The Sphinx Strategy

You look like you need a vitamin, my mom announced at breakfast, sliding an orange bottle across the table. I gave her my best are-you-serious look, because what seventeen-year-old wants to be told their glow is fading?

It's for your brain, she added, like that made it better. Focus, remember things.

I swallowed the pill with lukewarm orange juice, thinking about how I'd been spying on Cameron's Instagram since seventh period yesterday. Not in a creepy way—just, you know, research. His bio had changed from chaos demon to maybe existence is a prank, which felt significant.

At school, my best friend Trinity caught me between classes.

You're doing it again, she said. The sphinx face.

What sphinx face?

That thing where you look all mysterious and brooding, like you're guarding some ancient Egyptian secret, but really you're just overthinking whether to DM him.

I rolled my eyes. I'm not overthinking. I'm being strategic.

Girl, you've had a crush on him since winter formal. Your goldfish memory is the only thing keeping you from realizing he's literally in your Spanish club.

She wasn't wrong. My pet goldfish, Fin, had lived for three years—longer than any of my crushes had survived my attention span. But Cameron felt different. He wrote poetry in the margins of his math homework. He wore vintage band tees that were actually vintage.

After school, I found Cameron sitting on the library steps, headphones on, writing in a beat-up notebook. My heart did that thing where it forgot how to heart.

Hey, I said, casual as I could manage.

He looked up, surprised. Oh, hey Maya.

I sat beside him. What are you working on?

Poetry, he said, like it wasn't the coolest thing ever. It's stupid.

Bet it's not.

We sat there while the sun turned the sky pink-gold, talking about everything and nothing. His arm brushed mine, electric and terrifying. When my phone buzzed—my mom asking if I took my vitamin—I almost laughed.

Your mom? Cameron guessed.

Yeah. She thinks I'm deficient in something.

That's not a deficiency, I said. That's a superpower.

Cameron looked at me then, really looked at me, like he was seeing something new. Yeah?

Yeah. The world needs more people who actually think about stuff.

The corner of his mouth lifted. You know, you're not exactly easy to figure out either.

I'm an open book, I protested.

You're like a sphinx, he said. Mysterious. I've been trying to work you out for weeks.

Wait.

YOU'VE been trying to work ME out?

Is that weird? He looked almost shy. I mean, you always sit alone in the library. You write in this journal, like, constantly. You never post anything on Instagram except pictures of your fish.

My fish. I'd posted about Fin dying last week.

He was a good fish, I said softly.

I'm sorry about Fin, Cameron said. I was going to comment, but I didn't want to be weird.

Commenting isn't weird, I said. Not commenting is weird.

We both laughed, and the air between us shifted—lighter, electric with possibility.

So, Cameron said, would it be weird if I asked for your number? Because I've been spying on your reading list from across the library and I have some recommendations.

My heart did a somersault. Only if you promise not to judge my taste.

I promise nothing, he grinned, but his eyes were warm.

Walking home later, I thought about how sometimes the universe aligns in ways you couldn't plan. How vitamin deficiencies and goldfish grief and sphinx riddles and all the awkward, beautiful, terrifying parts of being seventeen could somehow lead to this: a boy who noticed you, really noticed you, and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, you were exactly who you were supposed to be.

My phone buzzed again—Cameron, this time. Hey Sphinx 😉 the text read. What's your favorite book?

I smiled so hard my face hurt.

The mystery wasn't solved yet. But for the first time, I wanted to stay exactly where I was—in the middle of it, figuring things out, one conversation at a time.

Ask me tomorrow, I wrote back. It's complicated.

I've got time, he replied.

And maybe that was the best part of all.