The Sphinx's Final Riddle

Jax was running—literally and figuratively. Cross-country practice had ended twenty minutes ago, but he kept pushing, lungs burning, sneakers pounding the gravel path behind school. Anything to avoid going home to The Conversation.

"You've been running in circles, fresh meat," a voice called out. Mikey. The self-proclaimed **bull** of sophomore year, currently leaning against his parked Honda like he owned the entire parking lot. "Same route every day. Predictable."

Jax slowed to a walk, chest heaving. "What do you want, Mikey?"

"Just admiring the view." Mikey gestured toward the school's weird mascot statue—a cement **sphinx** that some principal from the seventies thought would make the campus "culturally sophisticated." Now it was just where stoners went to vape between third and fourth period.

"The Sphinx sends regards," Mikey said, suddenly cryptic. "Riddle time, track star. What has memories but no brain, lives in a bowl but never swims, and dies every time someone forgets to feed it?"

Jax stared. "Dude, are you high right now?"

"Answer the riddle, or I'm telling everyone about your little Tumblr from eighth grade." Mikey grinned, all teeth and zero warmth. "The one with the vampire fanfiction."

Cold panic. Jax had totally forgotten about that. His old internet life, his cringe phase, everything he'd outgrown but the internet never forgot.

"I don't know," Jax said finally. "What?"

"A **goldfish**, genius." Mikey pushed off his car. "Specifically, Buttercup. My sister's fish that I killed last summer when I forgot to feed it for two weeks because I was too busy—" He stopped. "Whatever. Consider yourself warned."

"Warned about what?"

"About running in circles." Mikey flipped him off and drove away, leaving Jex alone with the sphinx and his own rapid pulse.

That night, Jax couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about goldfish and seven-second memories and how everyone said they had no attention span, but maybe they just chose what to remember. Maybe that was a superpower.

He opened his laptop, found his old Tumblr, hesitated, then clicked "delete all." 234 posts of embarrassing, authentic, younger-him thoughts—gone.

Some things you outran. Some things you had to face head-on. And some things, like a sphinx's riddle or a bully's weirdly intimate threats, you just had to accept as part of the story.

Tomorrow, he'd run a different route.