The Sphinx at Shortstop

The dugout smelled like old pine tar and teenage boy sweat — basically, the essence of my entire freshman year. Marco sat beside me, currently having what his mom called 'a hair crisis' but what was really just him contemplating getting a mohawk like the senior varsity shortstop.

"Dude, your hair is fine," I said, for maybe the thousandth time this season.

Marco squinted at his reflection in his phone. "You don't get it, Jenna. This isn't about hair. This is about VIBES. About PRESENCE." He gestured wildly with his batting gloves. "What if Coach benched me because I didn't have shortstop ENERGY?"

We were up 7-2 in the bottom of the seventh, and I was supposed to be tracking the game. Instead, I was tracking my best friend's spiraling confidence. That's when I noticed it — the concrete sphinx statue behind home plate, paint chipping off its wings, staring blankly at the field. Some weird mascot thing from the 90s that nobody ever talked about.

"You know what a sphinx would ask," I said suddenly.

"A what now?" Marco pulled his cap down, trying to achieve the tousled look he'd been working on since April.

"A sphinx. Riddles. Like — what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? That whole deal. But if there was a teenage sphinx, it would ask something way worse."

Marco looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "Okay... such as?"

"Like: 'What has two legs, zero confidence, and overthinks everything but somehow still crushes it at baseball?'"

Marco froze. Then — because he was dramatic and fourteen and my best friend in the world — he actually gasped.

"He's talking about ME," Marco whispered, like the sphinx had personally manifested in our dugout. "Jenna, the sphinx sees my SOUL."

The umpire yelled "BATTER UP" and Marco grabbed his bat, smoothing his hair one more time. But something had shifted. He jogged to the plate with this weird little smile, like he was in on some cosmic joke.

First pitch — line drive to center field. Single.

Next inning, with runners on second and third, Marco comes up again. Same hair, same uniform, same everything. But he's loose now, dancing between pitches, pointing at his imaginary sphinx friend behind the plate. He hits a double over the left fielder's head. Two RBIs, game over.

"What did you tell him?" Coach asked me later, as Marco celebrated with his teammates like they'd just won the World Series.

I shrugged. "Just told him the sphinx said he was gonna crush it."

Coach looked at me, then at Marco (still gesturing dramatically to the chipped concrete statue), then back at me. "Baseball," he said, "is a weird sport."

"Tell me about it."