The Sphinx of Table Seven

The cafeteria hat rule was stupid, but Marcus wasn't about to risk detention again. He'd spent three weeks growing out his fade specifically so he could wear his grandfather's fedora to school, and now it sat crushed in his backpack alongside a squished orange.

"Dude, just sit with us," Jace said, already halfway through his lunch. "You've been staring at Table Seven for like, five minutes straight."

Marcus wasn't staring at Table Seven. He was observing. There was a difference.

The girl at Table Seven was a sphinx in a hoodie. Every day, she sat alone, earbuds in, eating whatever weird combination the lunch ladies had thrown together. Today it was spinach pizza. Yesterday, cottage cheese and apple slices. She never looked up, never engaged, like some mystical creature who'd absolutely destroy you if you asked the wrong question.

What was her riddle?

Marcus's phone buzzed. Group chat going off about the spring semiformal. Everyone asking who was taking who. Jace was going with Sarah from chem. Ty was taking his girlfriend from North. Marcus had nobody. He had three weeks to ask someone, and the idea made his chest feel like it was collapsing in on itself.

The sphinx looked up. Their eyes caught across the cafeteria—her dark brown, his probably wide with panic. She didn't look away. She didn't smile either. Just watched him with that unreadable sphinx-face, like she already knew all his embarrassing secrets and was deciding whether to tell them to everyone.

Something in him snapped.

Marcus grabbed his tray and walked over. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else, someone with way more confidence and maybe slightly less awkward coordination.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked, voice cracking on "taken." Smooth. Real smooth.

The girl—her nametag read LAYLA—pulled out one earbud. She looked at the empty chair. Then at Marcus. Then at the fedora-shaped lump in his backpack.

"No," she said. "But you should know I'm weird."

"Weird how?"

She gestured at her spinach pizza with half a pepper slice on it. "I eat whatever they give me. I don't complain. I don't pick the peppers off. I just... eat it."

Marcus sat down. "That's not weird. That's efficient."

Layla's mouth quirked. The tiniest almost-smile. "You're wearing a fedora in your backpack, aren't you?"

"How did you—"

"Sphinx intuition." She popped an orange segment from her pocket—where had she been keeping that?—and offered him half. "I'm Layla. I transfer here whenever my dad's work moves us. I don't make friends because I'm always leaving again. That's my riddle. What's yours?"

Marcus took the orange. It was sweet and perfect and terrifyingly normal for how weird this moment was.

"My riddle," he said, "is that I have three weeks to find a date for semiformal or I'm going alone, and I'm pretty sure asking the cafeteria sphinx counts as social suicide."

Layla actually laughed. It was bright and surprising, like finding money in old coat pockets.

"Good thing I'm not going anywhere this time," she said. "And I love causing social damage."

Marcus's chest stopped feeling like it was collapsing. It felt like something else instead—something bigger and brighter and maybe, possibly, exactly like hope.

"So," he said. "Spinach pizza tomorrow?"

"If you're lucky," the sphinx said. "If you're lucky."