Queen of the Clueless (Interim Goddess of Love)

by Mina V. Esguerra

  "Was that you?" I asked.

  "No," he said. A second streak of lightning followed, bright enough to change the pattern of shadows on the ground we were on.

  "Don't be mad at me for doing what I'm supposed to do," I said.

  There was sweat on his forehead, and he looked like he was out his breath. He didn't look like this, ever, not even during a game when he was supposed to be sweaty and out of breath. Sometimes I wondered if Quin forgot that he had to appear normal, ordinary.

  I wondered what Quin was like when he wasn't trying to be ordinary.

  "You don't know what you're doing," he said instead.

  "Maybe you're not a good teacher," I retorted.

  The late bell rang. Class seemed like a better place to be in all of a sudden.

  Chapter 16

  "This is really good popcorn."

  "It is, isn't it? Should ask Tita Carmen where she bought it."

  "Ask her too where she got those curtains in the living room."

  "I think she's had them in one of the cabinets ever since she moved here."

  "Still. She got them from somewhere."

  "She likes shopping online. Maybe she found them there. Do people look for curtains online?"

  "People look for everything online."

  This was Thursday evening, and Sol and I were walking to an event at school, pretending that our last conversation didn't happen.

  It was a surprise that she even showed up, and not just because when I last saw her, she was storming out of the Guidance Office. I lived close enough to the campus that, whenever something interesting was happening there after class, Sol would drop by the house and walk with me the rest of the way. At least, she used to do that until Neil became her designated driver. I didn't even think of her when I found out about the launch party for College Girl, but she showed up at my doorstep just as I was preparing to leave.

  This little get-together for a thousand people was going to be in one of the episodes of the reality show featuring Ford River. I think it was supposed to be the Senior Bonfire, but the invite list was changed to include all year levels.

  I could imagine how much this must have annoyed Vida, head of student government and event planner of the Senior Bonfire. Having to deal with lowly freshmen and everyone else at what was supposed to be an exclusive party.

  Sol was talking. "Have you seen Kathy lately? She looks super radiant. I wonder if her TV contract includes facials and stuff?"

  "I haven't seen her," I said.

  So, popcorn. Curtains. Kathy Martin's reality show. My shade of toenail polish. Topics that we casually tossed around, as we neared Ford River.

  I kept thinking that I should say something about Neil, but I didn't want to ruin the mood. Meaning, we seemed to be on speaking terms. But each step counted down to campus, to civilization, and likely her waiting boyfriend, and if I didn't say anything just then, maybe I wouldn't get to at all.

  "So we're watching Day of Hearts, right?" I blurted out.

  "Of course!"

  More steps, more about that movie opening on Valentine's day. Losing my chance by the moment. As we turned the corner, talking about some interview the actor did, I could see Neil and his hair waiting for Sol along the curved driveway.

  "I can get Neil help but you have to stop seeing him," was my next outburst, my last chance to say it without him hearing.

  Sol stopped walking. "I can't believe you. You just said—"

  "Ignore what I said then. This is what I'm saying now. Neil has a problem and I can get him help, but you have to stop seeing him before he becomes a danger to you."

  "I'm not going to leave him, he needs me!"

  "Look," I squeezed her forearm, a little too tightly. "Can't you just not call him? Stop talking to him at school? Just for a few weeks, see what will happen."

  "I don't get you at all," Sol said, prying her arm away, totally unmoved. "I don't want to leave him. I told you about the thing because I want him to get, I don't know, therapy or something. But he and I are great together. Except for this one thing."

  "You make it sound like a cute little quirk! It's not."

  "Come on." Sol could see him and his hair in the distance too, and her voice dropped. "Don't make me regret telling you. I don't want to break up with him. I want to help him through whatever this is."

  "If you want me to help him, you have to stay away from him. I won't allow him to take advantage of you again."

  "Allow me? Excuse me, you don't get to decide what I'm allowed to do. Do I forbid you from following Quin around like a puppy, while you spend so much time doing his homework or whatever it is you do together? I don't like it, but I don't forbid you from acting like an idiot."

  Now that was so out of context for me. It was out, to the side, and down the road from context as far as I could tell. "This isn't about me."

  "Exactly. This is about me. I thought you'd understand."

  My best friend thinks I'm an idiot. I wanted to focus and stick to the plan, to—

  My best friend thinks I'm an idiot.

  "Are you going to get him help or not?" Sol demanded.

  "I don't want you to get hurt," I insisted.

  "I've been hurt. You know the story. I cried over that guy every day for months. And now I'm happy with Neil. Except for this one thing. Don't make me give him up."

  I wanted to tell her that she didn't love Neil. She was on the rebound, hanging on to something that wasn't perfect just because it was there. She deserved better than "there." At least she discovered this early enough. She'd recover quickly.

  Plus? Maybe Quin actually liked my company. I didn't force him to hang out with me all of last year. And this year has been training, you know, really important stuff. That did NOT MEAN I WAS FOLLOWING HIM AROUND LIKE A—

  My best friend thinks I'm an idiot.

  I didn't get to say anything else.

  Before I knew it, Neil was right there next to her, arm around her waist. He knew he was interrupting something; Sol looked angry and wasn't hiding it.

