Interim Goddess of Love

by Mina V. Esguerra

  "I've reached the end of what I can do," are the words that came out. Except the words are not in English, or Filipino, but a lyrical one I don't recognize.

  "Father says what?"

  "He says I should let you decide."

  I sense his anger, and frustration. I can barely see his face, and yet I know this. The anger seems sharp. But it is not directed at me, and in fact I feel safer than I've ever been my entire life.

  I feel a little giddy, even.

  But I don't seem to be disoriented, despite the unfamiliar surroundings. Usually my dreams are set in places I know, but this is too bright, too green, too quiet to be anywhere I've been.

  "You know how I am going to rule on this," he says.

  "It's the same way I would," I say.

  "Then why should I be part of it?"

  "Because Aman will not fight you."

  Quin is not convinced by this. He doesn't care.

  "Your father wants you to protect me," I say. "Because Aman will destroy me if I intervene. You know he can."

  The water at my feet starts to rise. I lift one foot, just to make sure that it's mine, and touch the water's edge with a toe. I see that Quin is holding – has been holding – my hand.

  That explains the giddy.

  "I won't let him hurt you," he says.

  A bright light shines directly into my eyes.

  I wake up.

  After five minutes of just looking up at the ceiling, I flexed each of my toes and fingers (everything worked). It was not the first time that Quin had a lead role in one of my dreams. But for the first time, I wasn't sure if the female lead was me. I didn't seem nearly as confident, or mature, or… goddessy.

  He did say I would start having dreams. Remembering things that never happened to me. Maybe this was someone else's memory of Quin?

  Well hello there, jealousy.

  I still wasn't sure what exactly Quin could do (apart from the light tricks) given his role in the universe and all that, but I did know he had the Power of Great Timing.

  I couldn't even count the times last year when he showed up inviting me to the cafeteria or the coffee shop just as I realized I was hungry. Or when I just needed company, like that time when I assisted during entrance exam week and had to wait until past seven, because I had to be available for errands the whole time. That could have just been me waiting in front of an exam room for hours, but instead my memory of it included a coffee run with Quin and telling him about my high school prom while we collated handouts.

  After a while that kind of thing just happened so often that I thought it couldn't be a coincidence, that he was actually seeking me out. I guess that was true.

  Hmph. I couldn't decide yet if knowing that made the entire year more, or less, special.

  After talking to Kathy, I decided that my first course of action would be to talk to the people manning the mail service and get them to snitch on Kathy's Secret Santa. I made the mistake of telling Quin this. A summary of the phone conversation that took three hours:

  Quin: You're not here to find out who sent her the book, like it's a mystery and that's the big revelation.

  Me: I'm not?

  Quin: You're here to find out who she loves and who loves her. The gift business is a distraction.

  Me: I don't agree. That was the event that made her come to me.

  Quin: Trust me, Hannah, it's not about who sent her the gift. It's all about her reaction to it. If you want her to find love, you look at the people who might love her. Then you'll find the person who took that leap and acted on it.

  Me: You mean I have to do this the hard way and talk to what could be dozens of people, instead of just the one person who knows for sure who sent her the gift.

  Quin: You're dealing with emotions. You have to be thorough.

  Anyway, on that Wednesday afternoon as I walked to the mini bleachers by the all-purpose sports field, I was thinking that maybe I should meet up with Quin, but of course he was already there.

  He was sitting on the flat seat, about four rows up, illustration board (black side up) balanced on his lap like a tray. On top of it was a lump of red clay and it seemed to be troubling him.

  "What the--?" I said, taking a nearby seat one row higher.

  "Philosophy teacher wants us to mold this into something that represents our being," Quin said.

  "That should be easy for you."

  "I don't really want to clue them in on my being."

  "The teachers here can be so touchy feely," I said sympathetically. I'd been in classes where teachers started off the day with a sharing session (like show and tell but just the tell), or a personality test, or a quick discussion on celebrity gossip. I was told that it was because of a memo from the admin that they should "strive to get to know the students as people." It made the cool teachers cooler, and the others look like they were trying too hard. Or just creepy. A ball of clay to "represent your being" was trying too hard.

  As he pinched and rolled the clay tentatively, I looked out onto the running track to check out my actual purpose for being there -- Carson Garcia. In the interest of being "thorough."

  "Do you know him?" I asked Quin.

  "I think Diego beat up one of his friends one time. I've never really talked to him."

  Carson wasn't a team sport kind of guy. I watched as he warmed up for his run around the track.

  "He's Kathy's best guy friend," I explained. "When I asked her who she thinks could be her secret admirer, she said she had absolutely no idea."

  "Did you believe her?"

  "Of course I didn't. She has to have some idea."

  He looked at me from his clay and again almost smiled. "You would have known that even if you weren't the goddess of love right now. I told you, you're good at this."

  My face, I swear, totally acted casual, but the tips of my toes were tingling. "Anyway, no girl is that clueless. I told her that the gift was too personal, that it's probably someone she already knows."

  "And she told you she thinks it's this guy."

  "I kind of had to pull it out of her."

