Interim Goddess of Love (2 page)

Hearing tales of love and woe wasn't new to me. My earliest one was when I was eleven, when my mother explained to me that my dad wouldn't be living with us anymore. It was quickly followed by the news that he had a new family and had decided to live with them. I hugged her and told her that she was going to be okay, and that she shouldn't wish for him to stay with us if he was happier somewhere else. She said then, not a little irritated, that I shouldn't give up on him so easily. He might still come back. I didn't believe it but told her what she wanted to hear.

Years later, I think I was a high school junior by then, she reached for my hand across the dinner table (set for two, still)
and out of the blue thanked me. I just knew what she was referring to; she didn't have to say it.

I would
also hear stories from friends, neighbors, teachers, cousins, and even strangers sitting beside me in public transport. It was like I had a sign over my head advertising my counseling services.

Most of the time they just needed an ear, but sometimes I got asked for adv
ice. Every time, I warned them that I had never even been in a relationship before, so I could just be making things up as I went along. They didn't care.

I guess that was why I wound up studying Psychology.

"Maybe," Quin said. "Or it's the other way around."

That I was attracting the love stories
because
I was potentially a replacement for the goddess of love? It was comforting, the idea that I was special in some way.

When I said yes to this, Quin invited me up to the roof deck of Ford River's North building. Students weren't supposed to be there, especially at night, but now I understood why Quin seemed to be able to do all these things without ever getting a note from the Student Discipline Office.

On that particular day, I got there just in time to see him play with light again.

Quin, usually when he thought I wasn't looking, liked to change the way light fell on things. He would stare at something intently, and the shadows would move. It looked like art to me, these impossible patterns of shadows on the bright concrete surface. He would hold that pattern for a second, and then with a wave of his hand he'd set it back to normal.

"
That's pretty," I said, not knowing how else to react.

"
It's how I write notes to myself," he explained.

"
That's crazy."

I wanted to ask more about that, but he had changed the topic.

"Thank you for doing this, Hannah," he said, in his somber way, as if he had just asked me to scrub the mold off his kitchen tiles. "I'm very grateful."

"
No problem," I said cheerfully. "Besides, who else could do this, right? I have that special predisposition, don't I?"

That was a very understated way of saying that I was uniquely positioned to take on this job because a long time ago I had an ancestor who
was one of those deities who fell in love with a mortal. It didn't work out, but when did those ever?

An awkward pause followed, not just in my head but between me and Quin. I cleared my throat.
"So what do I need to do?" I asked. "Is there, like, an initiation?"

Quin had a hint of a smile on his face,
the only kind of smile I've seen on him. He touched my wrist and gently led me to where he had been standing, and I could see the moon right behind him, visible already in the late afternoon sky.

He looked so…
cute
as a word was so inadequate, it should be ashamed of itself.

"
Stand still," he said.

He gently
tipped my chin up, like he was making me look at the moon. The tips of his fingers touched my forehead, then my temple near the corner of my right eye.

What was I supposed to be
doing? I couldn't look at the moon even if I tried.

I wanted to say something
to release the ball of tension in my throat but he had come even closer, and then our heads were together, his lips grazing my ear. He said something in a whisper, something that felt gentle and old, and I either couldn't hear it or understand it, but immediately afterward I felt a rush of warmth radiating from each point where he had touched me.

I fainted.
Or something happened and it felt like fainting. Everything in my peripheral vision went white and yet I could only see the moon, the sky, and Quin's face.

And then he stepped back.

"That's it?" I asked.

He nodded.
"Yeah, that's it."

"
What happens next?"

"
You'll start seeing it. Remembering things that never happened to you. And people will begin to find you, because they need you. There might be dreams too."

Great, like I hadn
't had enough dreams featuring Quin.

I
blinked. "What if you had to initiate a guy?"

Quin almost laughed. I liked to think that I brought that out in him. Instead of what was closer to the truth, which was that I was just a silly mortal who happened to have the barest minimum of goddess
in me to meet the job requirement. I began to suspect that he knew exactly how I felt about him. He probably always did, pre-goddess stuff.

That was
so
embarrassing.

So yes, I knew longing.

You called the goddess of love with a song. Quin actually hummed it for me.

"
It sounds like a lullaby," I said. I must have heard it from my grandmother.

