Sphinx in a Sun Hat

The piece of **spinach** had been lodged between Maya's front teeth for approximately forty-seven minutes.

She'd tried subtly swishing sparkling water around her mouth. She'd done the casual tongue-sweep. But no—Spinachgate continued, stubborn as a bad cellular signal. And of course this happened at Chloe's pool party, where everyone from school seemed to be congregating like strategically placed social mines.

Maya adjusted her floppy sun **hat**, grateful she'd thrown it on to hide the fact that she'd half-assed her hair that morning. The hat was doing heavy lifting—camouflaging both frizz and her general lack of desire to be there.

"Maya! You made it!" Chloe called from her throne by the **pool**. Because of course Chloe was lounging like a Egyptian **sphinx** on a chaise, one elbow artfully propped, surveying her kingdom. Her bikini coordinated with the pool floats. Her skin glowed like she'd been photoshopped in real life.

"Yeah!" Maya managed, doing a little wave that felt incredibly awkward. "Happy almost-birthday!"

"Almost-birthday?" Someone snorted behind her. Of course it was Tyler, Chloe's neighbor and the guy Maya had been lowkey crushing on since algebra started becoming a thing that required actual effort. He was dripping wet, fresh from the pool, and Maya's brain short-circuited for a solid three seconds. "You know that's not a real thing, right?"

"Shut up, Tyler," Chloe said, but not like, actually mad. "Her birthday is literally tomorrow. That counts."

Maya forced a smile while simultaneously trying to keep her lips closed tight enough to hide the spinach situation but loose enough that she didn't look like she was, you know, hiding something. She wondered if she could just **bear** this entire interaction without dying on the spot.

Tyler's eyes flicked to her hat. "Nice hat. You going undercover?"

"Something like that," she said.

"Good," he said, and his expression was weirdly sincere. "You need to block out this sun. It's aggressive out here."

And then, because the universe apparently enjoyed scripting moments of pure mortification, Maya's phone chimed from beneath the hat's brim. Her mother had texted her three separate paragraphs about why she needed to come home early because her aunt was unexpectedly coming over and could she please pick up some more spinach for the smoothie regimen and also did she remember to wear sunscreen.

"Your mom?" Tyler asked, catching a glimpse of her screen.

"Yeah, she's... a lot."

"Tell me about it," he said. "Mine called me five times yesterday because I forgot to water her plants."

Maya looked at him, really looked at him, and something shifted. The spinach situation was still catastrophic. Her hat was still doing way too much emotional labor. But Tyler's hair was messy and his nose had a little sunburn on it and he was standing here talking to her about parent problems instead of immediately ditching her to go back to the pool.

"Hey," he said, "wanna get some air? This party is giving me social anxiety by proxy."

Maya felt her shoulders drop about three inches.

"Yes," she said. "But I have to do something first."

"What's that?"

She tilted her hat forward, stepped toward the refreshment table, and grabbed a napkin.

"Emergency spinach removal," she said, not even bothering to whisper. "Worst forty-seven minutes of my life."

Tyler cracked up. It wasn't polite laughter. It was genuine, bent-at-the-waist laughter.

"You knew?" she accused, mostly horrified but also weirdly relieved.

"The whole time!" He was still laughing. "I thought you were going to wait it out like a personal challenge."

"I was trying!"

"Well," he said, once he'd composed himself, "you're way cooler than anyone else here. Also, I'm Tyler, and I apparently have no problem watching someone suffer through a spinach emergency."

"Maya," she said, finally smiling for real. "And apparently neither do I."

They walked toward the edge of the yard, away from Chloe's sphinx-like surveillance and the blinding pool, and Maya didn't even think about her hat.