The Sphinx's Riddle

Maya's phone was at 3% when she spotted him across the cafeteria. Alex, aka "the Sphinx" — that's what everyone called him because the guy never gave a straight answer. Everything was a riddle, a metaphor, or some cryptic statement that left you wondering if you were being punked or enlightened.

"Your aura looks like it's buffering," he'd told her yesterday when she asked if he was going to Jordan's party.

"Dude, are you going or not?" she'd replied.

"The real question is: will the party be there if I arrive?" Classic Sphinx behavior.

Now Maya's phone was dying, her social life was arguably nonexistent, and she'd just discovered a massive piece of **spinach** stuck in her front teeth — probably from the smoothie she'd chugged that morning because she was trying to be that healthy girl who meal prepped and had her life together.

Could this day get any worse?

She scrambled for her charging **cable**, tangling it in her backpack straps like some kind of tech snake, and shoved it into the wall outlet behind her. The screen flickered to life: three new notifications.

Alex: u coming?

Jordan: ppl r asking 4 u

Alex: 🧩🐍⏳

Maya stared at the emojis. Puzzle. Snake. Hourglass.

She groaned. This was so typical. The Sphinx was being Sphinx-y again.

But then it clicked. The riddle. Snake could mean "snake eyes" — dice. Puzzle meant escape room. Hourglass...

They weren't at Jordan's house anymore.

They'd gone to that new escape room downtown that Jordan had been obsessing over. The Sphinx hadn't been being cryptic for once — he'd been telling her exactly where they were, in his infuriating Sphinx language.

Maya grabbed her backpack, spinach be damned, and bolted toward the door. Maybe the Sphinx wasn't so impossible to figure out after all. Or maybe she was just finally learning how to speak his language.

Either way, she wasn't missing this.