Interim Goddess of Love #1 of 3 (COMPLETE)

Chapter 10

Personality Test Result for Joaquin Apolinario:

You are analytical, rather than emotional. You prefer to work alone, and are more comfortable in social situations with people of similar convictions. The way to get the best out of you is to present facts, argue logically, and prioritize efficiency. To others you may seem cold or unresponsive, but you do open up to certain people over time. Often the lack of warmth is a coping mechanism, and those who deal with you must be patient about it.

I didn't have to feel helpless about this. I saw from my mom's marriage that waiting didn't really do a girl any good, so whenever I started to like a guy, I did things. The first thing was to look him up. (a.k.a. mild stalking.) In high school, this meant I looked up a crush in old yearbooks, tried to find common friends, read up on whatever they happened to be interested in. Not that this all worked, by the way—I did say that I'd never had a boyfriend.

Some girls can't stand to be around the guy they like. They get really nervous, and rather than make fools of themselves, they just stay away. I was the opposite; the more I liked a guy, the more I wanted to be around him. I was the type who'd join the same org, or pick the same elective. Sure I was probably looking like a fool five times a day over a bunch of things, but I liked being close to someone I admired.

The act of doing something about the feelings, no matter how futile the exercise, was still way better than sitting around just hoping they'd notice the girl who never said anything.

Looking someone up was easier because of the internet, except Googling "Joaquin Apolinario" didn't lead anywhere interesting. That was why I was hunting for a mythology book in the library, but even that wasn't so successful.

I guess if a god didn't want to be found, he could, you know, hide a library book about himself. Or scrub the internet of any juicy info.

I had one other source of insight though.

Student personality tests weren't strictly confidential, by the way. I mean, you couldn't just walk into the Guidance Office and ask for the results of some other person, but they didn't keep those things under lock and key. And if I happened to, while encoding a survey, click open another database with the Annual Personality Test results, search for Quin's entry, and print the result page, I wouldn't get into trouble for it, even if anybody else found out.

Farrah Flores, Ms. Farrah was what I called her, was an actual psychologist. She worked with the school two days a week as a guidance counselor. She was a Ford River graduate, also an SK, and decided to work in the Guidance Office for a few years to "give back" to the school. She was young, couldn't have been more than ten years older than me. She still looked like she belonged on campus, and every so often a college guy would speak to me hoping they'd get to ask her out.

Anyway, I liked Ms. Farrah.

"We do this yearly so we can figure out if the student population in general has a common personality," she explained to me. "Like, how many students are introverted? I have a theory that we can get their grades up if we offer modules that'll let some students catch up on class alone, instead of in a group. But that's just a potential application that we never really have time for, so we just keep doing the test. Unless the results show something extreme that we need to be concerned about, and then maybe we'll get that person some help, but that hasn't really happened yet."

I was biting my lip at this, figuring how to get my feelings out in question form.

She shrugged. "Is that what you needed?"

"I guess I wanted to know if this test should be taken seriously. I mean, why take it every year?"

"Sometimes people change," Ms. Farrah said. "Not that the person has changed dramatically, but sometimes if they were in a certain mood while taking the test, it'll affect their results. Sometimes people don't take the test seriously and don't answer truthfully. It's better really to just take the test over a few years and see if it's consistent with their behavior, and maybe any life circumstances. Why do you want to know this, Hannah?"

"I'm just curious," I said, trying to downplay the whole thing.

Quin's results were the same, for all four years that he had taken the test. Talk about someone who was set in his ways.

Did this tell me anything new about him? Only that I had gotten as close to him as I was ever going to get. And that if I wanted anything to happen I had to wait, had to hope he would change his mind.

A phone beeped—Ms. Farrah received a text message. She read it and reacted with an annoyed sigh.

"Can I just tell you about what Ben did again?" she asked. Ben, her boyfriend, was annoying her lately. I had met him briefly the week before, when he came over to pick her up, and got the distinct sense that he was going to propose marriage soon. But I was not going to tell Ms. Farrah that.

I had papers to file, but they can wait. Love apparently had to come first.

"I bought turon for us too," Ms. Farrah said. "Just to save you a trip to the caf."

Love and snacks. This wasn't so bad sometimes.