The Sphinx by the Pool

Chloe's hair refused to cooperate. Again. She'd spent forty-five minutes flat-ironing it, but the Michigan humidity had other plans. By the time she reached the community pool for Taylor's birthday blowout, her bangs were already doing that weird flip thing.

"Chloe! Over here!" Maya waved from the deep end, where half the sophomore class was already clustered. Chloe's stomach did that familiar twisty thing it always did at social gatherings.

She was midway through her awkward hello-waves when she saw him.

He sat alone on the pool's edge, legs dangling in the water like he didn't have a care in the world. Dark curly hair, intense eyes that seemed to see straight through people's BS. Leo. The sphinx. That's what everyone called him because he barely spoke, but when he did, it was something devastatingly clever or uncomfortably true.

Chloe had been lowkey crushing on him since English Lit, when he'd quietly dismantled the teacher's analysis of The Great Gatsby with a single paragraph.

She was still processing the fact that The Sphinx was at a POOL PARTY (he seemed like the type to silently judge such mainstream activities from behind a darkened coffee shop window) when someone cannonballed near him.

Water sprayed everywhere. Chloe, without thinking, threw herself backward to avoid getting soaked—right into Leo.

He caught her arm with reflexes that were frankly annoying. "You okay?"

"Fine. Great. Just—you know—"

"Running away from social interaction?" A small smile. "I get it."

Wait. The Sphinx got it? THE Sphinx?

"I'm not running," she lied. "I'm strategically positioning myself."

His laugh was quiet but genuine. "Nice recovery."

They ended up talking for an hour. About everything. About how much it sucked that everyone expected them to have their lives figured out at sixteen. About how pool parties were basically just performance anxiety in swim trunks. About how Chloe's hair kept trying to escape her ponytail and how that was basically a metaphor for her entire personality.

"You know," Leo said as the sun started dipping, "you're the only person who's actually talked to me like I'm a normal human being all year."

"Same," Chloe said, and she meant it.

When her mom honked from the parking lot (mortifying, but whatever), Chloe found herself actually looking forward to Monday. For once, she wasn't running toward something or away from something.

She was just walking into it. With The Sphinx by the pool. Her hair still doing its own thing. And that was perfectly fine.