Interim Goddess of Love

by Mina V. Esguerra

  "So you can play with human feelings and actions but not each other's."

  "That's not how I see it, but it's kind of true."

  "Am I your equal?"

  "You're younger than us," Quin said. "Sorry if that disappoints you. Yes, we can affect your thoughts, actions, and feelings, if we wish to. But this rarely happens."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Because I've always been an advocate for letting people be, and the other gods -- as I told you -- can't change this even if they tried."

  "So my powers won't work on any of you, even if I try."

  "It doesn't work that way."

  "And you are which generation?"

  Quin motioned for me to sit again, and I still refused. "Only my father has any power over me."

  Maybe if that mythology book hadn't been missing from the library I would have known about this earlier. I was surprised, though, at how dejected I felt at finding out that there was a hierarchy to this and I happened to be near the bottom.

  And Quin… just when I thought this experience had brought us closer, apparently I was still not an equal. It was freshman year all over again.

  No wait. Freshman year was better because last year I stupidly thought that it was possible for a junior to be absolutely inexplicably charmed by me.

  "You didn't tell me about Robbie," I whined.

  "I just said, I wanted to let things be," Quin said. "How about you sit down and let's have dinner?"

  Screw. You. I put much force behind that thought, hoping that he could hear it, even if he probably didn't intend to, in the spirit of "letting things be."

  Then I left. This lowly "third generation" goddess had work to do.

  Chapter 13

  Good thing I was drafted to be the goddess of love, because I would suck as the goddess of law enforcement.

  Johnny Alba was a student employee, an SK just like me. This semester his assignment was to work off his required hours in the internal mail delivery service at the Ford River Student Center. What that meant, really, was manning the window, asking students to fill up a form, and making sure that when the messengers came around they were given correctly-labeled deliveries.

  …He imagined himself as an elf in Santa's workshop.

  He had a girlfriend who was still a senior in his high school in Cavite. He missed her, but maybe not as much now that he was visiting her every weekend. He told me about how she was going to be the valedictorian for sure, and that she was considering a career as a meteorologist.

  He told me this and more, but even after an extensive interrogation, he would not tell me who asked him to deliver the gifts to Kathy.

  Was I just doing it wrong? For a second I wondered if Johnny Alba, mail delivery assistant, was one of them, because I couldn't seem to pierce that part of his brain. But he opened up about his girlfriend almost immediately, and I was seeing his other memories of love just fine, so that couldn't have been it. I ended up staying there for forty-five minutes before giving up.

  And when I left the office, who else was by the door but Diego Simon, all casual, leaning on the concrete wall. Seeing him without his boy band disoriented me every time. I gasped just a tiny bit.

  "I saw what you were trying to do," he said.

  "I wasn't trying to do anything."

  "Lying to me. That's promising." He took me by the shoulder and steered me away from a crowd of students that just walked into the mail room, and all I could think of right then was Sol is going to be sooo jealous. "I'm sure that whatever hoops our boy Joaquin is making you jump through, it doesn't include a shortcut through the mail guy."

  Were we friends now? Diego never really talked to me, despite the Quin connection. Even when we were in the same room together he would just stay in his corner, glowering. Quin said he just wasn't the type who did small talk very well, and I understood that. If I had been born at the beginning of time I would find most of the people here stupid and shallow too.

  "Is it because what I want to know isn't about his love life?" I asked him.

  Diego laughed. "What? No. That's bullshit. You can do anything to anybody."

  "Then why can't I get him to tell me what I want to know?"

  "I don't think you understand yet what you are now allowed to do, New Girl. You have the power to create and destroy lives and change human history. If you can't do something as inane as get a name out of a freshman, then it's because one of us -- someone in your generation or older -- isn't allowing you to."

  "It's Quin, isn't it?" I groaned. "He has this thing about making me take this slow. It's so annoying." I wasn't sure if I should have admitted that to anyone else, but this was Diego, and he probably knew that anyway.

  "His favorite hobby has always been to hold everyone back. You need this name why?"

  "It's a goddess project. I'm practicing."

  "Wait here."

  I didn't exactly wait right there at the spot where he said it. There was a bench near it, and by the time I had walked up to it, he was back beside me.

  "I have your name," Diego said.

  "What? How? You can override Quin's mojo on the guy?"

  He didn't like that I referred to it as "mojo." "For supernatural things? It's useless to try taking on Quin -- we stalemate. But that's why I like using human methods like my fists. Or threatening to use my fists. Some people just have weak wills and give it up easily."

  "You are…" Crude? Cruel? Brutal? I knew this about Diego already. My brain did not feel enriched by this. But he did give me something I wanted.

  The name of Kathy's admirer, the person paying Johnny Alba to send her gifts anonymously, was Jake Lalisan. The Jake Lalisan who was also the "boyfriend" of Vida Castillo, reigning queen of Ford River.

  And the guy that Kathy just admitted to me was the one she really liked.