It
's the sound that the heart makes. It calls you to hear it, and when you do, you will be able to see, and feel, and remember, someone's pain or joy with such clarity.

Over the next few weeks, Quin and I met at the roof of the North building and he explained how things worked. The goddess of love listened to people. She received requests, pleadings, demands, and her job was to decide what happened next.

"How exactly do I do that?" I couldn't comprehend it. So maybe I selfishly agreed to do this because I wanted to be closer to Quin, but this was
serious business.
Maybe a little too serious. More than once, I started to panic.

And every time, Quin would find a reason to brush a hand, a fingertip, an arm, against my skin, and I felt instantly reassured. Even if I didn
't understand it all just yet.

"
Don't worry about it. It'll start with words, conversations. Those are simple, easy to handle. The rest will come when you're ready, I'm sure you won't even notice that you're different."

"
Different how?"

"
You'll be able to do more than listen. It's like…
enhanced
empathy."

"
Will I have powers?"

"
Let's see how you do with listening first."

"
Okay." I was hoping there would be powers. "Is it because of those people who keep telling me their love stories? Is that why I'm qualified to fill in as goddess of love?" I asked him.

"
You're qualified because I chose you."

I wanted to ask,
you mean you chose me because I'm qualified, right?
But it wasn't the time for nitpicking, or for second-guessing Quin, the sun god of the Tagalogs. (Technically my people, based on ancestry.)

Instead, I asked,
"When will it start?"

"
One of these days. You'll be summoned, but don't feel like you have to help everyone who does. Take it one person at a time."

"
Like a project."

"
Yeah, something like that."

So I wasn
't going to be expected to solve the love problems of the billions of people in the world. (Good to know.) I guess I was on a Goddess Probation Period.

Kathy Martin claimed to have a special power too.

"
I'm invisible, I swear," she moaned.

I didn
't react immediately.

"
I'm
kidding
," she added.

"
Of course, I knew that," I said. I hoped that becoming goddess didn't mean having to lose my sense of humor. Then again, Quin never laughed at anything. In my defense, I got thrown off by "invisible." I mean if the Sun God was walking around on campus, anything else was possible, right?

"
I mean, I might as well be. I don't really get noticed."

On a bench in front of
the cafeteria, Kathy told me about herself while I chewed on the
turon
-- fried banana rolls with sugar and jackfruit -- that she bought for me.

I totally got what she
was all about, within seconds. She, too, was a sophomore. She, too, was okay-looking but was a makeover away from being
really
attractive. She, too, wore her nice-enough outfits with about as much flair as a clothes hanger.

I also picked up something else.

…
When Kathy was nine years old
, a boy in her class decided that he liked her more than any other girl there, and he would show it by being an annoying little man every day that he saw her. It would start from when, after getting off the school bus, she would cross the open field to get to the entrance closest to the grade four classrooms. He was always hanging out there, outside the doors and near the drinking fountain, in any kind of weather. And he would call out a new insult as she passed. Not that he was the finest specimen himself -- he was skinny and his teeth were crooked.

S
he knew he liked her. She wasn't like some of her friends who studied in all-girl Catholic schools that never offered regular boy interaction -- she wasn't fooled by this at all. It was why the first time, she just gritted her teeth and ignored him. Besides, pointing out to the dozen other people within earshot that her hair looked unwashed wasn't as humiliating as he thought. Neither was noticing the rash she had on her neck from the heat. But on the third day, he yanked at her bag, and started to say something about it being the kind of bag that a grade one kid would have, and she hit him.

It
was instinct, and also the pent-up rage from the other two days. As soon as he pulled at her backpack, her other arm (the one that had a lunch bag at the end of it) swung in his direction and a container of fried chicken and rice hit his head. He was surprised, and maybe slightly injured, but he never reported it.

Kathy only got a moment
's satisfaction from this because she immediately saw that he liked it.

Yikes.

The next few days, he continued to stand there as she passed, and sometimes made a move to touch her bag again. She tried so very hard to be casual and unaffected by it, but that walk from her school bus to the building, the act of crossing the field, started to give her stress.

She started to wish that he wouldn
't notice her. If he could just, well, be distracted by something else as she passed. Nothing even had to happen to him. She just wanted him not to notice her.