  It wasn't that Kathy didn't know who it was, but she was afraid to say their names aloud. Not that I blamed her; that was totally my MO too. She and I, we were girls who never said anything. Never wanted to assume anything. It was a coping mechanism, saving our faces for when guys like Quin came along and acted all nice toward us. I got that, and managed to convince her that her assumptions were safe with me.

  "He and Kathy hang out every day, almost," I told Quin. He had turned his attention back to the clay, and I saw a sliver of yellow light appear between it and his palm. The sliver grew larger -- no, my mistake, the ball of clay was actually levitating, and in mid-air had formed something that looked like an arrowhead. But he quickly caught it and squashed it in his fist.

  "Why are you wasting your fancy light powers on touchy-feely teacher assignments?" I groaned.

  "Just because you're talking to me here right now doesn't mean I'm not somewhere else doing something else too. I can multitask. You were saying, about Carson and Kathy?"

  "They're in the same English Lit block, and they clicked. But he had a girlfriend until about three months ago."

  Carson was Kathy's first "suspect" because of what he knew about her. He was a movie buff too, and they had actually watched Slumdog Millionaire together once before, when she brought the DVD to school and he popped it into his laptop one idle Wednesday. She bought caramel popcorn from the cafeteria, and they huddled on a bench until the Bollywood-style closing credits.

  Sure, Carson was good-looking, but Kathy didn't believe he thought of her that way. Not so soon after his breakup.

  "Does she want it to be him?" Quin asked.

  Why does that matter? If it wasn't him and he wasn't interested, no amount of wanting would help. Guys didn't seem to understand that.

  I let myself roll my eyes because he wasn't facing me -- but then remembered that he might actually have the power to see e
ven the stuff he wasn't looking at.

  "Well, I'm going to find out if it's him," I said. "I'll find a way to talk to him somehow."

  "Good luck," Quin said.

  "I… had a dream, by the way."

  "Tell me."

  "Waterfall. You and I were talking about something."

  "That's interesting. What were we talking about?"

  "I'm not sure, it was just the middle of a conversation. A guy named Aman. I was asking you for help with something?"

  He looked genuinely surprised by this. "That's a memory, but it isn't yours."

  I could still remember how my hand felt in his. "Is it Original Goddess?"

  He looked like he was trying to guess my reaction, or read my mind, and said, "Maybe."

  "Should I be worried?"

  Quin squeezed the ball of clay and shook his head. "No. It just means I'm right. You are going to be a great goddess."

  You know what, I wasn't sure what my powers were, either.

  When I asked Quin that question, he sort of just nodded and said that I would be able to do "what the project required" and then closed the topic. I joked about projects that required flying and X-ray vision, and he must have tried very hard not to laugh.

  But maybe along the way I had picked up the Power to Hitch A Ride, because I pretty much just walked up to Carson, a guy I'd never met personally, asked for a ride home, and he said yes.

  Ford River did not have its own dorms, and since it was outside of the metro, many of its students were either renting a house or apartment nearby. My own solution to this problem wasn't to rent, but to stay with my mother's sister who lived about five minutes away (twenty if I walked), about two subdivisions down the same main road.

  Carson's car was nice. European, rare in these parts. He actually still lived in Metro Manila, at one of the nicer villages at the edge of the city, plus he had this car so he didn't mind the drive every day. Definitely RK.

  I should explain that. "RK" was a term only "SK," Scholarship Kids, used. It was no way an official group or designation or anything.

  Because of Ford River's steep tuition and reputation for having some exceptionally good programs, the student population had become divided into roughly two main groups: Scholarship Kids, like me, and the Rich Kids, like Kathy and Carson. To my knowledge the RKs didn't know they were being called that, because only the SKs were hung up on the difference. The school was aware of this divide but didn't encourage it. We had our prep school uniforms only on Monday and designated special days, and from Tuesday to Friday were subjected to a dress code that allowed for some "freedom to be you" but not to "be a showoff." Still, it was surprisingly easy to tell a cheap pair of shoes apart from an expensive one.

  So, sitting in Carson's expensive car, I was very aware of which side he was on.

  I tried not to let it get to me. I was a goddess now, after all.

  "…it's just a matter of finding the file and printing it," I was saying.

  "Could you?" Carson said. "Sorry for the bother, but I really think it would help, for some reason."

  Doubt. That's what Carson had. It was a bit difficult to identify at first, but then it sort of enveloped me like a fog (I could practically see it) in his car. I picked up on it after sitting in it for a minute.

  During our small talk on the way to the parking lot, I mentioned that I worked at the Guidance Office. The same one that gave him the personality test? Yes, I said. Carson lost his copy of the results, and was hoping he could have a new one. I said sure, it was just a matter of me going back there and printing a new copy of his result file.

  "I just want to know if I'm still me," he said.

  "That's weird," I said. "I don't think people can just transform into something else overnight."

  I wasn't just imagining it -- his doubt was the fog in the car, and it looked like I was the only one who could see it.

  "She said I changed," he told me.

  "Who said you changed?" I asked, as if I didn't know.

