The Riddle of Everything

Maya felt like a total spy sometimes, lurking in the bathroom stall during third period, just listening to the popular girls talk about her. They'd never guess she was there, feet on the toilet, heart pounding like she'd been caught doing something criminal. She was sixteen and still didn't know how to exist in rooms without feeling like she was performing for an audience she couldn't see.

"It's like she's got this sphinx energy," Chloe was saying, probably checking her lip gloss in the mirror. "You know? All mysterious and quiet, but also kind of judging everyone?"

Maya's face burned. She'd spent the weekend reading about the Sphinx of Giza for history class, how it guarded secrets and asked riddles no one could answer. Now she was being compared to a stone lion with human features, forever silent and inscrutable. Great.

Her mom had gone through a health phase last month, which meant Maya's lunchbox was packed with things that felt like punishment. She'd opened her Tupperware at lunch to find a spinach salad with actual raw leaves, like she was supposed to just eat grass like some kind of obedient goat. Marcus had been sitting across from her, and she'd spent the whole lunch trying to hide the green stuff while he talked about his new gaming setup.

"Dude, are you even listening?"

"Yeah, totally," she'd lied, shoving a spinach leaf into her mouth when he wasn't looking and nearly choking.

Now she sat in her room, scrolling through Instagram, watching everyone else live their perfect, visible lives while she collected vitamin D deficiencies from never going outside. She'd read somewhere that lacking vitamin D made you depressed, which explained everything. Her mom had bought her these massive horse-sized pills that tasted like nothing and everything at the same time.

"You gotta take them," her mom said through her door. "You're always inside. It's not healthy."

Maya stared at the ceiling. She was tired of feeling like she was spying on her own life, tired of being compared to mythical creatures she'd never asked to embody, tired of forced nutrition and vitamins that were supposed to fix feelings that had nothing to do with nutrients.

She grabbed her phone and texted Marcus: wanna hang later?

He responded immediately: yeah come over

The sphinx could keep its riddles. Maya was done being a mystery to herself.