The Riddle of Saturday Night

Maya's palms were sweating. Again. She wiped them on her dress—third time in five minutes—as the bass from Tyler's party thudded through the floorboards like a second heartbeat.

"You coming?" Jace called from the doorway. His hair was somehow perfect, effortless. Typical.

"Yeah, just... one sec."

The truth: Maya felt like a zombie. Finals week had turned her brain into something that shambled through school in search of coffee and survived on three hours of sleep and existential dread. But this was junior year. You didn't miss Tyler's party. You just didn't.

She grabbed her phone—twelve notifications—and followed Jace downstairs.

The party hit her like a wave. Bodies moving, someone's solo cup already spilled on the carpet, that weird smell of too many people and too much cologne. Maya spotted Tyler by the speakers, laughing with his arm around Chloe. Of course.

"Hey!" A girl Maya barely knew—Sam? from AP History?—grabbed her arm. "You HAVE to try this escape room thing Tyler set up in the basement. It's actually cracked."

"Escape room? At a party?"

"I know, bear with me." Sam pulled her toward the basement door. "But he went all out. It's got this whole Egyptian theme, sphinx riddle, the works."

The basement was dim, lit by flickering string lights. At the center: a cardboard sphinx with glowing LED eyes, a cryptic inscription taped to its base. A queue of teenagers waited, some filming on their phones, others pretending not to care while absolutely caring.

"Okay," Sam whispered. "Watch this."

A sophomore approached the sphinx. A mechanical voice from a hidden speaker boomed: "WHAT WALKS ON FOUR LEGGS IN THE MORNING, TWO IN THE AFTERNOON, AND THREE IN THE EVENING?"

"A dog?" the sophomore guessed.

"INCORRECT." Everyone laughed. The sophomore groaned and moved aside.

"No one's solved it yet," Sam said. "Tyler's been stumping everyone for two hours."

Maya looked at the line. Jace was already there, grinning at something Chloe said. Her chest tightened.

You know what? She was done feeling like a zombie. Done sitting on the edges of parties, done watching Jace from across rooms, done being the girl who wiped her sweaty palms and waited for permission to exist.

She stepped forward.

The sphinx's LED eyes flickered. "WHAT WALKS—"

"A person," Maya said. "Crawling as a baby, walking upright, then with a cane in old age."

The basement went dead silent.

The sphinx paused dramatically. Then: "CORRECT." The cardboard mouth dropped open. Tyler popped out from behind it.

"WHAT." He stared at her. "Bro, that took me TWO WEEKS to write."

"Riddles are kind of my thing," Maya said, suddenly aware that everyone was looking. Not past her, not through her. AT her. And nobody was laughing.

"That was actually insane," Sam said. Someone high-fived her. Jace looked over, really looked, and smiled—actually smiled, not the polite one.

Maya checked her palms. Dry. For the first time all night.

"Hey," Jace said, crossing the room. "You coming back upstairs? They're about to do karaoke."

Maya grinned. "Yeah. I think I am."