The Riddle of Friday Night

I stood outside Tyler's house, heart hammering like a trapped bird. First party of sophomore year, and I was definitely not ready.

"You coming in or what?" Maya called from the doorway, grinning. She'd already claimed her spot in the weekend's social hierarchy - effortless, while I was still figuring out how to exist in a room without feeling like everyone was watching.

Inside, the air smelled like cheap body spray and nervous energy. I grabbed a soda, leaning against the wall because that's what you do when you're scared to actually talk to people.

That's when I saw her.

She sat on the fireplace hearth, watching everything with these intense eyes that seemed to know way more than she let on. Lex. Everyone called her "the Sphinx" because she never gave anything away - you had to earn her words, solve her like some ancient mystery. I'd been crushing on her since seventh period English, when she'd dissected our assigned novel like it was personally offending her.

"You're blocking the cat," someone said.

I jumped. A tortoiseshell cat wound between my legs, demanding attention like it owned the place. Her name was Cleo, and apparently she was the real reason half the football team showed up to these things - to play with the cat while pretending to be cool.

"Sorry," I mumbled, stepping aside.

"Bear!" someone yelled across the room.

Mark - everyone called him Bear because he was huge and cuddly and would absolutely crush you in Madden if you got careless - bounded over with his usual energy. "Dude, finally made it! We need you for beer pong."

I shook my head. "Not really my thing."

"Come on, don't be such a scaredy-dog," Bear laughed, using his annoying nickname for me. I'd once admitted I was afraid of my neighbor's rottweiler, and somehow that had become my entire personality.

"Maybe later."

But Bear had already moved on, because that's how parties worked - constant motion, nobody staying in one conversation for too long unless they were hooking up or having a deep emotional breakdown in the bathroom.

I ended up on the back porch, which is where I found her.

The Sphinx herself.

"Mind if I sit?" I asked, suddenly aware that my hands were shaking and I had no idea what to do with them.

She shrugged. "Free country."

We sat there for like three minutes without saying anything, and somehow it wasn't weird. The dog next door - some yappy thing that wouldn't shut up - barked at nothing, and inside, someone dropped a glass.

"You know what's stupid?" she said suddenly.

"Everything?"

She laughed, and it was this real sound, not the fake giggle she used in class. "Yeah. Everything. But specifically, like, how we're all pretending we know what we're doing. I've been coming to these things since freshman year, and I still have no clue how to talk to people without feeling like I'm acting."

I stared at her. The Sphinx, the mysterious unreadable girl, felt like a fraud too?

"We're all just winging it," I said, and it came out more confident than I felt.

"Yeah." She looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time all night. "Maybe we should stop pretending we've got it figured out."

"Starting when?"

"Starting right now." She smiled, and something shifted in my chest, like finding the answer to a riddle I hadn't even realized I'd been trying to solve.

"I'm Alex, by the way."

"I know. You sit behind me in English."

"Oh."

"And I'm terrible at beer pong," she added. "Wanna go get destroyed by Bear together?"

I stood up, hands suddenly steady. "Absolutely."

Inside, the cat wound around our ankles as we walked toward the chaos. For the first time all night, I didn't feel like I was pretending. The riddle of Friday night had finally made sense: sometimes the sphinx's secret is that she's just as lost as everyone else.