The Sphinx in the Cafeteria

I was operating on about three hours of sleep, basically a walking zombie with dark circles that could've passed for eyeliner if I'd been going for that look. Which I wasn't. Mom had shoved her supposedly organic multivitamin at me with breakfast, claiming it would fix my apparently terrible immune system. Yeah, okay. The only thing that would fix me was eight hours of sleep and maybe, like, three fewer AP classes.

Then everything got weird.

Maya—the actual coolest senior who I'd been lowkey crushing on all semester—was sitting at the corner table in the cafeteria, surrounded by people. She was holding this weird-looking fruit I'd never seen before. Papaya, apparently. Someone had brought it in for some weird cultural appreciation potluck thing.

"Okay, riddle time," Maya announced, and everyone went dead silent. She had this reputation for being, like, the sphinx of our school—always asking questions that made your brain hurt but somehow made you think deeper. People called her 'The Sphinx' behind her back, but not, like, in a mean way. It was kind of epic, actually.

"What's something you consume every day," she said, cutting into the papaya with clinical precision, "but it only works if you believe it does? And no, I'm not talking about TikTok manifestation content."

My sleep-deprived brain was barely processing this. Someone yelled "Placebos!" but Maya shook her head.

"Think smaller. Something orange. Something your mom definitely makes you take."

"Vitamins?" I said, without really meaning to say it out loud. My voice cracked. Immediately wished I could dissolve into the cafeteria floor.

Maya's eyes locked onto mine. She smiled—like, actually smiled, not her usual mysterious half-smile thing.

"Finally," she said. "Someone who's actually paying attention." She slid a piece of papaya across the table toward me. "You want it? I'm not gonna eat all of this."

I took it. It was actually kind of amazing—sweet and weirdly tropical tasting.

"I'm Kai," she said, like I didn't already know literally everyone knew who she was.

"Zara," I said back. "And I'm literally operating on zombie mode right now, so if I say anything dumb, that's why."

She laughed. It was this genuine sound that made something in my chest do this stupid little flip thing.

"Zombie mode," she repeated. "I feel that. You want to sit here? I promise not to ask any more riddles. Probably."

And that's how I ended up spending lunch with Maya, eating papaya and talking about everything and nothing, while the supposedly magical vitamin Mom made me take sat somewhere in my digestive system, not doing anything magical at all.

Some things, I learned, you can't supplement your way into. You just have to show up, even as a zombie, and see what happens.