  "Hi, Hannah," Neil said.

  "Hi, Neil," I said, my voice shaking.

  "They want us in the auditorium," he said, trying to read my expression.

  Strange. He didn't seem like a threat to anybody. He just looked like a college boy.

  I smiled. "Please go ahead. I'm waiting for somebody."

  Chapter 17

  Quin didn't look like a college boy anymore.

  See, even though he was one of the oldest gods ever, he walked on this particular college campus as a twenty-one year old guy. I asked him once what the deal was, why have bodies at all.

  He said that if he wanted to accomplish something, he'd choose a body that would help him do it.

  So does Quin Apolinario actually exist? I asked.

  Of course he does.

  No, I mean does he exist separate from you. Does he have parents? Did a woman go to a hospital and give birth to a baby, and then you just took over its body? What happens when you're done with what you need to do, does Quin just die?

  Yes.

  Yes what?

  Yes to all of it.

  Maybe I needed a philosophy degree to understand all of it. At some point I just stopped asking.

  I wasn't alone at the launch party. As soon as I stepped into the auditorium, someone put a cold bottle of some pink liquid in my hand, and there was no shortage of air-kissing and people telling me how happy they were to see me. I couldn't have given you the names of half of them. For some reason I had more friends this year.

  But they weren't enough of a crowd to keep me from seeing Quin and Ms. Cabral, talking by the fire exit. He was talking, she was sipping her pink drink. Just them, and me, and a thousand people.

  At some point Vida took the stage, looking radiantly beautiful, reminding people that this was a senior send-off party too and the bonfire would still be happening after the TV crew packed up and left. It was a bit difficult to focus on her though, what with
Kathy Martin's pretty face being projected on the large screen onstage.

  Two indie bands performed in front of me, people danced and jumped all around my space. I did not move a step for an hour, I think. And neither did the two people I was watching. Quin seemed so in his twenties all of a sudden.

  I started to wonder where Robbie was.

  I blinked, and Diego showed up midway between me and the two twentysomethings. A moment later, he was right next to me.

  "Help me build a bonfire," he said.

  Everyone wanted to be on TV, so no one else was building the bonfire on the open field on the other side of campus.

  "I don't think students should be allowed to set anything on fire," I said, for the record.

  Diego tossed a dry branch as large as his arm into what looked like a huge can. "We're watching out for everyone."

  "We meaning our divine chaperones?"

  "You're in a bad mood, New Girl."

  Sometimes, Diego didn't seem like a crazy hothead that my mother would warn me about. Sometimes, he seemed like someone who could actually understand what it was like to feel something.

  I wondered how much of that story about Maganda's Regret was true.

  "I have moods," I said. "I'm human, I can have them."

  "We have them too. Quin is different. Robots wish they could be that stoic."

  "I didn't say this was about Quin."

  He shook his head and threw another branch in. "It's always about him with you."

  A small flame flickered among the branches. As far as I could see, no torch was brought to it, but it caught fire anyway. Soon it was healthy and orange, but very controlled.

  "Are you doing that?" I asked.

  "Soon you'll be able to, also."

  "Great, I'll save so much when I stop buying matches."

  Diego pulled me close enough to the fire to feel its warmth. "It won't get any better, you know."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You've obviously never been infatuated before. It happens. You deal with it."

  My face fell, and I imagined something, like my hopes and dreams, falling with it to the fire.

  "But I'm the Goddess of Love," I said. "I know how it can get better for people."

  "Regular people who fall in love with regular people, yes."

  And not for me? Ever?

  If I chose to love Quin, I guess.

  The fire made a popping sound as it consumed my hopes and dreams.

  Suddenly, pain. Inside of my rib cage. It was familiar; I felt it in other people. But this time it was mine, a similar but unique pain, and I wanted something, needed something, had to say something—

  Warmth against my lips. I thought it might have been smoke, but it was Diego and one slow and long kiss. My first one. Technically.

  I tried kissing him back, and the pain rushed past my ribs and I felt relief. I needed more of that, how could I get more of that? I kissed him again, and relief rushed through me. And again. And again.

  Diego had to pry himself away from me. When he finally stepped back, I was crying. I wasn't sure when that started.

  "You okay?" he said, going back to tending the fire.

  There was no pain anymore, but I remembered it anyway, and it might as well have still been there. "I feel like crap," I said.

  Diego shrugged. "It doesn't get better."

  Chapter 18

  I thought I recognized that shadow.

  Maybe I was just seeing things, but the lamp posts and the additional lights from the TV shoot were throwing strange patterns all the way up to the roof, where Quin and I usually hung out. There was a curvy shadow on the floor just then, and I wasn't sure where it was coming from. It looked like an intricately-drawn rose, if it were stretched lengthwise and laid on the floor. A note Quin wrote to himself that he forgot to hide? Or maybe I was seeing things?

  I wasn't supposed to be up at the roof of the North building alone. No one was allowed to be there, not even during the daytime, but the rules didn't apply to Quin of course. It felt like the only place where I could be alone though, and not be caught crying by a camera crew or the bonfire-happy seniors.

