The Friend Algorithm

My screen went black at the worst possible moment—right as Maya sent that text. The one I'd been waiting for all week.

"Battery critical," I muttered, fumbling through my backpack for the charging cable. Nothing. I'd left it at home again. Classic me.

"Need a charge?" A voice behind me. Tyler, from my AP History class. He held out a cable like an olive branch.

"You're a lifesaver." I plugged in, watching the battery icon struggle back to life. But when my iPhone finally powered on, Maya's text wasn't there. Just three dots, floating, then nothing.

The social pyramid at Northwood High had always been simple: popular kids at the top, everyone else scrambling for the lower levels. Maya and I had been stuck in the middle since freshman year—solid, invisible, safe. But something had shifted.

"She's been weird lately," Tyler said, like he could read my mind. "Sphinx mode."

"Sphinx mode?"

"You know. All mysterious, asking riddles instead of just saying what's up." He shrugged. "Chloe's doing it too. It's contagious."

I thought about the pyramid scheme everyone was talking about—this new app that promised to reveal your "true friend rank" based on who texted you first, who replied fastest. Maya had downloaded it yesterday. Today, she'd barely looked at me.

My phone buzzed. A notification from the app: *Your true best friend is... Chloe Anderson.*

The answer hit me like a physical blow. Maya wasn't being mysterious. She was being honest. Our friendship had been sliding for months, and I'd been too distracted to notice. Too busy climbing the pyramid, worrying about who sat with who at lunch, whether my posts were getting enough likes.

"Hey," Tyler said. "You okay?"

I unplugged my phone and handed him back his cable. "Yeah. Just... thinking."

The sphinx had spoken, and the riddle wasn't about friendship rankings or social pyramids or any of that noise. It was simpler than that: sometimes the people you think are your forever people aren't. And sometimes the person holding out a charging cable in third period might be exactly who you need.

"Want to grab lunch?" I asked Tyler. "Somewhere that doesn't require a friend ranking."