Sphinx of the Baseball Diamonds

The summer before freshman year, I spent most of my time running away from my reflection. Literally.

I'd joined the summer track team because my older brother Jordan said it'd help me "stop being such a twig." But really, I was running from the fact that my best friend Maya had ghosted me three weeks into summer break. No texts, no Insta replies, nada. Just gone.

Every afternoon after practice, I'd hit the community pool for laps. Swimming was the only time my brain actually shut up. No overthinking every social interaction, no replaying conversations where I definitely sounded like a total dork. Just me, the water, and the smell of chlorine that somehow made everything feel manageable.

That's where I saw her — the sphinx.

She was this girl who sat by the diving board every day, reading thick hardcover books and watching everyone with these intense, knowing eyes. The lifeguards called her Sphinx because she never spoke, just observed. She had this presence that made you feel like she saw right through your awkward teenage facade.

One Tuesday, I got out of the pool and found her sitting on the bench next to my stuff, eating spinach straight from a plastic container. Like, raw spinach. No dressing. Nothing.

"That's disgusting," I blurted, then immediately wanted to die.

She looked up, dark eyes assessing me. "It's an acquired taste. Kinda like not caring what people think."

I stood there dripping wet, clutching my towel like an idiot. "I'm Leo."

"I know." She held up her book — it was about Egyptian mythology. "I'm Sam."

Turns out Sam wasn't some mysterious oracle. She was just a sophomore who'd moved here from Chicago and didn't feel like performing social niceties for people who'd judge her anyway. We talked for two hours while the pool emptied out. About baseball (she was secretly obsessed with statistics), about Maya's ghosting (she called it "classic middle school friendship casualties"), and about how sometimes you just gotta eat spinach because it's good for you, even if it tastes like sadness.

"You know what a sphinx really is?" Sam asked, closing her book. "It's not about being mysterious. It's about asking the right questions. Most people are too scared to ask anything real."

That night, I texted Maya: *Hey. I miss you. Can we talk?*

She texted back: *Omg yes. I thought you hated me.*

Some sphinxes don't have riddles. Sometimes they just eat spinach and help you find your courage again.