The Sphinx of Cross Country

I'm not built for running. That's what I kept telling myself as my lungs burned and my legs turned into jelly, but here I was, somehow on the varsity cross country team as a sophomore. Coach Bennett called me 'natural talent,' which was hilarious because I spent most of practice wheezing like an old vacuum cleaner.

The real sphinx of the situation wasn't the mystery of why I'd joined. It was Mason freaking Chen—senior, team captain, and apparently part gazelle. Mason ran like he was defying gravity, all effortless grace and barely breaking a sweat while the rest of us looked like we'd just crawled through a desert.

'You're holding your breath, rookie,' Mason said, falling back to match my tortoise pace during Wednesday's practice. 'That's literally the first rule of not dying.'

'I'm not holding my breath,' I huffed, which proved I was, in fact, breathing. Sort of.

He laughed—that easy, warm sound that made my stomach do something I refused to analyze. 'You're improving though. Last week, you couldn't even form complete sentences.'

The thing was, I *was* improving. But every meet felt like facing a bull in an arena—massive, terrifying, and absolutely going to crush me if I made one wrong move. My nerves were straight-up wrecking me before the regionals qualifier.

That's when everything went sideways. My golden retriever, Max, decided this particular Saturday morning was the perfect time to learn how to open the backyard gate. I woke up to my mom screaming that Max was gone, and suddenly I'm sprinting through the neighborhood in my pajamas, calling for a dog who thinks he's part Houdini.

I found Max three streets over, happily accepting belly rubs from Mason Chen. Who was apparently also a morning person. Because of course.

'This your dog?' Mason asked, scratching Max behind the ears like they were best friends.

'Yeah, that's Max. He's... an escape artist.' I stood there, hair everywhere, wearing mismatched socks, while my crush and my dog bonded.

Mason stood up, dusting off his knees. 'Cool. He's got good energy. Just like you on the course.' He grinned. 'Regionals today, right? You've got this.'

Something shifted in my chest. Not the usual anxiety spiral, but something... solid.

I PR'd at regionals. I didn't medal, but I beat my time by forty-five seconds and didn't feel like dying afterward. Mason high-fived me at the finish line, and yeah, maybe I made it weird by practically vibrating with happiness, but whatever.

Maybe that's the thing about sphinxes—you spend so long worrying about their riddles that you forget you're allowed to just live your way into the answers. And sometimes, just sometimes, running toward what scares you is exactly how you find out you're stronger than you thought.