The Sphinx at Miller's Pool

Maya's phone buzzed with the address: 42 Fox Hollow Road. The summer pool party of the decade, apparently. Kyle Miller—whose dad owned that ridiculous house with the indoor pool—had invited half the sophomore class. The other half would find out about it tomorrow and feel weird.

Maya stood in front of her bathroom mirror for twenty minutes, checking for spinach in her teeth even though she hadn't eaten anything green since kindergarten. Her mom had made her a salad for dinner. Spinach was apparently crucial for growing girls. Maya had pushed it around her plate until her mom stopped watching, then flushed it.

At the party, the pool water glowed an artificial blue, and someone had rigged up these floating LED lights that made everything feel underwater and dreamy. Maya sat on the edge, legs in the water, pretending to check nonexistent texts while everyone else cannonballed and flirted in that aggressive way fourteen-year-olds did when they thought no one was watching.

That's when she saw him—Evan, the quiet kid from English class, sitting on a lounge chair under the fake palm tree. He had this weird ceramic sphinx statue on the table next to his soda. Like, who brought a sphinx to a pool party?

"Weird night for ancient Egyptian artifacts," she said, sliding onto the chair beside him. Smooth, Maya. So smooth.

Evan smiled—that shy, crinkle-eyed smile that made her stomach do that annoying flip thing. "My mom's an art history professor. It's a paperweight. I'm supposed to be the sphinx at parties. Mysterious. Enigmatic. Instead, I'm just... here."

"At least you're not a bear," Maya said, then immediately regretted it. What did that even mean?

But Evan laughed. "You mean like, hibernating through everything? Awkwardly lumbering through social situations? Yeah, that's me. Total bear."

"I meant more like—you know how bears are all strong and scary but they're actually just trying to find berries and not get bothered?" God, shut up, Maya. "Anyway. I'm Maya."

"Evan. And I am definitely a bear. Are you a fox?"

Maya splashed water at him. "I'm a sphinx too. I just hide it better."

They spent the rest of the party ignoring everyone else, talking about nothing and everything—how much they both hated spinach, how they both pretended to understand references in books they'd never read, how they both felt like everyone else had gotten some manual on how to be a teenager that they'd missed.

When Kyle's parents came home early and kicked everyone out, Evan walked her to her mom's car. "Same time next week?" he asked, casual, like it wasn't the biggest question of her entire freshman year.

Maya's phone buzzed again—her mom, waiting outside. "Definitely," she said. "Except maybe without the sphinx next time."

"No promises," Evan said, and something about his smile made Maya think that maybe, just maybe, high school wouldn't be completely terrible after all.