The Sphinx in the Basement

Maya's face was six inches from mine on the screen, pixelated and freezing mid-laugh. The WiFi cut again.

"Ugh, this is the third time," she said through the choppy audio. "Maybe we should just—"

"No! I got this." I mashed the disconnect button like an idiot. "Just give me five minutes."

"Fine. But if you're not back in five, I'm starting Season 3 without you."

Panic mode: activated. My parents were at some work thing, leaving me—Tyler, sixteen and technically responsible—to fix the internet before Maya found someone else to binge-watch with. Someone whose cable modem didn't look like it was about to explode.

I headed to the basement where our router lived. The darkness swallowed me as I clomped down the stairs. That's when I saw it.

My eight-year-old brother Jordan had built a sphinx out of cardboard boxes and toilet paper rolls, complete with a mysterious cardboard face. Its painted eyes seemed to follow me. Even creepier? Jordan had taped a note to its forehead: "Only the worthy may pass."

"What are you, five?" I muttered. But then I noticed—the router cables were woven through the sphinx's legs like some kinda obstacle course.

And another note, taped to the router itself. "To restore connection, answer me this: I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?"

I stared at it. Jordan and his weird obsession with riddles. The clock ticked. Maya was waiting. My pulse hammered in my ears.

Cities, houses, mountains, trees, water, fish—what was he talking about? A map? A globe? My brain short-circuited like the WiFi itself.

Then I remembered Jordan's geography homework spread across the kitchen table last night. The answer hit me like a freight train made of maps.

"A MAP!" I shouted to the empty basement. "The answer is a MAP!"

Nothing happened. I was still an idiot talking to a cardboard sphinx.

But wait—there, written in tiny letters at the bottom of the note: "Now eat the spinach smoothie in the fridge."

My stomach turned. Jordan must have made it with that nasty protein powder Mom bought. He'd basically boobytrapped our internet.

I raced upstairs, chugged the gray sludge without breathing (tasted like wet grass and despair), and sprinted back down. When I checked the router, the cables had somehow loosened. I pushed them back in, watched the lights blink green, green, green.

Connection restored.

Back in my room, Maya's face reappeared crystal clear.

"Took you long enough," she said, but she was smiling. "Everything good?"

"Yeah," I said, wiping green smoothie residue from my lip. "Just had to slay a sphinx."

"You're so weird, Tyler."

"I know," I said, and hit play. "But at least I'm worthy now."