Icon of the Indecisive (3 page)

Chapter 5

Risk = the fact that a decision is made under conditions of known probabilities (“decision under risk” as opposed to “decision under uncertainty”) (
Risk,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology)

Robbie told himself,
This is it. You're really going to do this.
He had it all planned out.

If my Tita Carmen (I was living with her while going to Ford River, because her house was nearby) happened to be hom
e when he arrived, he would mention that his mother loved the cupcakes she made that he brought home from last time. He would ask for a recipe, or offer to pay for a dozen if she was into that.

He would say I looked beautiful in my dress.

Whatever she happens to be wearing. Just say it.

He was hoping I'd have my hair down, but he was planning to say he loved my hair "like that" anyway.
Whatever it happens to be.

He would not attempt a cheek kiss in front of my
tita.

He would first take my hand when he escorted me to
the passenger side of the car. Just for a few moments, however long it took for me to get in.

The drive would last less than fifteen minutes, just enough to ask about school, my mom, my
tita.

Dinner was actually going to be at Logan's house. Logan was in his basketball team but was also a culinary arts student, and Logan and his girlfriend Nica were making a four-course dinner for them.

Appetizer: Coquille Saint Jacques

Soup: Potage crecy

Main course: Boeuf bourgignon

Dessert: Tarte au pommes

It sounded very French.

Robbie wanted something simpler but Logan was all,
Trust me, bro, she's going to be all over you after this.

Nica promised she was going to keep him in line.

Logan would make sure no one else was home, so they'd have the place to themselves. He would set it up so that there would be a small table inside the pool house. Nica would choose the place settings.

Nothing too cheesy.

Shut up and let the expert handle it, Robbie. This is not my first romantic dinner.

They would serve champagne, but not too much, because Logan's dad would notice if an entire bottle were missing. While waiting, Robbie would be
ready to tell Emmental apart from Camembert. Just in case. Logan wrote the talking points on index cards.

During dinner he'd ask about my night out with Sol. And the movie. That he didn't want to watch it, so I could tell him the story without spoiling it for him. He'd ask how Sol was, how she was holding up, and would be ready to reassure me if I ever expressed my doubts again over my role in that breakup.

You're someone I want on my side, always.

He'd find a way to say it.

Logan said he'd have a playlist ready.
Violins and shit.
Nica would announce that dessert will be served outside, next to the pool. Then they would excuse themselves to start cleaning up.

He would take my hand. Remind me about his love letter. And depending on my response, kiss me, or hurl himself into the pool.

He was hoping he could get to kiss me.

First he would touch my hair, whatever style it happened to be, pretend to push it away from my face. He wanted a hand gently on the side of my face.

One or two? Just one.

Short kiss or a long one? Combination. Soft and quick, and then the follow
-up would be longer.

As long as I'd allow.

I knew this—saw it, felt it, all of it—as soon as he stepped up to my
tita
's front porch and knocked on my door. Robbie didn't realize it, but when he asked the universe for courage and strength to do this, it was all going to me.

My power wasn't all that great yet, but over him, and his happiness...

It looked like a really good date though.

Seemed like a lot of fun.

"Hi," I said, as I opened the door for him.

"Hi," he said, not surprised. He was ready for me possibly opening the door for him. "You look beautiful."

It sounded familiar and slightly rehearsed, but it was earnest, and genuine. He really did think I was beautiful in
this dress
and any dress, hair up or down or sideways. He was saying it because he thought I didn't know, that I could only know if he said something.

Then I realized that this
—planning a date, compliments, simply holding someone's hand—they mattered so much because they were all that people had to go on.

The best thing to do was reciprocate.

So I let him hold my hand as he helped me into the car. I marveled at Logan's family's beautiful house, and Nica's candles and napkins folded into bird shapes. Appetizer? Perfectly creamy scallop. Soup? Lacked salt, but in the best way. The beef? Tender and just melted in my mouth. Every conversation he started, I was ready for. I told him about Sol's sucky movie and he laughed. He told me about Risk class, and the paper he was writing, and the big beach party he was invited to, and if I would like to go with him. I said I would, but I'd have to ask my mom, because maybe she was still mad at me for flying off to Naga without telling her. But I would definitely go with him if she let me.

