The Sphinx and the Stupid Brace-Face Moment

I was literally dying. Like, actually dying. Cross country practice at Miller's Pond, and Coach Martinez had us doing intervals while my brain was still back in the cafeteria dealing with the fact that I'd had spinach in my braces for, like, three hours.

Three. Hours.

I'd smiled at Tyler in the lunch line. With green stuff stuck in my teeth. He'd definitely noticed. His small weird smile had flickered, like he was trying not to laugh, and then he'd looked away. I was never leaving my house again.

"Hernandez, pick it up!" Martinez yelled.

My legs were burning, my lungs felt like they were full of broken glass, and my social life had just imploded. I picked up the pace anyway, because that's what you do when you're the girl who's always running—literally and figuratively—from your problems.

That's when I saw it.

In the woods beside the trail, something moved. Orange-red fur. Pointy ears. A fox.

It stopped and looked at me, like it was waiting.

I slowed down, confused. Foxes didn't hang out near high school cross country practices. They were supposed to be shy or whatever.

But this one just stood there, watching me with these intense amber eyes. Then it turned and trotted into the trees, looking back once like, come on, are you coming or what?

I followed it. I know, I know—following a random animal into the woods is how horror movies start. But something about the way it moved felt... deliberate. Like it wanted to show me something.

We ended up at this old stone structure I'd never seen before, half-buried in vines and dead leaves. It was small, barely taller than me, with weathered carvings on the front that I couldn't quite make out through the moss.

The fox sat beside it, watching me.

I knelt down and wiped away some of the vines. Underneath was a face—a lion's body, a human's head. A sphinx. Someone had built a miniature sphinx back here, years ago, and the forest had been eating it alive.

A sphinx. The riddle creature.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture. Then another. The forest was golden with late afternoon light filtering through the leaves, the fox still sitting there like this was all totally normal, and this weird little sphinx looking out over the pond.

"You're showing me this?" I asked the fox.

It flicked its ears and then disappeared into the brush like it had never been there at all.

I walked back to practice alone, my heart racing for a completely different reason now. Martinez didn't even yell at me for disappearing. He just nodded, like he knew.

Back in the locker room, I pulled out my phone to look at the photos. They were good. Actually good. The light, the composition, this feeling of something ancient and secret hiding in plain sight.

I posted one to my photography account with the caption: what riddles are you hiding?

By the time I got home, it had 200 likes. And a comment from Tyler: wait this is behind Miller's Pond? I've literally lived here my whole life and never seen this.

I stared at my screen. Then I typed back: cross country secret. I'll show you sometime if you want.

He replied almost instantly: yeah. definitely.

I lay back on my bed and laughed. Maybe tomorrow I'd run into the woods again. Maybe the fox would be there. Maybe not.

But for the first time in forever, I wasn't running away from anything.

I was running toward it.