The Sphinx of 7-Eleven

The vitamin gummies hit my tongue like sour revenge—cherry flavored misery. Another day of my summer "wellness journey," aka my mom's attempt to fix me after I bombed freshman year geometry.

I worked at my aunt Tia's exotic fruit stand, which was basically a pyramid scheme she'd fallen for, except instead of selling essential oils, we sold overpriced papaya to hipsters who thought fruit could solve their existential dread.

"You look like a sphinx," Tia said, adjusting her headwrap. "All mysterious and brooding. The customers love that angst."

I wasn't brooding. I was just existing in a permanent state of secondhand embarrassment.

Then Liam started coming around. Liam with his ripped jeans and perpetually messy hair, the kind of guy who made you forget your own name when he looked at you. He'd linger at the stand, asking about fruit origins like he was conducting an anthropological study.

"What's the deal with papaya anyway?" he asked, leaning against the counter. "Like, who decided THIS was the fruit of the moment?"

"Same people who decided matcha lattes were life," I said, trying to sound chill instead of like someone who'd been practicing conversations with him in the mirror.

He laughed. Actual laugh. Not the polite kind.

The vitamin gummies were supposed to help with "stress resilience," but nothing prepared me for when Liam showed up with a skateboard and a question: "You doing anything tonight?"

We ended up at the park, watching other people live their best lives while he told me about his mom's obsession with pyramid energy healing and how he secretly loved the backstreet Boys.

"You're like a sphinx," he said. "Mysterious but, like, in a cool way. Not the creepy ancient way."

I let myself smile—really smile, not the customer service one I'd been practicing all summer. The papaya could wait. The pyramid scheme could collapse. For once, I wasn't thinking about vitamins or wellness or whatever version of myself I was supposed to be.

Sometimes the weirdest summers become the ones that actually matter.