

"At all?"

"Not since ... it's complicated."

That night, I couldn't sleep. Found myself by the pool, moonlight turning the water to something silver and alive. Sasha was there. Not sketching. Just ... sitting.

"You play padel?" she asked. Her voice was rough, like she hadn't used it in weeks.

"Badly."

"Marcus thinks he's so deep." She looked at me. Really looked. "He doesn't know. About you."

"About me?"

"That you're not trying to climb anything." She flipped her notebook open. A drawing of me. Not just me—me laughing at something Marcus said, my guard completely down. "I see things."

The papaya stain was still faintly visible on my shirt. A reminder that maybe awkward wasn't the worst thing to be.

"Teach me to play padel?" I asked her.

Sasha smiled. It transformed her face. "First lesson: you don't play to win. You play because the racket feels right in your hand."

By the end of camp, I still couldn't beat Marcus. But I had something better—a Sphinx who finally spoke, a papaya stain that became a inside joke, and the realization that some pyramids are meant to be climbed, while others are meant to be dismantled from the inside out.