The Riddle of Everything

Maya stood frozen by the pool, clutching her iPhone like a lifeline. The screen glowed with eleven unread texts from Chloe, but Maya couldn't look. Not yet.

Three feet away, Trinity lounged on a pool chair like a sphinx—impossible, unreadable, beautiful in that way that made everyone else feel like background characters. Trinity didn't even know she was a sphinx. She just *was*, posing riddles without speaking: Why am I invited here? What does she see when she looks at me? Why did I wear this swimsuit?

The answer came in the form of a suburban disaster.

Someone's elbow connected with a fishbowl on the patio table. The bowl didn't break—it rolled, a spinning glass wheel of fortune, before tipping its contents into the pool.

The goldfish hit the water with a tiny splash that nobody noticed except Maya. Because Maya had spent enough time feeling like a fish herself—swimming in circles, trapped behind glass, watched by everyone, understood by no one. She knew that look in its orange eyes.

Something snapped.

Maya dropped her iPhone on the chair and launched herself into the pool, shoes and all. The water swallowed her screams as she thrashed toward the sinking fish, fingers grasping, heart pounding.

When she surfaced, dripping and gasping, cupping a bewildered goldfish in both hands, the entire party had gone silent.

Trinity sat up. "Did you just—"

"His name is Gerald," Maya said, breathless. "He doesn't know how to swim."

For three seconds, nobody moved. Then Trinity started laughing. Not mean-girl laughing. Real laughing, bent-double laughing, the kind that broke through her sphinx armor and made her human.

"Gerald," Trinity repeated, wiping her eyes. "You're running a rescue mission for Gerald."

"He's having a rough day." Maya waded to the edge, deposited Gerald into a nearby cooler filled with ice water. "We're all having rough days."

Later, she'd fish out her iPhone from the pool chair and discover it still worked. Later, Trinity would sit next to her on the diving board and they'd talk about everything and nothing until the stars came out.

But in that moment, dripping pool water onto the concrete while a goldfish named Gerald swam circles in a cooler, Maya finally felt like she could breathe.