Riddles in the Spinach

Maya's cat, Binx, sat on her bed like a furry judgment machine, watching her pack for her first real party. He had this sphinx-like vibe lately—staring into her soul, knowing exactly how much she was lowkey spiraling.

"You're not helping," she said, throwing a crumpled napkin at him. Binx didn't blink.

Maya had spent forty-five minutes on her eyeliner. She was trying this whole new aesthetic thing. sophomore year, reinvent yourself, all that. Her phone buzzed: *u coming??* from Nicole, who'd somehow graduated from hallway-wave-acquaintance to actual friend in like, two weeks.

Her mom called from downstairs: "Did you eat something healthy before you go?"

"Had spinach!" Maya yelled back, grabbing her keys. Close enough. She'd forced down a spinach smoothie that tasted like wet lawn.

The party was already lowkey loud when she showed up. People scattered across the backyard, red cups pulsing in the fairy lights. Then she saw him—Cameron, leaning against the garage, laughing at something that wasn't even funny, probably. Maya's stomach did that thing where it forgot how to stomach.

"Hey!" Nicole appeared, handing her a cup. "You made it!"

They gravitated toward the fire pit where Cameron was talking about some video game boss—"literally impossible, bro, it's like fighting a sphinx, you have to solve riddles while it's throwing fireballs at your head."

Everyone laughed. Maya laughed. She didn't play video games but she laughed like she did.

Then Cameron looked right at her. "You're in my English class, right? You did that presentation on Egyptian mythology?"

Maya froze. "Yeah?"

"That was sick. The way you broke down the sphinx symbolism? Actually kind of genius."

Wait. He REMEMBERED?

"Thanks," she managed. Her face was definitely doing something unhinged.

Cameron smiled—actually smiled, not performing for the group. "I'm Cameron, by the way."

"Maya."

"Cool name."

They talked for twenty minutes about everything and nothing. He didn't try to impress her with game stats or how many people he knew. He just asked questions. Actual ones. About what she liked to read, why she was into mythology, if she'd seen this one documentary about cats in ancient Egypt.

Then Nicole grabbed her arm. "Maya, your smile—"

Oh god. Was something in her teeth? Was she bleeding? Had she been smiling weird this whole time?

"You have..." Nicole gestured vaguely at her own teeth. "Since you got here."

Maya's stomach hit the floor. Spinach. From the smoothie. She'd been talking to Cameron for twenty minutes with literal green vegetation stuck in her teeth like some kind of festive decoration.

She was ready to evaporate. Actually evaporate. Become mist. Float away into the atmosphere.

But then Cameron started laughing. Not mean laughing. Real laughing. "Dude, I've had spinach in my teeth for like three hours now. Nicole was just waiting to see if you'd notice before she told either of us."

Nicole shrugged, totally unbothered. "It was funny."

Maya started laughing too. She couldn't help it. The ridiculousness of it. The perfection she'd been chasing, the aesthetic curation, the forty-five minutes of eyeliner—all undermined by a leafy green vegetable.

Cameron handed her a mirror. "Welcome to the club."

Maya looked at herself—spinach and all—and didn't feel like dying. She felt... real. Like, this was high school, right? Messy, awkward, occasionally humiliating, but also kind of perfect.

"So," Cameron said, checking his own teeth. "You wanna go inside? I think they have pizza."

"Lead the way."

Back home, Binx was still sitting on her bed like he'd never moved. Maya flopped down beside him, staring at the ceiling.

"You will never guess what happened," she told him.

Binx yawned, displaying his own formidable teeth, absolutely unconcerned with social navigation or vegetable emergencies. Sometimes being a cat was just easier.

Maya smiled, checking her reflection in her phone. No spinach. Just a girl who'd survived her first party, made a boy laugh, and learned that perfection was overrated anyway.