The Poolside Oracle

Marcus stood at the edge of the pool, chlorine stinging his nose as summer humidity wrapped around him like a wet blanket. The graduation party was in full swing — someone's playlist blasting from portable speakers, girls laughing in that specific octave that meant they were performing for an audience, guys posturing with red Solo cups filled with lukewarm soda.

He was a zombie moving through the motions of teenage social ritual, dead inside but somehow still walking.

"You look like you're contemplating murder," said Riley, sliding onto the lounge chair beside him. She was wearing a vintage baseball jersey — some team from the nineties, probably thrifted — and her hair was that perfect kind of messy that took forty minutes to achieve.

"Just contemplating how I've been to twelve graduation parties this week and had the exact same conversation twelve times," Marcus said. "'So, college? Major? Excited?' It's like everyone forgot how to ask questions that actually matter."

Riley snorted. "Welcome to the sphinx's riddle, Marcus. We're all just guessing answers hoping we don't get eaten."

He blinked. "The what now?"

"The sphinx. You know — creature that asks impossible questions, devours you if you're wrong? That's literally what being a teenager is. Every adult asking what we're going to do with our lives, and we're supposed to have answers like we've been alive long enough to figure anything out."

Marcus looked at her differently. Riley, who'd spent four years in the periphery of his friend group, quiet but always present. She reached into her bag and pulled out a battered baseball — actual leather, scuffed from years of use.

"My grandpa gave me this," she said. "Told me life's like pitching. You can aim perfectly, control everything, and sometimes the batter still crushes it. Or you throw garbage and somehow strike them out. The point is, you keep throwing."

She tossed it to him. The leather was warm from sitting in her bag.

"What if I don't want to play baseball?" he asked. "Metaphorically. What if I want to quit the team?"

"Then quit," she said, standing up and stretching like a cat. "But you should probably get out of the pool area first. You've been fully clothed standing near the edge for twenty minutes and people are starting to think you're going to push someone in."

Marcus looked at the baseball in his hand. At the party swirling around them — the performed joy, the awkward transitions, the hundred tiny ways they were all pretending to be people they hadn't figured out how to be yet.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked.

Riley grinned. "Finally. I was wondering when you'd ask the right question."