  …He had been with Martha, the ex-girlfriend, since high school. Carson was from a family of state university alumni -- his father, all his uncles, his two older siblings, and four out of six cousins. He went to Ford River only because Martha did. She didn't even apply to the school he wanted to go to, thinking she wouldn't pass anyway.

  So he braved the anger of his dad, the confusion of his mom, and the mocking of his older sister. Risked his future entirely on the idea of being with her every day just like in high school -- and then she broke up with him. Because he changed.

  When he said that word again, I saw it.

  Carson and Martha didn't have the same major, so they had different schedules. Even though he tried to find PE classes and English lit that would match hers, things just didn't work out. They spent their entire freshman year waiting for one another, mostly Carson waiting for Martha. She opted for a lot of afternoon classes, and joined Ford River's pet society, which liked to meet after class and into the early evening. He was frustrated but he had already given up a lot to be with her, and didn't want to waste what was left.

  And then, a few months ago, he realized he didn't mind the wait.

  Three people made the waiting not so bad. Jim, quirky Math major from Bacolod. Anna, once a sparring partner in PE 105 (Taekwondo). And Kathy, also a film buff. He introduced them all to each other, and they were always up for something. And Kathy always had a movie worth watching in her laptop (or a disc in her bag).

  It annoyed Martha that he had begun settling into her school.

  Twenty-five minutes. That was the entire amount of time we spent together, from my approaching him at the running track, watching him pack up, walking to his car, and actually being driven home. But that split-second memory was enough for me to conclude that while he may like Kathy, it wasn't in that way.

  "I'm really sorry," Carson said once we had reached my aunt's house. "I normally don't go on and on about her like this. Really sorry. I just felt like I should say it."

  "It's no problem."

  "Thank you for listening."

  "That's what I do."

  Knowing her well enough wasn't it. He had to have spent some time thinking about a meaningful gift, and how to give it without Kathy finding out it was from him. That required at least two brain cells not occupied with thoughts of Martha, and he probably didn't have those to spare.

  I barely knew my mother's sister.

  Tita Carmen, known in my family as the Unmarried One, lived about fifteen minutes from our house in Manila for years but we never saw her. It wasn't because she and Mom had a fight, or anything like that. Apparently they still talked and saw each other, but Tita Carmen just never showed up when the entire family was around.

  A few years ago she purchased a house very near the school my mom was intending to send me to. Could she take me in for four years, and save us the dorm costs? It would make up for the eighteen years of not visiting.

  We were all right, though. One time, she was getting ready for a Friday night dinner with a guy, and almost started to tell me about him. But he arrived and interrupted our conversation, and the next time I saw her, she didn't mention him.

  I called Quin from my cellphone as I walked from the curb up to my aunt's front door.

  "It's not him," I said. "But the poor thing needs help too. Can I have more than one project at a time?"

  "Hold on," he said instead, and I knew what that meant.

  I ended the call and waited there, still on the sidewalk. A minute later, a car turned the corner into our street. It was a Toyota that had to be at least ten years old, and in the past year it seemed to have developed the engine equivalent of a cough.

  "Get your car fixed," I told Quin when he joined me on the driveway.

  "It's still running," he said. I was hoping he would be amused at my constant bringing up of that, but he looked like he cared more for that thing currently in his hand. The red blob of clay was round now, a sphere the size of a tennis ball.<
br />
  "Are you revealing to the class that you're a cherry?"

  He held it up for a second just on the tip of his index finger. "I'll just say it's a basketball. Anyway, you called?"

  All business, always. "Carson definitely likes Kathy, but he's probably a year away from planning secret admirer stuff."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "He's hung up on his ex. It's so sad. Shouldn't I help him too, just a little?"

  "Hannah, if you pay enough attention, everyone is a project. And they all need you at the same time. I don't think you're ready for that yet."

  I sighed. "Is that why you're here, in a small school in the middle of nowhere, when you could be running the free world or something?"

  "I've been at this a little longer than you. I told you, I can multitask."

  "I bet you can."

  "Quin, having dinner with us?" said my tita, who had come out onto the porch without my noticing.

  "Yes, if you don't mind, tita," he said, and of course Tita Carmen didn't mind, because Quin was always so polite, well-mannered.

  "Good! I made lasagna and cupcakes, more than Hannah and I can eat. You've got great timing."

  I used to think that Tita Carmen secretly had a thing for Quin, or at least secretly wanted him to have a thing for me, because she was always cooking something enough for three when he happened to be around. Now I knew that he was probably orchestrating that happy coincidence. Oh well. The end result was cupcakes. Why should I complain about the means?

  I rolled my eyes and gently pushed the sun god into the house.

  Chapter 6

  The next day, Kathy made a grander entrance into the Guidance Office, guaranteeing that she would not be missed.

  If the clatter of her chunky heels running down the hall into our room wasn't a clue, then the dramatic whoosh of the door opening, and then the bang of it slamming shut behind her, definitely was.

  I just so happened to have the printout of Carson's psych test in my hand, which I dropped when I heard the door.