  Truth was, I came up to the roof more often than Quin knew. I went up without him, usually when I was feeling like crap about him. Now I was there, reflecting on this whole new bucket of feelings I fell into.

  A shadow formed beside the rose pattern on the ground. Human form, strangely shaped head.

  "Shit," I said as I jumped, discovering Neil Prado beside me.

  "Why are you all alone here?" he asked, and yet he didn't sound sympathetic.

  I had no tissues or handkerchief. I had to use my arm instead, to get the tears. "You shouldn't be here, Neil."

  "I just need to tell you something."

  Why did he seem so tall? And, unfriendly? He wasn't a stranger, this guy. I talked to him a few times. I rode in his car once. He was nothing but polite and pleasant, if a little uninterested in being super chummy with me. That wasn't a bad thing.

  "Hannah."

  "What?"

  Before I realized it, his hands had gripped my arms. Not painfully, but firmly.

  My breath stopped. And then, the oddest thing.

  I was about to say that I blacked out, but it wasn't that. Everything went white. The roof, the night sky around me, the campus, the hills in the distance, all as if they had been painted crudely with a thick brush. Only Neil remained as real as a person should be.

  "I want to talk to you. I feel like I can. Sol trusts you, and everyone else seems to." His voice was gentle, surprisingly unthreatening. Soothing almost.

  I wanted to nod, but I couldn't move.

  Looking straight at me, his grip loosened, letting go a finger at a time. There was a rhythm to it, almost graceful, and heavy, like he had been stuck to me with glue. When he stepped back, surveying his handiwork, I thought that I started to see why Sol found him attractive. There was a determined air about him I couldn't help but admire.

  Except he was kind of holding me hostage right then. It wasn't that I couldn't speak—I just didn't want to.

  Neil started to circle me, moving slowly against the backdrop of crude white.

  "You don't really know me, Hannah." The voice was nice to hear, friendlier than he'd ever been. "But the past few years have sucked for me. Sol is the only good thing I've got right now."

  That's not my problem. But I didn't want to say it.

  "So if she says anything to you about me, all you'll say is that you trust me, and that all I want is for her to be happy with me."

  I still wasn't breathing.

  "Because taking things from people who won't care, that's not wrong. They wouldn't hand things over too easily if they really needed it, right?"

  How did he justify stealing from his own girlfriend? "I use her money to buy stuff for her anyway"?

  "Hannah, say yes."

  It was difficult. "Yes." And when it came out it was like a child's voice, didn't sound like me at all.

  "Thank you, Hannah." It looked like he was done for now, but then he ended up right in front of me again. He looked curious.

  "There's something I don't understand about you," Neil said. "I've done this to a few other people but you seem like—you actually seem aware of me while I'm talking. I wonder if you're special too, like me."

  I am way more special than you. Whether I could say this or not, I decided not to force it.

  Neil lifted a finger and gently poked me. "Hannah, please raise your right hand and hold onto me."

  It suddenly seemed like a really good idea to raise my right hand and reach for his. So I did.

  'That's right. Can you come a little closer?"

  It suddenly seemed like a really good idea to do that. And I did, taking two tiny steps closer.

  He let go of my hand as I stood close, so close that I could feel his breath on my skin. I couldn't look away, didn't want to.

  And I still wasn't breathing.

  Ne
il didn't let up the staring, waiting. He breathed deeper, and this time I actually felt his body touch mine. He brought his nose to my hair, and held it there. It seemed like a long time. Immediately the insides of my fingers prickled, wanting to connect with his shoulder and push. Half my head was still processing what just happened with Diego, the other half protesting this new, unwelcome advance.

  But I didn't push.

  I didn't feel like it.

  He took my hand again and pressed his lips against it, slowly, and then I felt a rush of warm air as he smelled my skin.

  That's enough. My mind told the nerve endings responsible for action. They didn't feel like doing anything about it.

  "Hannah," he said, "You're a really great listener. Do you think it's warm up here?"

  It was always warm in this country. But that wasn't what he meant, I knew we weren't suddenly talking about the weather.

  "It's very warm," I heard myself say.

  Neil's eyes. I wish I could describe what it was like to look straight into them. I barely blinked and felt like I was seeing him think through those eyes. Irises making tiny, nearly unnoticeable movements. Calculating. Commanding?

  And then I had the strangest impulse.

  It's so warm.

  I should take my shirt off.

  Then the next second I did just that. Reached for the hem of my top and pulled it over my head, as casually as someone taking off a jacket, a hat. And I stood in front of him in my black sporty bra, still not blinking, still not breathing.

  He didn't have to say it.

  "Interesting. Hannah, please reach into my pocket for my phone."

  No I will not, perv! And yet my hand obediently crept up the space between us. I felt the material of his jeans, my fingers dipping into his front pocket. He sort of nudged his head and my hand moved to his back pocket instead. I grabbed something solid by its corner and pulled it out.

  The phone wasn't the same one as mine, and yet I operated it with ease, swiping through the menu to get to...

  The camera.

  I held up the phone at an incriminating angle and snapped three photos.

  "Thank you, Hannah." He retrieved the phone and stuck it back in his jeans.