The Sphinx's Locker

I was operating on pure caffeine and zero sleep—basically a zombie shuffling through third period. Finals week at Northwood High turns everyone into the walking dead, but I'd stayed up until 3 AM finishing my history paper.

That's when I saw him. Caleb. The Sphinx of Northwood.

That wasn't his actual nickname, obviously. People called him that because he sat at the back of every class, mysterious and unreadable, like he knew something the rest of us didn't. He wore hoodies even in May and had this way of looking through people instead of at them. I'd been crushing on him since September, but we'd never actually spoken.

Until today.

I was grabbing lunch from the salad bar—trying to be healthy, you know?—when I felt someone behind me.

'You got some,' a voice said.

I turned around and almost dropped my tray. Caleb. The Sphinx. Standing there like he'd been there the whole time.

'What?' I asked, my brain short-circuiting.

He pointed at his own teeth. 'Spinach. From your lunch.' Then he actually smiled—a tiny, crooked thing that made my stomach do flips.

My face burned. 'Oh my god. Thanks.' I frantically wiped my mouth with a napkin. 'That's so embarrassing.'

'It happens,' he said, and for a second, the sphinx-like mystery dropped. He was just a guy who'd noticed spinach in a girl's teeth and decided to say something instead of being awkward about it.

'I'm Maya, by the way. Since we're doing the whole embarrassing introduction thing.'

'Caleb.' He looked at my tray. 'You're doing the paper for History, right? The one on ancient civilizations?'

'Yeah, I'm barely functioning. Zombie mode, you know?'

He laughed, and it was this warm sound that made me want to hear it again. 'I did mine on Egypt. Sphinx riddles and all that.' He paused. 'If you want, I could help you with yours? I'm pretty good at research.'

The Sphinx of Northwood was offering to help me study. And I had spinach in my teeth.

'I'd love that,' I said, and this time when I smiled, I didn't care if there was spinach or not.