Interim Goddess of Love

by Mina V. Esguerra

  So I wasn't going to be expected to solve the love problems of the billions of people in the world. (Good to know.) I guess I was on a Goddess Probation Period.

  Kathy Martin claimed to have a special power too.

  "I'm invisible, I swear," she moaned.

  I didn't react immediately.

  "I'm kidding," she added.

  "Of course, I knew that," I said. I hoped that becoming goddess didn't mean having to lose my sense of humor. Then again, Quin never laughed at anything. In my defense, I got thrown off by "invisible." I mean if the Sun God was walking around on campus, anything else was possible, right?

  "I mean, I might as well be. I don't really get noticed."

  On a bench in front of the cafeteria, Kathy told me about herself while I chewed on the turon -- fried banana rolls with sugar and jackfruit -- that she bought for me.

  I totally got what she was all about, within seconds. She, too, was a sophomore. She, too, was okay-looking but was a makeover away from being really attractive. She, too, wore her nice-enough outfits with about as much flair as a clothes hanger.

  I also picked up something else.

  …When Kathy was nine years old, a boy in her class decided that he liked her more than any other girl there, and he would show it by being an annoying little man every day that he saw her. It would start from when, after getting off the school bus, she would cross the open field to get to the entrance closest to the grade four classrooms. He was always hanging out there, outside the doors and near the drinking fountain, in any kind of weather. And he would call out a new insult as she passed. Not that he was the finest specimen himself -- he was skinny and his teeth were crooked.

  She knew he liked her. She wasn't like some of her friends who studied in all-girl Catholic schools that never offered regular boy interaction -- she wasn't fooled by this at all. It was why the first time, she just gritted her teeth and ignored him. Besides, pointing out to the dozen other people within earshot that her hair looked unwashed wasn't as humiliating as he thought. Neither was noticing the rash she had on her neck from the heat. But on the third day, he yanked at her bag, and started to say something about it being the kind of bag that a grade one kid would have, and she hit him.

  It was instinct, and also the pent-up rage from the other two days. As soon as he pulled at her backpack, her other arm (the one that had a lunch bag at the end of it) swung in his direction and a container of fried chicken and rice hit his head. He was surprised, and maybe slightly injured, but he never reported it.

  Kathy only got a moment's satisfaction from this because she immediately saw that he liked it.

  Yikes.

  The next few days, he continued to stand there as she passed, and sometimes made a move to touch her bag again. She tried so very hard to be casual and unaffected by it, but that walk from her school bus to the building, the act of crossing the field, started to give her stress.

  She started to wish that he wouldn't notice her. If he could just, well, be distracted by something else as she passed. Nothing even had to happen to him. She just wanted him not to notice her.

  And then one day, as Kathy crossed the field and came closer to the drinking fountain, he just… turned to one side and started talking to someone else. She passed by him without incident.

  He never bothered her again.

  "Whoa."

  That was a memory. An actual memory of someone else but I was there. Like it was my own, and I saw it, felt it, lived it. It left me reeling a bit, and I steadied myself against the bench. If she hadn't been so into her story she might have noticed that I stopped chewing for a second and my eyes kind of glazed over.

  If it affects you, just hold on to something strong and steady. They won't notice, Quin told me. People in the middle of their joy or pain are oblivious to anything else anyway.

  Whether or not this memory passing on from Kathy to me was helpful, it at least gave her some context. Something about her was comforting, non-threatening… which were of course just horrible words to use to describe a teenage girl. But I guess she wanted it that way.

  "I just fade into the background, I know it," Kathy said. "I could tell, earlier -- you didn't even know I was there."

  "Filing can really make me lose my focus," was my lame excuse. Apart from the overwhelming flashback that lasted a millisecond, I was also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that an RK (Rich Kid, or people who were not on scholarship, like Kathy) had this kind of insecurity.

  She tucked a stray lock of hair underneath her hair band, and I noticed just then that it was a fiery orange as well. "You don't have to pretend. I know that people don't really pay that much attention to me."

  Which was precisely why the gift came as a surprise.

  Students at Ford River had an extra perk of not just having a locker, but an internal mail delivery service as well. That meant if you wanted to send something to a student that couldn't fit in the slit that people shoved locker notes into, then you could put your item in a labeled, clear plastic bag and leave it at the Student Services desk. The student will receive a text message about the package, and can choose to reply with the time and which building to send it to. Handy for lending and borrowing books, notes, and a bunch of other random things, although the school highly discouraged using it for things of actual value like laptops, cellphones, dogs. (Yeah, one time someone used the mail service to send a dog…. Anyway. Rich kids.)

  When Kathy got the text, she dropped by Student Services and picked it up herself.

  "Who is it from?" she asked, because there was no note.

  "Sorry," the guy at the window, no doubt a student employee too, said. "I wasn't here when it arrived."

  Inside the Ziploc bag that was handed to her was…Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A, the basis for Slumdog Millionaire.

  She said it with such drama that I thought I missed something. "And?"

  "It's my favorite movie. Of all time." Kathy said that as if I should have known it all along -- and I kind of did get that, the realization rolling in a beat before the words did. Like the lightning before the thunder.

