The Sphinx Moth Summer

Maya and I had been best friend since seventh grade, attached at the hip like those sphinx moths that kept showing up in her backyard that summer. Weird ones, too — orange wings that glowed like ember against the porch light when we stayed up too late dissecting our crushes and our fears.

Then came the orange hair dye. The boxed stuff that smelled like chemicals and promised "fiery copper." Maya stood in her bathroom, hair stained the color of a setting sun, and told me she was reinventing herself for high school. Fresh start, new Maya, same old us.

Except it wasn't the same.

First it was the lunch table switch — she started sitting with the theater kids, leaving me at our usual spot with the people we'd known forever. Then came the cancelled plans, the texts left on read for days, the way she looked through me instead of at me in the hallways.

"You're overthinking it," said Leo, my neighbor who I'd started walking his dog, Buster, to clear my head. The golden retriever had better emotional intelligence than half our grade. "People change. It's called growing up."

Easy for him to say. His friends weren't ditching him like a bad habit.

The night before school started, I found Maya sitting on her front porch, another sphinx moth circling the light above her. Her orange hair was faded, roots showing through, and she looked smaller than I remembered.

"I don't know who I'm supposed to be," she said, not looking at me. "Everyone expects this new version of me, but I still feel like the same awkward kid who's afraid of everything."

I sat beside her. The sphinx moth landed on the railing, orange wings folded like a secret.

"You don't have to perform for anyone," I said, and realized I meant it. "Not even me."

We didn't fix everything that night. High school was still going to be weird and awkward, and things between us were different now. But as we watched the sphinx moth take flight again, dancing around the porch light, I figured different didn't have to mean over.

Some things transform. Some things stay the same. And sometimes, you just have to let your friend figure out which is which on their own time.