The Sphinx of Putt-Putt Paradise

My first day at Putt-Putt Paradise, I locked eyes with the sphinx—a six-foot fiberglass statue with chipped paint and one eyeball that looked suspiciously like a melted marble. Behind hole three's waterfall, the sphinx guarded the secrets of my summer job, which mostly involved fishing golf balls out of the pond while my coworker Dakota texted her boyfriend.

"Dude, your cousin's baseball coach is staring at you again," Dakota said, not looking up from her phone. She'd already dubbed me "Goldfish Boy" after my third trip into the pond. "Three-second memory, that's you."

I ignored her. Coach Miller had been giving me weird looks since school ended, ever since I'd quit the team. The thing was, nobody knew why—not even Dakota, who I'd been crushing on since seventh period English last year. I wasn't about to explain that I'd rather spend my summer working for minimum wage and rewatching episodes of The Office on cable than spend another season pretending to care about RBI averages.

"So," Dakota said, finally pocketing her phone, "there's this party at Kyle's tonight. His parents are out of town."

My stomach did that thing where it feels like someone's wringing it out like a wet towel. Kyle's house was where the social pyramid came into sharp focus—jocks and popular kids on top, everyone else scrambling for whatever scraps remained. I hadn't been invited to anything there since... ever.

"You should come," Dakota added, flipping her ponytail. "I'll be there."

The sphinx seemed to be laughing at me. I could feel my face heating up, which was ridiculous because I spent half my day in chlorinated pond water. "I don't think—"

"You're thinking too much again," Dakota cut in, grabbing a handful of tokens from the arcade cabinet. "Just show up. Eight o'clock. Don't make me come find you."

Later that night, standing outside Kyle's house with my sneakers already feeling too tight, I remembered something my dad had told me when I quit baseball: "Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is walk away from something everyone thinks you should want."

So I knocked. And when Dakota opened the door, already laughing at something someone said inside, I didn't feel like Goldfish Boy anymore. I felt like someone who was finally ready to play a different game.