The Riddle of Friday Night

Maya dragged herself through the cafeteria like a zombie, her brain still fried from three days of finals. She'd survived on caffeine and panic, and now she was supposed to be excited for Jake's party tonight.

"You're coming, right?" Chloe asked, sliding into the seat across from her. "It's gonna be epic."

Maya nodded, though she wasn't sure epic was the word she'd use. Social situations made her want to burrow into the ground like a scared mole.

That night, she stood in Jake's crowded living room, nursing a soda and feeling like she'd accidentally stumbled onto an alien planet. People laughed too loud, the bass thumped in her chest, and she was painfully aware she was wearing her nervousness like a neon sign.

Then she saw him.

Leo leaned against the wall by the sliding glass door, looking unfairly good in a black hoodie. They'd shared AP World History all year, and Maya had spent approximately zero percent of that time NOT thinking about how his eyes were like actual honey or something embarrassing that poets probably wrote about.

He caught her looking. Instead of looking away like a normal person, she stood there frozen.

Leo pushed off the wall and walked over. Maya's heart did something that felt genuinely unsafe.

"Hey," he said. "You're Maya, right? The Sphinx of period three?"

She blinked. "The what?"

"You never talk, but when you do, it's something brilliant," he said. "Like in Mr. Harrison's class last week, when you dismantled that bull about how the Great Depression was just laziness. That was legit."

Maya felt her face heating up. "I just—"

"Here's the thing," Leo said, stepping closer. "I've been trying to work up the courage to ask you something all year, but you're kinda intimidating. So, riddle me this: What's worth waiting six months for, but scares me more than jumping off a cliff?"

Maya's brain short-circuited. Was this happening? Was Leo, Leo with the honey eyes and the unfairly nice voice, actually—

"The answer," he said, smiling crookedly, "is asking you to get food with me tomorrow. You know, if you're done being a zombie from finals."

"Oh," Maya said. "Oh! I mean—yes. Yeah, I'd like that."

"Cool." Leo's smile widened. "Cool."

Maya didn't feel like a zombie anymore. She felt like someone who'd just figured out the answer to the riddle she'd been working on her whole life.

And maybe, just maybe, high school wasn't going to be terrible after all.