The Sphinx in the Spinach

Maya's phone buzzed against her thigh, the third notification in thirty seconds. Her iPhone was basically having a seizure.

"You going to open that?" Liam asked, not looking up from his own phone. They were sitting on the bleachers, waiting for track practice to start. Maya's hair was pulled back in a ponytail that was already coming loose, the frizz fighting back against the humidity.

"It's probably nothing." But when she finally swiped, her stomach dropped.

The photo: Maya with a massive piece of spinach stuck in her braces, laughing like she didn't have a care in the world. Posted twenty minutes ago. Already forty-two likes and climbing.

Someone had tagged her: "Maya's accidental salad aesthetic 😭💀"

She was running before she even made the decision. Away from Liam, away from the track, away from the humiliation that was basically high school in a nutshell. Her phone kept buzzing in her pocket like an angry hornet.

She ended up at the library, ducking into the mythology section because nobody went there except freshmen trying to look intellectual. That's when she saw it — the book on Egyptian mythology, open to a page about the Sphinx.

The riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?

A human. Childhood, adulthood, old age.

Maya thought about everything she was trying to be — the perfect Instagram aesthetic, the varsity track star, the girl who always had the right answers. The spinach in her teeth, the hair that wouldn't cooperate, the awkward moments she couldn't curate away.

Maybe the riddle wasn't about the stages of life. Maybe it was about the versions of herself she kept trying on like ill-fitting dresses.

Her phone buzzed again. Another notification.

Maya turned it off and stuck it in her backpack. Some sphinx moments weren't meant to be shared.