The Sphinx's Secret

Okay, real talk—I am absolute trash at confrontation. Which is exactly why I should've told Maya no when she begged me to "spy" on her crush at the Fall Fling and find out if he was gonna ask her to dance. "Just observe," she'd said, all dramatic, like she was assigning me a top-secret mission instead of making me third-wheel creep on her crush's friend group.

The school gym was decorated like "Under the Stars" which was rich, considering we were surrounded by cardboard cutouts of constellations and glitter that was definitely going to be stuck to everything for the rest of the school year. I spotted Jay by the punch bowl—Maya's crush—standing next to Chad Miller. Chad Miller, varsity linebacker, regularly made animals in biology class cry, and had once bench-pressed a freshman (allegedly).

I tried to casually navigate through the crowd, but I was basically a **bull** in a china shop full of hormonal teenagers. Someone knocked into me, I stumbled, my drink splashed everywhere, and suddenly half the dance floor was staring at me like I'd grown a second head.

"Bro, you good?" Chad Miller was standing over me, actual concern in his eyes. "That was tragic."

"I'm just existing incorrectly," I muttered, feeling my face heat up. "No big."

He helped me up, handed me napkins, and I bolted toward the exit before I could embarrass myself further.

Outside, near the senior courtyard, Lincoln High's ancient **sphinx** statue sat in the darkness—the same stone creature that had been vandalized, decorated, and Instagrammed by basically every graduating class. The tradition went that if you whispered your biggest secret to it before senior year, you'd be "free" of it. No one actually believed that, but people still did it anyway, desperate for anything to hold onto when everything felt like it was falling apart.

"You running from something or just towards fresh air?"

I jumped. Chad Miller stood there, looking less linebacker-sized and more... just a guy.

"Both," I admitted. "What are you doing out here? The party's inside."

"Needed a break from the performative socialization." He leaned against the sphinx. "You know the riddle the sphinx asks? About what walks on four legs, then two, then three?"

"Man," I said. "Baby, adult, old person with a cane."

"Exactly." He looked at me sideways. "What about the stuff in between? The parts where you don't know what you're walking on anymore?"

Something about the way he said it hit different. Like he wasn't just talking about riddles.

"You're not as scary as everyone thinks," I said before I could stop myself.

"And you're not as clumsy as you think." His lip curled up. "For the record, you were doing a terrible job spying on Jay."

My face burned. "That was—Maya made me—"

"I know." He pulled out his phone. "Maya's been waiting for Jay to make a move all semester. Jay's been waiting for Maya to notice him exists. The amount of pining is actually painful."

He showed me his screen—a text to Jay: *ASK HER ALREADY, YOU COWARD.*

We both started laughing, and it wasn't fake or awkward or performative. Just real.

"Wanna go back inside?" he asked. "I'll **spy** on Jay so you don't have to."

"Only if you promise not to let me near any more punch bowls."

"Deal."

And just like that, the sphinx's secret wasn't about whispering your fears into stone—it was about finding someone who understood them without you having to say a word.