The Riddle in the Mirror

Maya stared at her reflection, fingers tangled in her frizzy hair. It was junior prom night, and somehow her hair had developed a mind of its own—bursting everywhere like she'd stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

"You need to calm down," her little brother Leo announced from the doorway, still clutching his gaming controller. "You look like you're about to face the sphinx or something."

Maya rolled her eyes. "That's exactly what I'm doing, genius. Facing Tyler. At his house. For dinner. With his parents."

The cable guy downstairs had accidentally cut their internet earlier, leaving Maya unable to look up anything about Tyler's family. Were they fancy? Casual? Did they serve normal food or... whatever.

Her palms were sweating so much she had to keep wiping them on her dress. This was it—her first real date, her first time meeting parents, her first everything.

"Maya! Dinner's ready!" her mom called from downstairs. "And I made your favorite!"

Maya's stomach dropped. Spinach. Her mom had made spinach.

"No," she whispered to her reflection. "No, no, no."

But there it was on the dinner table: a steaming bowl of creamed spinach, the one food guaranteed to turn anyone's teeth slightly green and ruin prom photos forever. Her parents were already digging in, happily oblivious.

"You've got something in your..." Leo gestured at his own teeth, grinning wickedly.

Maya bolted to the bathroom. Sure enough, tiny green specks decorated her smile like some kind of cosmetic disaster. She scrubbed until her gums burned, checked her reflection one last time—hair still wild, but teeth presentable—and grabbed her jacket.

"Good luck!" her dad called. "Don't worry about being nervous. Tyler's a good kid."

Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one about to spend three hours talking about school and hobbies and trying not to say anything weird while worrying about whether there was spinach still stuck in her teeth.

The sphinx had nothing on this.

Tyler's house was nicer than she'd expected. His parents were actually... normal. They laughed at her terrible jokes. They didn't serve spinach. And Tyler spent most of dinner accidentally knocking over his water glass and apologizing way too much.

When he walked her to her door later that night, his hands were sweating too.

"So," he said, leaning against her doorframe. "I was wondering if you wanted to—" He froze, staring at her. "You, uh, have a little—" He gestured at his own teeth.

Maya's heart sank.

But then Tyler started laughing. "I'm kidding. I'm terrible at jokes. Sorry. What I meant was, would you want to go out again sometime?"

She checked her reflection in his eyes—hair wild, heart racing, no spinach in sight—and smiled. "Yeah. I'd like that."

Sometimes sphinxes weren't monsters. Sometimes they were just sixteen-year-old boys with sweaty palms who were just as terrified as you were.