And then when we were led outside, toward the cute pastries and coffee perched on a tall round table near the pool, I wasn't nervous at all. He was; his thoughts were rushed and uncertain, but he was sure about what he wanted to do.

I helped him. I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward me. We were close enough that he should recognize this as the Touch Her Hair stage, but it took him a beat to realize it. But he recovered, and went back on script, with the hair, and then the hand against my cheek.

And then he kissed me. Short kiss.

And then I kissed him. Long kiss.

His jumpy thoughts, they slowed. Relaxed. Lingered a bit, enjoying what was happening.

He kissed me again. Long kiss.

"I really, really like you, Hannah," he whispered into my ear.

I didn't see that in his plan. He must have improvised it. It felt good, to be surprised like that.

"I like you too, Robbie," I said.

Chapter 6

I am somewhere.

I can't tell where.

There's a familiarity to the place, but I can't...

...and there's someone else...

It's Quin, I am kissing Quin again. In this dream.

It's a series of kisses, one after another. It's intense. I have trouble breathing and talking.

We are not trying to talk.

Okay, I don't care about the breathing even. I'm afraid if I think about it, it'll stop. The goddess—whoever this is, whoever's memory I'm hijacking—might notice.

Please continue. Don't mind me. I try to look up and away and see clouds, and a shadow on its surface, like graffiti.

I raise a finger to the sky and trace its shape. I know that shape.

He is kissing my hand. Like, my palm. I can breathe, and I inhale long and deep. The air is sweet, and pleasant, and clean.

I am—

I don't
—

We are not just kissing. His skin is radiant and warm and I feel it. All of it.

It's not just kissing.

Shoot. Mother of. I can't
—

I shouldn't be here. This isn't
—

I don't think
—

Stop thinking. Stop thinking.

And then he, and I, cry out something, and it's a word I don't know, it sounds ancient, and loving, a promise—

Chapter 7

6:27 a.m.

"AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH," I said.

My limbs were still tingling. My cheeks were warm. Every inch of my skin felt alive, and awake, and on fire...

"What?" Tita Carmen yelled from her room, across the hall.

"Nothing, sorry!"

For the next three minutes, until the alarm clock finally rang, I had my hands pressed against my eyes, hoping that would take me back to where I was. But it didn't work, because
my goddess dreams were like actual sleep dreams, in that I couldn't just put myself back in them.

And then, once my mind started to really wake up, and the tingling started to fade, guilt started to settle in too. That was a very intimate moment I had just seen. Didn't know whose memory it was, but I hope she didn't know I was there, like,
co-experiencing
her moment with Quin. Should I be doing research on the other gods? This one had like really long pale hair. Not blond, but really pale brown. And had beautiful, slender hands. And flawless skin, sun-kissed, unnaturally glowing.

Who looked like that among them?

Did it even matter, when they could change the way they looked anyway? And if I found out who it was, would I even apologize? How could I?

She shouldn't be angry. I couldn't control this. And besides, she was the lucky one. I was...

Was I jealous? But I had no right to be. I just had a really
really
great night with Robbie. It was perfect. My dreams should have been filled with sexy fantasies about
him.
I should have been waking up the following morning in a contagiously happy mood. With that silly smile that the jaded single people would love to rub off my face with bleach.

I was about to have a
love life.
People should have been jealous of me today, for once.

So not fair.

Chapter 8

I had to admit, people became less impressive, the more I knew about them.

Sometimes I would see into a person's thoughts of love, and would find something unexpected and special—like popular guy Jake Lalisan being so smitten over shy Kathy Martin. He
saw
something in a girl that so many people overlooked, like Kathy had a glow about her that everyone else was oblivious to. Experiencing that was an amazing thing.

