The Vitamin Summer

Chloe's mom dumped the orange bottle on her desk like it was a cure-all. "These vitamin D gummies will fix everything," she said, closing the door like fixing a sophomore year friendship fallout was that simple.

Everything wasn't fixable. Maya, her best friend since kindergarten, had ghosted her over summer because Chloe hadn't been cool enough for the new crowd Maya wanted to impress. The friend group that had been their entire world had evaporated in three weeks of Instagram stories Chloe wasn't tagged in.

The first day of school, Chloe sat alone at lunch, chewing the chalky vitamins like they were actually going to help. She spotted Maya across the cafeteria, laughing with the popular girls, not even looking over.

That's when she saw him — Tyler, from her English class last year, sitting by himself too, reading a thick paperback with a sphinx on the cover. He caught her eye and gave this tiny nod, like they were both in on some joke nobody else got.

The Sphinx. The creature that asked riddles and devoured you if you got them wrong. Fitting, really. Middle school felt like one long riddle she kept failing.

"What's that about?" she asked, sliding into the seat across from him. "The sphinx?"

He shrugged. "Oedipus. Guy who solved the riddle. But, like, at a terrible cost."

Chloe snorted. "So what's the moral? Don't solve riddles?"

"Sometimes answers break things," Tyler said. "But sometimes not knowing breaks things worse."

She looked at Maya again. This thing between them — the silent treatment, the unspoken everything — was a sphinx in the middle of the cafeteria. Devouring her slowly.

Chloe stood up, her heart doing that weird fluttery thing. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," Tyler said, like he actually meant it.

She walked across the cafeteria. The vitamins hadn't fixed anything. But maybe some things weren't vitamins to take. Maybe some things were riddles you finally worked up the courage to answer.

"Maya," Chloe said. "We need to talk."