The Friday Night Sphinx

Maya stared at the notification on her cracked iPhone screen: **pyramid scheme** party at Derek's, 9 PM. Not the illegal kind, obviously. Just another dumb high school hierarchy game where seniors sat on actual folding chairs arranged like tiers while everyone else stood around pretending not to care.

"You coming?" asked Jordan, bouncing on her heels beside Maya's locker. "Derek's parents are literally never home."

"Pass," Maya said, though her stomach did that annoying flip it always did when Jordan's eyes lit up like that. "I have that bio project due Monday."

"Lame." Jordan grinning, already pulling out her phone to post something. "Your loss. I'll make sure to save you some lukewarm punch."

Friday came anyway, because Friday always does. Maya found herself at Derek's house at 9:15 because Jordan had texted "please come" three times and Maya was weak for Jordan in a way she hadn't figured out how to name yet.

The living room pyramid of chairs was already occupied by the varsity jacket crowd. Someone had constructed a cardboard **sphinx** head in the corner—a prop from some theater production, now wearing a plastic cup like a party hat. It stared blankly at the room full of teenagers pretending to have fun.

"Truth or dare!" someone shouted, because of course they did.

Maya ended up in the circle somehow, sandwiched between a sophomore named Riley who smelled like grape soda and Tyler from lacrosse, who kept checking his own iPhone like it might magically transform him into someone more interesting.

"Maya," called McKenzie, sitting smug at the pyramid's peak. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Maya said, because she was practical like that.

"Who're you texting?" McKenzie nodded at Maya's hand, which was indeed clutching her phone in her pocket. "You've been checking it all night."

Heat rose to Maya's cheeks. She wasn't texting anyone. She'd been drafting and deleting the same message to Jordan since she arrived: *this is awkward, want to bail?*

"No one," Maya said. But then Jordan, from across the circle, caught her eye and smiled—really smiled, not her party smile. The one that made Maya's chest feel too small.

"She's texting me," Jordan said. "We're planning an escape."

"Ooooooh," the circle chorused, because everything meant something when you were sixteen and bored.

They ended up on Derek's back porch, sharing earbuds and watching the **goldfish** in the backyard pond flash silver in the moonlight. The muffled bass from inside made the wooden boards thrum beneath them.

"That was excruciating," Jordan said, leaning her head on Maya's shoulder. "Thanks for coming though."

"Yeah," Maya said, and realized she meant it. "Anytime."

The sphinx stared through the sliding glass door at them, its cardboard smile frozen in something like approval. Maya's iPhone buzzed with a new notification: Derek's mom would be home early, everyone clear out by midnight.

"Want to get food?" Maya asked, because she was suddenly starving and also brave for some reason.

"Taco Bell?" Jordan perked up. "My treat."

"Deal."

As they walked away from the house with its pyramid of empty chairs and its cardboard sphinx, Maya's phone stayed in her pocket. She had better things to think about than notifications. Like whether Jordan's hand brushing against hers was accidental or not, and whether she should reach back, and whether this counted as the worst or best party she'd ever been to.

Probably both. That's how things worked when you were sixteen and figuring out who you were supposed to be.