Summer's Sphinx Lightning

The pool party was already giving Maya major anxiety, and then there was the **spinach** incident. She'd spent twenty minutes perfecting her eyeliner, only to discover a vibrant green wedge stuck between her front teeth while checking her reflection in the sliding glass door. Because obviously. Because the universe had decided her social life needed more comedy.

"Yo, you good?" Jordan asked, appearing behind her with that effortless cool that made Maya's chest tight. Her best **friend** since sixth grade, now somehow morphing into someone who got invited to pool parties by people like Chelsea, while Maya hovered on the edges of everything.

"Fine," Maya lied, wiping at her teeth. "Just...chloramine smell."

"You're overthinking again." Jordan bumped her shoulder. "Come **swimming**. Everyone's doing cannonballs off the diving board."

"In a minute."

But then she saw it. Chelsea's little brother had constructed an elaborate **sphinx** out of pool noodles and floaties near the shallow end, complete with a mysteriously knowing expression drawn in Sharpie on a basketball taped to the top. It was ridiculous. It was magnificent. It was exactly the kind of weird that Maya usually secretly loved but publicly pretended to find immature.

Suddenly, the sky cracked open. Actual **lightning** forked across the horizon, close enough that the hairs on her arms stood up. Someone screamed like it was a horror movie instead of just weather. The pool emptied in seconds, towels and phones and dignity scattered everywhere in the rush toward the covered patio.

And there Maya stood, alone in the sudden downpour, laughing so hard her ribs hurt, while the sphinx of pool noodles bobbed triumphantly in the rain-ruffled water like it had been waiting for this exact moment. Jordan doubled back, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward the patio, both of them soaked and breathless and maybe, just maybe, not caring so much about who was cool anymore.

"That sphinx," Jordan gasped between giggles, "is literally watching us."

"Riddle us this," Maya shot back, and then they were both laughing again, lightning flashing in the distance, spinach forgotten, everything exactly weird enough to be perfect.