The Sphinx Protocol

The hat was supposed to be his armor. Instead, Leo looked like a fedora-wearing tryhard, which was honestly worse than just looking like himself.

He was twelve minutes late to track practice because his sister's cat—a hairless sphinx named Gandalf who looked like a wrinkly alien—had decided the backyard fence was an appropriate place to have an existential crisis. Leo had spent twenty minutes convincing the cat that freedom wasn't all it was cracked up to be, all while Coach Miller was probably doing laps around the track without him.

Coach was going to kill him.

Leo started running, the fedora flapping against his forehead in the most embarrassing way possible. Why had he thought buying a hat from a vintage store would suddenly make him mysterious? It wasn't working. The hat had to go.

He tossed it into a ditch as he rounded the corner toward the school. Goodbye, armor. Hello, whatever came next.

The track was empty except for Maya, the girl who always sat by the water fountain reading during practice. She watched him jog toward her, hair windblown and hat-free for the first time in weeks.

"You're wearing the sphinx shirt again," she said instead of asking why he was late.

Leo looked down. His riddle shirt—the one with the sphinx asking "What goes on four legs in the morning..." was definitely not appropriate for track. "My cat's a sphinx," he said, like that explained anything.

Maya smiled. "Cool."

They sat on the bleachers while Coach finished with the varsity team. Leo talked about Gandalf's escape attempt. Maya admitted she only came to practice because her crush was on the team but she was too nervous to actually talk to him, so she just pretended to read instead.

"Wait," Leo said. "You've been coming here for, like, three months?"

"Four," Maya corrected. "It's sad, I know."

"No," Leo said. "It's dedicated. It's... it's brave, actually."

Maya looked at him like he'd spoken a different language. No one had ever called her brave before.

They walked to the parking lot together, not running, not hiding. Leo's hair was a mess from the wind. Maya's book was tucked under her arm, pages unmarked.

"I'm not wearing the hat tomorrow," Leo said.

"Good," Maya said. "The hair's better anyway."

Leo waited until he got home to tell Gandalf the cat that his advice had actually worked. The sphinx just yawned, unimpressed, and curled into a bald, wrinkly puddle on Leo's pillow. Still. It was progress.