  Chapter 14

  Personality Test Result for Diego Simon:

  You are not a slave to convention, and often seek out new experiences. You are practical in your decision-making, opting to go with what's best for the situation as it is presented to you. In groups you tend to be the resourceful person. You prefer to learn by doing, and usually take a very hands-on approach when you are given a responsibility.

  As soon as I told Diego that Vida was somehow involved in this, he practically started salivating. When the bell rang (signaling the start of Chem 1 for me) he had not only skipped his class, but convinced me to do the same – so we could brainstorm together.

  "Do you have something against Vida?" I asked.

  "Where to begin?"

  I agreed a little too quickly to cut class. Because Diego wanted to work on this now now now, and I welcomed any reason to skip Chem. The ninety-minute sacrifice of a science class was totally worth it. Diego found out where Vida and Jake were (at the Student Council Room) and we camped out at a vacant counseling room in the Guidance Office to plan our next move. He decided to sit on the table, and I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't do that, but he did just threaten to beat up a guy. I didn't want to test his mood.

  "I can start the diversion," Diego was saying. "I need to talk to her anyway. But I guarantee you, this won't hold her back more than ten minutes, because she doesn't exactly like me either. You're going to have to get your boy to spill his feelings in that time."

  "I think I can do that, but ten minutes is tight," I warned him. "Can't you stall her for longer?"

  "You understand that I can't stall her, right? Not through supernatural anything. No effect on her."

  "Not to disrespect you or anything, but your powers kind of suck."

  "For that you'll have to blame our father, who made sure all his children were equal. I don't think you want to go telling him that."

  I didn't, and apologized. "So what can Vida do to me? If she sees me interrogating her boyfriend. Can she actually hurt me?"

  "Not as much as she can a regular person, because you're third generation now, New Girl."

  "Thanks a lot. That's so
reassuring." When my eyeroll was over I found him looking right at me with those big, dark eyes. It was a bit intense. I willed myself not to be the first to look away, just to prove that I wasn't such a newbie, but my eyes started to water.

  So lame, Hannah.

  "Is there any other way for me to buy some time?" I fiddled with my bag, pretending to get something. Why I was keeping up these pretenses in front of a god, I didn't know. I hoped that Diego felt flattered by this, at least.

  "You can get help from your friends, you know," he said.

  I laughed. "I don't think I can convince my friends to face the anger of Vida Castillo. I thought you'd know that."

  His grin became wider, the eyes on me a bit more intense. "You don't know."

  This was becoming frustrating. "What? What else don't I know?"

  "You've been able to work your power on some people studying here, right? Since you became goddess."

  "Yeah, a few." qct

  Diego smiled, and I recognized it as the look on his face just before he accosted someone for no apparent reason. Was it satisfaction? No wait -- a strange form of glee, the kind that comes from getting the first shot in. "Whenever someone summons you, and you choose to honor them with your attention, they become yours."

  "Mine?"

  "Pick up your phone and ask your friends to stall Vida for five minutes, each. They will do it immediately, and without question."

  I thought of who, exactly, I had "honored with my attention" for the past few weeks. Kathy. Carson. Ian. Ms. Farrah. The pharmacist at the infirmary. The senior librarian. The lady who sold buko juice in the cafeteria. Johnny Alba at mail delivery.

  As if he could hear me run through these names in my mind, Diego nodded. "Yes, all of them. Ask, and they will do anything for you. You should try it now."

  What Diego said made sense to me, and explained why these people never regretted sharing too much. And yet I still didn't let myself completely believe it until I made that first call, to Ian, and asked him for a favor.

  "Sure," he said. "I'm in the middle of lab but I can slip out for a bit to do it."

  The next three calls I made got me the same result. How cool was that? In high school I flew under the radar, wasn't one of the pop kids. Now I had minions!

  Why didn't Quin tell me about this? Did he think I couldn't handle it? Why even choose me if he was just going to hold me back every step of the way?

  Diego leaped off the table. "And they say I'm a bad mentor. Come on, let's do this. I'm in the mood to help some love struck kids today."

  Chapter 15

  …Jake Lalisan always chose the front row of the classroom now. In the past some teachers had mistaken that for a show of interest, and maybe he even got good grades he didn't deserve just because of that impression. Truth was? He had trouble focusing. His mind was always wandering off, and when he used to sit in the back row he could spend the whole period just looking at the backs of his classmates' heads, mind pretty much empty.

  The front row trick he had come upon by accident, when he was late for one class in freshman year in college and wound up on the row that no one ever really went for first. Suddenly he was right in front of the teacher, and he couldn't really hide behind people when he zoned out. So he stopped zoning out. He felt stupid that he never tried it until that day.

  That class was World History, a core curriculum subject that every student at Ford River took, regardless of major. On the first day, the teacher asked them to write, on a sheet of paper, "Five Things We Don't Know About You."

  At first, Jake rolled his eyes. At his first Math 11 class, just the period before, the teacher asked them to identify their "favorite number and why." He didn't realize that the teachers at this school were taking this "getting to know you" seriously. He felt like he was in a beauty pageant Q&A every damn time.