  "Slumdog? Who knows this?"

  "A few people. I don't have that many friends here."

  "Was there a note?"

  "It just said 'Re-read when bored.' Didn't say who sent it."

  Kathy was trying her best to sound casual. Understandable, even without the whole heightened empathy thing. She had never been in a relationship before, and while one part of her was telling herself to be careful, the greater majority was just tingling with excitement.

  She has a secret admirer. This was why she sought me, interim goddess of love.

  "Is this anything? Am I crazy to be thinking about it?" she asked me.

  At the same time, I felt her other question. The real one: Do I dare hope that someone here likes me?

  Even though she didn't have the book with her, I could see it now, as she did in her mind. It was brand new, carefully packaged, and the note was simple and sincere (not creepy). Someone here did like her. And as long as I didn't screw this up, I just might be able to lead them to each other.

  Chapter 4

  When I was a kid, I didn't dream of going to Ford River College. I don't think anyone has ever really done that (grow up dreaming of going there) because it's still kind of new.

  I didn't really spend that much time thinking about college, but I kind of took for granted that it would be one of the usual universities in Manila. Compared to them, Ford River is a toddler of a college among senior citizens. It opened its doors only fifteen years ago, setting up a six-building campus in an upscale neighborhood outside of the metro. Until my mom did some work for them a few years ago, I had never even heard of them.

  She fell in love with the school though, and couldn't stop talking about it. Soon it became clear to me that she didn't intend for me to go anywhere else. I had once said I maybe wanted to study psychology, and she confirmed that Ford River indeed had an excellent p
sych program if I wanted to end up in corporate. (Although I'm sure she would have said the same thing if I mysteriously wanted to study something else, like organic farming.)

  Soon we found out that we couldn't possibly afford the tuition, and my mom again made sure that I submitted the extra paperwork and got into the scholarship program. My friends and relatives thought I should at least work on getting accepted elsewhere, to be safe, but at a certain point it was clear to me that I was being led to that one place, whether I liked it or not.

  Did I want to go to Ford River? I visited the campus and it looked beautiful, its brick buildings scattered in a field of green that looked out onto an actual (clean) creek on one side, and a hill on the other. I went to a high school in the middle of Manila, and maybe I'd had enough of that.

  I just went with the flow. I didn't resist it.

  And what do you know? A few weeks into my first semester, I meet Quin.

  Kathy's question echoed in my head, but I heard it in my own voice. Do I dare hope that this is destiny?

  I pinched the inside of my elbow as hard as I could, so I would wake up from the silly daydream.

  Because no one I knew dreamed about going to Ford River, no one I knew ended up going to this school with me. Sol, my college best friend, was from Bicol. She was invited by Ford River to apply, probably because of her killer math skills, and when she got the acceptance letter it included a full scholarship.

  "Why are you prettier today?" Sol said, right there in the middle of the cafeteria as we waited for our burgers.

  "Shut up," I said automatically.

  "I'm not kidding. Your hair is so pretty lately."

  My instinct was to shrug and think that Sol was just being nice. Until I met her, being "pretty today" was not a concept I was familiar with. I was a regular-looking person, okay but not a knockout, much in the style of Kathy Martin. It didn't occur to me that someone could wake up one day and be more attractive than before.

  Sol, on the other hand, was striking. I personally thought she was beautiful, but she insisted that she didn't feel that way. Her features (dark skin, sharp chin, silky hair) weren't typical of the faces on TV ads. She never said anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in her life someone had made her feel ugly. On some days she believed that, on others she saw the truth about herself, as I saw it.

  In any case, she believed that people had pretty days and ugly days.

  "Is it because you're growing your hair long? It's like the longest I've ever seen it."

  "I look the same, Sol."

  "You don't." Sol stuck her face so very close to my cheek. "Did you get a facial? Your pores are great. What have you been doing differently lately?"

  She didn't know about the goddess thing. Quin didn't say it was a secret, but I didn't know how to tell her anyway without sounding delusional. I was always on the verge of trying to tell her though. It was pathetic.

  "Oh, the usual," I said. "Hanging out with Quin."

  She coughed, and I could have sworn that she snorted. "Quin Apolinario. He isn't your boyfriend yet?"

  "It's not like that."

  Sol was not that fond of Quin. He hadn't said more than a few words to her, despite being my closest friend in school. She was very aware of my feelings for the guy, and as time went on was becoming more and more unforgiving of Quin's indifference to said feelings. She believed I was being led on.

  I wanted to tell her that Quin was just being professional, you know, as the one in charge of training me as goddess of love… yeah, that sounded crazy, even to me.

  "I'm telling you, you should have picked Diego," Sol said, and any plans I had to explain to her the goddess thing was put on hold yet again.

  She said his name because he had just walked into the cafeteria. Diego Simon, senior, varsity basketball. While Quin had an aura of nice but a tiny bit intense, Diego was just brimming with anger and sweat. He entered a room and it was as if he was cooling down from something he had done outside, maybe a brawl he had wandered into on the way. Despite this, as far as I could tell, he was Quin's best bud.

