Interim Goddess of Love (5 page)

"
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 even 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 th
at. "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.

"
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?"