  Jake's five things:

  1. My dad and my three brothers are in the military.

  2. I used to want to be a spy when I grew up.

  3. I like lions. They're nasty and cool.

  4. I broke my left ring finger last year. Stupid guitar accident.

  5. When I was a kid I was told I would never be a good spy because I had trouble concentrating and often missed details. I wish I could just look at something and see just the important stuff.

  He answered this without thinking about it, just so he could have something to hand to the teacher.

  Then, once she took all the slips of paper with each student's "five things," she shuffled them around and redistributed them to the class. "You're all freshmen and new to this school. Now you've got at least one new friend," she said.

  He wound up with the list of a girl named Kathy Martin.

  She had him at #5 -- "Sometimes I think I'm invisible. I wish I weren't."

  There were fifty people in the class, but Jake found out who she was by checking their teacher's seat plan. Back row. Not the best move for someone who didn't want to blend into the wall, but college was new and intimidating, and he understood why it was just easier that way.

  He thought she was really pretty.

  …Kathy Martin was good at history.

  The teacher was always calling on her during class, and she wasn't like the others who looked away and tried to hide under their chairs during recitation. She always had an answer, and even if she wasn't completely right she didn't mind sharing the little she knew anyway. One time she said something about the aqueducts of the Roman Empire, which actually got him to Google it, but she downplayed any implied geekiness by saying she just happened to see it on the History Channel that weekend. He looked forward to these moments because it gave him an excuse to turn around and look at her.

  Based on the first, second, and third glances he took, it didn't seem like she was the kind of girl who'd have Slumdog Millionaire (her #1 thing) as her favorite movie. So he watched it, and was impersonating Anil Kapoor's smarmy game show host for days afterward.

  Whenever he saw mango-flavored anything (her #2), he thought of her. He started imagining what it would be like to hang out with her, ask her out, give her gifts. Any other guy might get her strawberry-flavored things, because that was safe and typical, but because Jake had her list, he would know better.

  Time flew really quickly when you were a freshman, just because everything was so new. In any case he let the first few weeks of school go by without introducing himself, and even though they saw each other every Monday and Thursday at nine-thirty, it felt wrong to suddenly just walk up to her and do it.

  Come second semester he scanned all his classes, hoping she would be there, but she wasn't.

  When he got back from a trip last summer, he decided to go for it.

  Eighteen minutes was how long I needed, to get all of that. Oh he was totally Kathy's secret admirer. He planned the gifts, and how she would get them, in the weeks before school started, and put the plan into action through his friend Johnny.

  I wanted more time to see how exactly Vida had come into the picture, but his memories of her weren't flowing as freely. In fact I barely saw Vida in anything I picked up from him, barely got a sense of how he really felt about her.

  But then I saw Diego appear by the open window of the Student Council Room, knocking his fist once against its wooden frame.

  I told Jake that I had to go.

  I was not as fast with my getaway as Diego would have liked. When we got to the hallway he took my hand and we flew (not literally) past the student org rooms, down one flight of stairs on the other end, and into the sunny but breezy outdoors. Even though this was my second year at Ford River I still wasn't used to how windy it was, even on a sunny day, totally not how I experienced afternoons in Manila.

  We slowed to a brisk walk and retreated into the North building, and that was where Diego paused to catch his breath. So did I, and noticed just then that we were both laughing. I may have been squealing like a kid as we sprinted, not sure, but likely.

  "Was she right behind me?" I as
ked.

  "No but she just spoke to the last of your minions and had just left the Guidance Office."

  That was probably Ms. Farrah, the guidance counselor. "What happened there?"

  "I left Vida at the cafeteria. On her way back she inexplicably became part of four conversations, one after another."

  "She knows it's me," I moaned. "She's going to just, I don't know, murder me, isn't she?"

  "I doubt it. Joaquin won't let her do anything to you."

  "I'm sorry for being slow about this," I said. "You probably think you're explaining the same thing to me over and over again. I just can't grasp yet the concept of you all being powerful but so limited."

  "There's a book in the library that explains it all very well."

  "It's missing," I said.

  "Think of it as territory," Diego said. "Every single thing about life has been divided among us, and we're all most powerful in our own turf. Yours, for now, is love."

  "What's yours?"

  "The sea. Work. And journeys."

  Something came over me as my heart rate slowed, going back to normal after that sudden run across campus.

  Diego just helped me with my work. If my work was, now, being the goddess of love.

  So despite the sweat and arrogance, stuff I normally avoided in a guy, I could see why Sol preferred him. He just had a different way about him -- more upfront about things, more transparent somehow.

  I mean, I trusted Quin and all, but I didn't mind learning my new "work" this way.

  Oh, is that guilt?

  It wasn't cheating. It wasn't like Quin and I were in an actual relationship, right.

  "What happens when territories overlap?" I asked.

  "Then it gets interesting," he said. "Everyone wants more than what Bathala has given. We fight, someone wins, the loser plots revenge. It's more common than you think, New Girl."

  Chapter 16