What the Sphinx Knew

The library was my sanctuary until that afternoon when Jason Miller caught me talking to the school mascot. A literal six-foot plaster sphinx that the drama club had painted gold for the fall production of "some Egyptian thing nobody asked for."

"Having a deep convo, I see," Jason said, leaning against the fiction shelves. His curls were annoyingly perfect. "What's she telling you?"

My face burned. "She. The sphinx is a she, by the way. And she was telling me that your costume needs way more glitter."

Jason laughed, actually laughed, and slid down to sit beside me on the carpet. That's when it happened — the moment that rewrote my entire freshman year existence.

"My brother's goldfish died this morning," he said suddenly. "Swimming along, perfectly fine, then — belly up. Just like that."

I stared at him. "That's... random."

"Isn't it, though?" Jason turned to look at me. "But here's the thing. My little sister said she saw a fox in the backyard this morning. Just standing there, staring at the house through the glass door. Like it was waiting for something."

"A fox? In the suburbs?"

"Weird, right? But Viv swore it was this gorgeous russet color, with these intense eyes. She said it felt like it knew something."

The sphinx's painted-on eyes seemed to bore into me. That's when I put it together — the riddle of it all.

"The goldfish wasn't dead, was it?" I whispered. "Viv was making it up. To get attention."

Jason's grin was all the answer I needed. "You passed the test. The sphinx would be proud."

That afternoon, I walked home with Jason Miller. And somewhere along the way, between discussing the probability of actual foxes in our zip code and the ethics of faking pet deaths, I stopped being the invisible library girl.

Sometimes sphinxes don't ask riddles. Sometimes they just sit there, gold paint chipping, waiting for you to figure out that the real mystery isn't what they're hiding — it's what you've been too scared to say out loud.

Like, "I see you. And I think you might be worth talking to."