Or maybe it was because it was my first project as Interim Goddess, and I was romanticizing it too much. Because I would soon find out that not everyone handled their thoughts of love with that kind of depth.

Like, some people you'd think were so smart? So dumb when it came to love. Or surprisingly shallow.

"They're teenagers," Quin told me when I once complained about it. "Nothing becomes something. Or sometimes, everything."

Easy for him to say.
I
happened to be a teenager too. I wondered if he just had that much disdain for everything
I
was thinking.

But there were some people who were awesome, even as I discovered more about them. Ms. Farrah Flores, Ford River's guidance counselor, for example. As a scholarship student, I had to work off my service hours in her office, but she didn't treat me like a
slave like other faculty did their student employees. Young, and an actual graduate of the degree program I was studying, she treated me sometimes like a protégé, and other times a friend. During our "friendly" talks she opened up to me/the Goddess and I picked up on her own love story with her now-fiancé Ben.

Opening up to the
Goddess makes one devoted to her. Me. Ms. Farrah was one of the persons who would do anything I asked.

Her mode that Monday morning though was neither friend nor mentor nor devotee.

"Hannah, sit down," she said as I stepped into her office, her voice tense. "Is this true?"

She pushed a
paper printout on the table toward me. I didn't recognize it, but when I gathered my bearings I saw that it had my name on it, one column listing all of the subjects I was currently taking, and another column of numbers.

"Absences," I said, reading from the top of one column.

Wow. I didn't realize they would have a detailed record of it.

"I'm allowed nine hours for each subject per semester," I said automatically, the same thing I told myself. Every time I cut a class. Apparently, twenty-two times.

Ms. Farrah was
not
happy. "Yes, I see that you've planned each absence that way, so you don't hit your limit for each subject. But that doesn't excuse the fact that you've missed class twenty-two times this semester—and it's not even over yet. So I checked, and noticed that you owe me three hours of work here at the guidance office too. Is there something wrong? What's happening?"

I gripped the armrests of the chair and didn't like how they felt. They were cold.

What's happening?
I wasn't cutting class to hang out at the parking lot and smoke. I had to deal with actual problems. Like when I took off to take an hour-long flight to Sol's hometown to save her from her boyfriend. And other Interim Goddess business.

"I'm just...adjusting to everything," I said. "I'll make up for it. I'll work extra."

"Does this have anything to do with your new friends?" Ms. Farrah asked.

"What new friends?"

"I notice you've been hanging out with the juniors and seniors more. They have their own cliques and you don't need them to be accepted on campus, but you know that, right?"

That was the oddest thing I'd heard her tell me. "I know that."

She shook her head. "You'll tell me if they're bullying you into doing things, right? Because it's not the first time that I've had to deal with a sophomore being treated like a senior's slave."

"I am
not
anyone's slave, I promise. You've really got it wrong."

"Have I? Because we don't allow any kind of
participation
in this kind of social group, Hannah. Even just joining that kind of organization could get you sent to an expulsion hearing, but for sure the scholarship is lost first. Do you understand me?"

"Are you talking about a
fraternity
?" I said, and with honest-to-goodness shock. Fraternities weren't a big deal in other schools, but they were an f-word in ours. Over here they were associated with violence, had been for years. Too-intense initiations showing up on local news, plus a school-wide campaign against bullying, and it became cause for disciplinary action just to be associated with one.

Wow, Ms. Farrah was so off.

"It doesn't matter what it's called, Hannah," she said, "you know we won't allow anyone to even try to participate."

"I'm
not joining a fraternity.
"

She looked at me like she was a
teacher
, which was so strange, and I tried to keep my eyes wide and innocent. She caved first.

"Well then," she said, "You still have some work to do to keep your scholarship. Definitely put in extra hours here, and I'll see what I can do for your other classes."

"I really would appreciate it if you talked to my other teachers and tell them that I'm fine, no need to punish me."

I said this slowly, carefully, hoping that the devotee in her would hear.

"Yes I will, Hannah," she said. Obediently.

I smiled. "Thanks, Ms. Farrah."

Yeah, she was awesome.