The Sphinx at Sarah's Party

I stood against the wall at Sarah's basement party, nursing a warm soda and feeling like the world's most awkward human. This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to be normal teenager stuff.

"Hey," someone said.

I jumped. It was Marcus from my English class — the guy who always sat in the back and drew in his notebook.

"Nice party," he said, leaning against the wall next to me like he did this every weekend.

"I guess," I said. "If you like pretending to be comfortable."

Marcus laughed. "Exactly."

Outside, lightning flashed through the basement windows, illuminating everything in harsh white for a split second. Thunder shook the floorboards.

"I should probably go," I said. "My mom's gonna freak if I'm out in a storm."

"Wait," Marcus said. "You know what my therapist told me? Social anxiety is like being trapped by a sphinx. You're stuck answering its impossible riddles, but the riddles are just normal interactions that your brain turns into tests."

I stared at him. "That's... actually the best metaphor I've ever heard."

"Right? Like, the sphinx asks, 'What do you say when someone says hi?' and I'm over here sweating because what if I say the wrong thing and then everyone hates me forever?"

Another flash of lightning. This time, the power went out. The basement plunged into darkness, and someone screamed.

"Great," I muttered. "Now we get to die awkwardly together."

Marcus's phone flashlight clicked on, casting his face in spooky shadows. "You know what the sphinx's real riddle was? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"Humans. We crawl, we walk, we use canes."

"Exactly. And my therapist said the sphinx was actually just misunderstood. She was lonely. She had all these riddles and nobody to share them with."

"That's incredibly sad," I said.

"Or incredibly relatable," Marcus said. "Having all this stuff inside and no idea how to let it out."

The power flickered back on. People were already laughing about how dramatic it had been.

"You want to get out of here?" Marcus asked. "There's a diner down the street. We could continue being socially anxious somewhere with better lighting and actual food."

I smiled — a real one. "Yeah. I'd like that."

As we walked up the basement stairs, lightning cracked the sky open one more time, brilliant and impossible and exactly the kind of thing that only happened in movies.

Except this wasn't a movie. This was me, making a friend, one awkward conversation at a time.