Running in Circles

Maya's legs burned as she rounded the third lap, the track blurring beneath her sneakers like a brown ribbongoning nowhere. Coach benson had nicknamed her "the fox" last season — clever, quick, impossible to catch — but lately she felt more like roadkill.

"You're overthinking it," said Jamar, leaning against the bleachers with his signature half-smirk. He'd been her best friend since seventh grade, back when they'd both gotten detention for TP-ing the principal's house. Now he was team captain, and she was just... tired.

"I'm not overthinking," Maya panted, collapsing onto the grass beside him. "I'm underperforming. There's a difference."

"Same difference." He tossed her a water bottle. "You need to chill. Maybe take one of those gummy vitamin things your mom's always pushing. The ones that taste like radioactive strawberries."

Maya rolled her eyes but accepted the water. Her mom had become obsessed with wellness culture since the divorce, stocking their pantry with supplements that promised to fix everything from concentration to charisma. Meanwhile, Maya's GPA had dropped to a solid B-minus, and she'd barely spoken to her dad since he moved out three months ago.

The real problem wasn't running. It was the suffocating pressure of being the girl who had it all together. The one who smiled through family dinner. The one who didn't cry when her geometry teacher announced a pop quiz.

That night, Maya sat at her desk staring at a poster of the Great Sphinx of Giza she'd bought for history class. Something about those ancient limestone eyes — unreadable, eternal, unbothered — made her feel small. The riddle of the sphinx: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man, but the real question was: what happens when you forget how to walk at all?

Her phone buzzed. Jamar: "Track meet tomorrow. You gonna show up or what?"

Maya typed back: "What if I'm not the fox anymore? What if I'm just... regular?"

Three dots appeared, vanished, reappeared. Then: "Then you're regular. Newsflash: we're all just winging it."

Something clicked. Not a breakthrough, exactly — more like when your foot finds solid ground after stumbling. The next day at the meet, Maya didn't win her heat. She came in fourth. But when Jamar high-fived her at the finish line, sweaty and grinning, she realized that was enough. Some riddles don't have answers. They just have running.