The Sphinx of Cafeteria Table B

Maya's signature look: oversized black **hat** pulled low, masking the insecurity that brewed beneath. She was practically a professional **spy** at this point—seventeen years of watching the popular kids from behind cafeteria pillars, cataloging their rituals like an anthropologist on Mars.

Today she'd somehow landed at Table B, the unclaimed territory between the AP crowd and the theater kids. She picked at her **spinach**, debating whether the veggie boost was worth the green-teeth risk. Suddenly, Jasper Hale sat across from her.

Jasper. The guy who'd started three rumors this month alone.

"Nice hat," he said. "You know, there's a stray **cat** living behind the gym. Wears the same expression."

Maya's fork froze. Was he dissing her? Flirting? Impossible to tell. Jasper was the **sphinx** of Westbridge High—mysterious, unreadable, possibly dangerous to your social standing.

"His name is Barnaby," Maya heard herself say. "I feed him fries."

Jasper's eyebrows lifted. "Seriously? I thought I was the only one."

They spent twenty minutes discussing Barnaby's various moods, their mutual dislike of pep rallies, and how spinach was secretly a government conspiracy to ruin teenage dating lives. When the bell rang, Maya realized something shocking: she hadn't once thought about her hat being crooked, or the fact that spinach might be stuck in her teeth, or whether this interaction would be social suicide.

"Same time tomorrow?" Jasper asked.

Maya nodded, unable to suppress her smile.

Sometimes the scariest discoveries weren't made while spying from the shadows. Sometimes they happened at Table B, over cold spinach, with a guy who fed cats fries and made you forget you were supposed to be hiding.