Sphinx in the Dugout

I stood in right field, my baseball glove like a foreign object on my hand. Coach stuck me here because I couldn't hit, couldn't catch, and apparently couldn't be trusted near actual action. The grass smelled like summer and embarrassment.

Then I saw her—the fox in the vintage denim jacket, sitting alone behind the backstop. Maya. She'd transferred here three weeks ago and still sat by herself at lunch, mysterious as a sphinx with her riddle eyes and half-smile that meant everything or nothing depending on how you squinted.

"Hey, nerd!"

Bull Chen, our team's designated asshole, lumbered past. "Stop staring and maybe catch a ball for once?" He snorted laughter with his goons. Classic Bull behavior—take a warm summer day and make it feel like a locker room.

But I wasn't even thinking about baseball anymore. I was thinking about how Maya had looked at me in homeroom yesterday, like I was actually worth noticing. How she'd drawn a sphinx in the margin of my history notes—no note, just the drawing, like some kind of test.

"I'm going over there," I muttered.

"What?" Bull sneered. "To get rejected? Go for it, loser."

I walked off the field. Coach would bench me. Whatever. I crossed to the backstop, heart hammering like I'd stolen third base with the whole world watching.

Maya looked up. Those sphinx eyes.

"You're just standing there," she said, not mean. Just observing. "Like you're waiting for something."

"Maybe I am."

She smiled—really smiled, not the half-one. "What are you waiting for?"

"For you to tell me what the sphinx means."

Maya pulled out a Sharpie and wrote on my hand: *Ask me anything.*

"That's not a riddle," I said.

"No," she agreed. "But it's a start."

Behind me, Bull was shouting something about my mom. The game continued without me. But I wasn't the kid in right field anymore. I was someone who'd walked away from the game for a shot at something real.

"Ask me anything," I repeated. "Okay. Why do you always sit alone?"

"Because nobody's ever brave enough to walk over," she said. "Until now."

The sphinx had spoken. And somehow, impossibly, I'd won.