The Sphinx's Secret

I felt like a zombie—seriously, three days of final exams would do that to anyone. But Maya's pool party was supposed to fix everything.

"You coming in or what?" Tyler called from the diving board, shirtless and annoyingly confident. I adjusted my glasses, suddenly hyper-aware of my pale, sleep-deprived everything.

"Yeah, just... gotta check something."

I wasn't checking something. I was spying. Because across the pool, beneath the willow tree, sat someone I'd never seen before. A girl with dark curls and mysterious eyes, reading an actual paperback book at a pool party like some kind of literary sphinx. She looked like she knew secrets.

Okay, that sounds creepy. But my best friend Kai had dared me: "Talk to one new person, or you owe me twenty bucks."

I made my way over, trying not to slip on wet concrete. The sphinx girl looked up.

"You're staring," she said. Not mean. Just... factual.

"Sorry. I'm—"

"Zombie, right? That's what everyone calls you."

My face burned. "WHAT?"

She grinned. "Relax. That's your swim team name, isn't it? 'Cause you're always dead tired at practice?"

Oh. OH.

"I'm Leila," she said. "And you're definitely not a zombie."

"How can you tell?"

"Zombies don't run away from awkward conversations." She nodded toward where I'd unconsciously started backing up. "But you're doing exactly that."

I laughed despite myself. "Fair."

"Wanna get out of here? There's this frozen yogurt place..."

"Running away together? Classic."

"Not running away," she said, standing up and grabbing her towel. "Running toward frozen yogurt. There's a difference."

She was right. There was. And for the first time in days, I didn't feel like a zombie at all.