The Riddle in His Pocket

Maya's fingers hovered over her iphone screen, the blue light casting shadows across her face in the darkened bedroom. Three dots. He was typing. Then they disappeared. Again. This had been happening all night.

Her best friend since kindergarten, Kai, was acting weird. Ever since the summer incident—the one nobody talked about—things between them had shifted. He used to facetime her for hours, ranting about video games and teachers. Now? Three dots that never became messages.

Maya grabbed her backpack for school the next morning, shoving her phone deep inside. The hallway smelled like the cafeteria's breakfast—something orange and artificial. She spotted Kai at his locker, surrounded by the popular crowd. Maya felt that familiar twist in her stomach, the one that felt like: do I exist to him anymore?

Their history class had a substitute who assigned them to research ancient civilizations for extra credit. Maya ended up at the library's mythology section, pulling out a thick book about the sphinx of Egypt. She'd always found it fascinating—the creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human, guarding knowledge, demanding answers to riddles.

The sphinx's riddle echoed in her head: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?

That's when it hit her. The answer was "a person"—someone who changes as they grow. Crawling as a baby, walking upright as an adult, using a cane in old age. Change was inevitable. Kai was changing, and maybe she was too.

She found him sitting alone under the school's orange trees at lunch, unusually not with his usual crew. Maya sat beside him, not saying anything at first.

"Sorry about last night," he said, not looking at her. "I kept trying to text you but I didn't know what to say."

"Since when do you overthink texting me?" she nudged him with her shoulder.

"Since everything's different now."

"Not everything," she said, pulling out the sphinx book from her bag. "We still have this weird obsession with mythological creatures, right?"

Kai laughed—really laughed—for the first time in months. He pulled out his own phone, opened his notes app, and showed her a draft he'd been working on. It was a comic strip about a sphinx who couldn't solve its own riddles.

"I was going to show you last night," he said sheepishly.

"You're such an idiot," Maya smiled, and the familiar rhythm between them clicked back into place like it had never left.

Some things change. Some things stay the same. And some best friends just need a reminder that the riddle isn't as complicated as they think.