Interim Goddess of Love #1 of 3 (COMPLETE)

Chapter 18

The Original Goddess could have decided your fate in less than a second. You didn't have to meet her at school and take her out for a snack at the cafeteria. She could listen to the hearts of all the world's people and pass judgment on every request in the same moment.

I apparently was still bound by the laws of time and space, unlike Original Goddess. I couldn't even imagine being able to do that, be responsible for the happiness of so many. But Original Goddess had a head start of, well, millennia. I didn't feel the pressure to be just like her right now.

On this particular morning, though, I was beginning to imagine what it might be like. Maybe it just happened to be a clear day, or it was so early and quiet. I was sitting on the curb of the circular driveway that served as the main entrance to Ford River, and I was alone.

But I could feel things.

They were just flashes of feelings, so quick that if I stopped to think about one, five more would zing right by. They were over before I could figure out what they were or who they were from.

Or maybe I was imagining it.

As seven o'clock neared, more and more people walked past me, making their way to their first class. SKs usually entered the campus on foot, because public transport only stopped a block from here. RKs either drove in with their own cars, or were dropped off by their drivers. The first bell sounded, ten minutes to class, and the morning rush into school peaked.

The flashes stopped.

Kathy's car pulled up into the driveway, and I pounced.

"Hey," I said.

Annoyance fluttered in her eyes and it confirmed right then that she did hang up on me last night. "Hannah."

"What was that about, huh? Did you even hear what I was trying to tell you? I hope that was just a horrible signal and a dropped call."

"I have a class in five minutes," Kathy said curtly.

"You're freaking out. Don't freak out. This is it, Kathy."

She shook her head. "Stop saying that. I don't believe you."

"It's true!"

"I'm not sure what I was thinking, telling you all that," she said. "It's embarrassing and you want me to make an even bigger fool of myself."

"You won't. Jake absolutely positively likes you, and if you show up at the Bash you'll find out."

"He has a girlfriend. Everyone knows that." Kathy tried to take a step forward but she couldn't get past me.

"You just have to trust me on this, Kathy! He likes you."

Even as she rejected the things I was saying, I felt her hope. It was frail now, because it was being stomped on repeatedly each time it tried to get up.

Kathy's World History Teacher had all of their slips of paper with their "Five Things We Don't Know About You" in a mug. When Kathy stuck her hand in, to randomly find out more about a classmate, she picked out the list of a certain Mandy Cho. No offense to Mandy, the smart, soft-spoken and perfectly lovely Korean student, but Kathy looked over her list and tucked it into her bag without really thinking about it.

Then, right before she left for class, she saw the piece of paper on the floor, the list that her own seatmate had carelessly tossed aside. Jake Lalisan's Five Things. He had her at #2—"I used to want to be a spy when I grew up."

I would make a great spy, because I'm invisible, Kathy told herself. She wanted to be noticed more, but this guy wanted to be able to disappear. She wondered if they could trade issues. Oh, and #3, loving lions, she found that hilarious.

By the next class, she was trying to guess who Jake was. Who looked like a guitar-playing, lion-loving military brat? Was it the chubby guy, second row? The tall, lean guy with long hair at the end of row 3? There was a really cute guy on the first row, but it couldn't be him.

Why couldn't it be though? His perfect posture could have been imparted by his military dad. The restless tapping of his fingers might be because of that lack of focus, or a reaction to the broken finger. The choice of first row could be a move to force himself to pay attention to the class. She couldn't find evidence of spy or lion fascination just from watching him from across the room, and for two more class days she played this silly game in her mind.

She wanted the cute guy to be Jake, and she felt a little smug for knowing these five things about him already—but didn't want to get her hopes up. Even in daydreams, Kathy liked to keep herself in check.

And then, anticlimactically, her teacher ended it by calling on him one time for recitation—Jake Lalisan. So yeah, it was him. So what was she going to do about it?

Apparently, nothing. Kathy was too shy to approach him, and in the weeks that followed she saw him get adopted into the popular barkada. She thought maybe, at the end of the semester, she'd tap him on the shoulder and say hello, how's the lion? But she didn't get to do it. (Plus it wasn't her style.)

So she disappeared again. That was more her style.

This was the thought that flashed right from Kathy and into me, and she kept clinging to it, to her self-proclaimed boo-hoo-no-one-ever-notices-me, as she spoke to me now. "Hannah, you're nice and I had a great time talking to you, but can you hear yourself right now? You're not making any sense. I don't believe you."

Quin warned me that this would happen. Not just Kathy, but pretty much anyone else. He said: People have a hard time believing. Don't take it personally. Until they believe, you can't do much for them. Let them go until they find you again.

How could I let this go when they were both so close? All Kathy needed to do was accept Jake's invitation.

"Just listen to me a second—" I started to say. And then the bell rang, and Kathy said she was going to be late for class, and she just left me there on the curb.

* * *

"How do I convince someone to do something for me?"

Diego looked up from what appeared to be math notes, even though the open bag by his feet seemed to have nothing else but basketball stuff. "I'm not your teacher. Where's Joaquin?"

I plopped down on the bench next to him. "I'm pretty sure he'll think my question is against his philosophy of letting things be."

"You just have to ask. Your followers will do anything you ask of them." As if that was that, Diego went back to his notes.

"Well what if she kind of doesn't believe me anymore?"

He paused and looked at me.

"I'm sorry if I'm bothering your... homework. Why you would even do this is weird to me."

"Why I would do what?"

"Math."

"I like puzzles." Diego shut his notebook. "New Girl, there's no handbook. If you try something and it doesn't work, then you don't have it."

"Arrrrrgggggggg. I think I may have scared Kathy off by telling her what I know about Jake. I mean, I can't even prove I know what I know."

Diego did the boy equivalent of rolling his eyes. "No details please, I'm about to cry from boredom."

"What, so you're not in the mood to help love struck kids today?"

He gave me that look again, and I tried not to blink. "Every day is different for me."

"I'm sure Quin just loves that about you."

"You know what? Just tell me what exactly you want done. The longer I let you talk about this, the longer you'll talk about it."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You won't be breaking some sort of law if you help me?"

To emphasize his point he slammed his notebook shut, pulling me up standing with him. "Even if I were I'd still help you. Just to get you to move on already."

Now see, Diego was proactive. I was starting to like that in a guy.