  Diego was, by the way, the god of the sea.

  Sol did not know this, but she preferred Diego anyway. It might have been his hair, which was long enough to curl slightly, the way it did on adorable little kids. It looked inappropriate on a guy like him, but somehow not.

  I wasn't sure how it worked in other schools, but in Ford River, the cute and popular guys hung out together in groups, like a boy band. If you didn't like one, you were sure to like someone else in the group. Yes, this was how Sol and I described it.

  Liking Quin, Sol said, was like choosing the lead singer. That was just too obvious and boring.

  I reminded her that I actually wasn't the type who would like the lead singer, but Quin chose to befriend me so there.

  Diego walked with purpose right through the middle aisle of the cafeteria, made it to one of the tables, and sort of tapped a guy sitting there with his palm.

  "What the fuck did you do that for?" Diego said.

  Wednesday happened to be a light day for many Ford River students. Most of the classes were early in the morning, if at all, and usually the rest of the day would be for org meetings and for scholarship kids to put in their hours as student employees. So the cafeteria on this day wasn't particularly noisy or full, and it served as a theater for Diego's performance.

  The guy he tapped stood up and pushed Diego back. God of the sea or no, I would have thought that was the wrong move. Anyone who had been in this school longer than a semester would have heard of Diego's temper, and known that he was always the winner in any fight, and had never yet been disciplined or sanctioned for his behavior. I used to believe, like the rest of the student body, that he was related to the founders of the school and untouchable. Why even bother? Maybe they liked getting their asses -- and torsos -- kicked.

  He looked scared, this guy. But we were all watching now, and Diego had so publicly challenged him. He gave in to his fight response.

  Diego smiled. He was waiting for something like this to happen. I didn't see the punch but heard it, because I looked away. Knowing that Diego was a bit more than a regular college guy made these hijinks seem even more unnecessary. Then I heard a scuffle, more swearing, and everyone's eyes traveled back to the cafeteria doors, watching Quin and another person drag Diego back out, kicking and screaming.

  And then the show was over.

  Sol shrugged and smiled at me. "See? I like the hothead. He's not a statue. Who was that other guy?"

  "I think it was Robbie. Their other friend." Not a god, as far as I knew.

  "He's cute," Sol said, craning her neck, hoping for another look. "He'd be the guy who gets a solo every now and then, but not always."

  That was the guy I usually liked. Except Quin chose me, so there.

  "Anyway," Sol shook off that drama with a shrug and turned to me. "Where was I?"

  "Diego."

  "Before that."

  "I look pretty today."

  "Before that."

  "Day of Hearts the movie is coming out soon."

  "Oh my God! I'm so excited. I hate the casting, but Ivy Mira Alonzo agrees with it, so who am I argue with the author, right?"

  I shrugged. "I'm not familiar with the book."

  "I'll lend it to you. Or let's watch the movie together. Let's make a Valentine's Day date out of it. And if it sucks then I'll lend you the book so it can redeem itself. But before that, what were we talking about?"

  "You have decided to go on a real date this year."

  "Ah yes." She tried to get back on that original train of thought, although she didn't have to. (I picked up the gist with the goddess power within five minutes of her talking.) "Not that my mom will let me yet, but she's in Naga. She can take a plane if she wants to stop me."

  "I thought she was okay with you dating when you turned eighteen?"

  "She was okay with group dating. Which is not a milestone, it's something I do e
very day."

  I laughed. "You don't 'group date' everyday."

  "I sit at a table and have a meal with boys all the time," Sol said, pointing to the very end of our cafeteria spot, where three freshmen boys were sharing a plate of fries. "This is not dating."

  Despite being the gorgeous person she was, Sol did not date. In freshman year it was because she wasn't over her ex-boyfriend yet. At the time she thought the only reason they had broken up was because she decided to go to Ford River. Later she found out that he had stayed in their hometown because he was interested in another girl who didn't go away to college. So Soledad Delloro learned that there was no use mourning that relationship and decided to take toddler steps toward the next one.

  "Your mom's just freaking out because she knows you'll be dating all these rich fancy Manila boys and she can't do anything about it."

  "Come on, don't take my mother's side," she said. "But you're right."

  Though I had the power to look into her heart, I chose -- and tried -- not to do it when I talked to Sol. I didn't want her to be one of my projects just yet, and listening to her talk about this was part of the best friend job description anyway.

  Chapter 5

  I am looking at my feet, and I am thinking, "My feet are nice."

  And this is why I know that I am in a dream.

  The other clue would be that I am apparently standing really close to a waterfall, and yet I can hear nothing but muted running water. I am maintaining perfect balance on smooth round stones, with clear, cool, and strangely still water up to my ankles. My skirt is pretty; it's got an intricate woven pattern in several shades of red.

  Quin is standing next to me, and we've been talking for a while. Except he doesn't look like Quin, not that I could describe him anyway. And I'm not calling him by that name either. He is telling me something, and I am commenting as if I know what he is talking about.

  "…not my problem," Quin is saying. "I specifically didn't want to be part of this."