The Sphinx of Center Field

I stood alone in center field, the summer heat baking my exposed neck. Three days ago, I'd chopped my waist-length hair into a jagged pixie cut, desperate to reinvent myself before freshman year. Now I was the only girl at baseball tryouts, feeling like I'd stepped into the wrong movie.

"Hey, Goldilocks!" someone shouted from the dugout. I flinched, already dreading the nickname. But when I turned, it was just Marcus pointing at my faded goldfish t-shirt. "Love the shirt, dude. Fish are chill."

I managed a weak smile. At least my last-minute Goodwill find was winning points.

The truth was, I only had that shirt because my actual goldfish had died that morning. I'd found poor Bubbles floating sideways in his bowl before school, and I'd poured him into a coffee can for a proper toilet burial later. Tryouts had seemed like a good distraction.

"You got this, Goldfish Girl," Marcus called again. "Coach Miller's a sphinx, but he's fair."

A what now? I scanned the field wildly until I spotted Coach Miller on the pitcher's mound, stone-faced and inscrutable beneath his sunglasses. Great. I was about to face my biggest fear—a baseball flying at my head—with a literal sphinx watching.

The crack of the bat sent me scrambling backward, heart pounding. The ball arced through the hazy sky, and I realized with horror that it was coming straight for me. Every instinct screamed to duck, but I locked my knees, planted my feet, and thrust my glove upward.

Thwack. The ball smacked into the leather like it belonged there.

Silence. Then someone whistled. "DAMN, Goldfish!" Marcus yelled. "Where'd you get hands like those?"

"All those years of piano," I joked, even though I'd never touched a piano in my life.

Coach Miller lowered his sunglasses. The sphinx had spoken. "Not bad, kid."

By the time tryouts ended, my new nickname had stuck. I walked home with my hair damp with sweat, my wrist sore from catching, and my heart full. Bubbles would be proud—his final gift to me was confidence.

Some riddles, I realized, don't need solving. Sometimes you just have to catch the ball and see where it lands.