Interim Goddess of Love (12 page)

"
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 M. 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.

On Thursday afternoon, the day before the basketball game and the First Quarter Bash, I found out that I wasn't going to the Bash with Sol, because she had a date.

She didn
't exactly get to tell me this though. Instead, she met me as I was closing the Guidance Office, and she had this look on her face -- and I knew what had happened.

Sol was serious when she told me that she was going to start to date. And though I hadn
't known her very long, I did know that Sol was super determined when she put her mind to it.

…Neil was her classmate in chess
, her PE class last semester. She noticed right away that he knew what he was doing, unlike the rest of the students who just seemed to have taken the class so they wouldn't have to change into gym pants and get all sweaty. He beat her on their first game (Ruy Lopez). She beat him on their second (Sicilian Dragon). They never got to have a third game, and whenever they saw each other on campus they'd jokingly refer to a "third game" but never really got around to it.

Also, at the time she still thought she was in a long distance relationship, so
if she had any thoughts about Neil she pushed them away quickly.

But after her declaration to herself, to me, and the universe, that she was going to date again, she decided that she
would
take Neil up on that not-really-a-date offer.

"You asked a guy out to the Bash tomorrow," I said, before she even said hi.

"
I'm sorry!" she gasped, hands to her face. "I was going to tell you. How do you even know about it?"

Next time let them tell story first
, Hannah.
"I guessed," I said.

"
You should still go, of course. I mean, Neil has a car, and I'm sure he won't mind taking you with us."

I was pouting. Actually pouting! Like a child.

As a mature adult (I
was
eighteen after all) I knew I had to be happy for my friend. This was a big leap for her, and from the looks of it, Neil was her type. But I had been looking forward to going to the Bash with her because I had turned down a couple of invites already, and if I went with Sol at least none of them would feel weird about seeing me there with some other guy.

So how much weirder was showing up there as Sol and Neil
's third wheel?

"
Are you mad at me?" Sol wailed. "I'm really sorry. I kind of forgot that you wanted us to go together…"

The fact that poised and put-together Sol was at all wailing just showed how much she really was sorry, but I let myself wallow in self-pity for a few moments more. A mere three hours ago this junior from my history class just walked up to me and asked if I had a date to the Bash.

I said no -- naturally -- not because of my plans with Sol, but because I didn't even know the guy. Plus as someone who hadn't really started dating anyone ever, my default answer was "no" anyway.

"
Didn't Robbie ask you?" Sol went into bargaining territory, misinterpreting what probably seemed like a really long silence. "Because I'm sure we can find him and arrange some kind of…"

"
Please,
please
don't." I hadn't even thought about how to deal with Robbie yet. "Look, don't apologize. I just… you know that I turned down three guys, right?"

"
Three guys asked you?"

"
Yeah, and I said no to all of them for you."

"
Who else asked you?"

"
Robbie. This guy who went to the Guidance Office once. And someone from history class."

"
That's kind of amazing. When did you become campus hottie?"

"
Don't change the subject."

Sol went back into groveling mode.
"I'm
sorry
! I really am. I just thought… I mean, I knew about Robbie but I thought that you'd eventually go with your basketball boy, you know?"

"
Quin and I aren't talking," I said. "Besides, he didn't ask me. And he's not
my
basketball boy."

"
Yes but how can I keep track, right? You two have been so tight lately. I didn't think you and I would actually go to our first Bash dateless, you know?"

Just great.
I didn't think of it that way. I mean, even if Quin and I weren't officially "dating" I always assumed that if we were there together we would hang out, but that wasn't going to happen while I was cold-warring him. I had to go to the stupid party, no getting out of it, and apparently I had to do it dateless.

As a sign of my maturity, I bit my tongue
and held back what I was actually thinking.

"
You're going to drive me there, right?" I said instead.

"
Yes. Yes. Of course!" Sol hugged me like I had given her permission to marry Neil. "Just don't be mad at me. Can't let the new campus goddess be mad at me."

Personality Test Result for Vida Castillo:

You are focused, efficient and organized. You are confident when dealing with people and tasks, which may invite conflict sometimes, but you are also usually unaffected by it. You are a quick and eager learner, dynamic in your actions and adaptive of change. In groups you may often find yourself naturally l
eading, or wanting to lead.

She was at the driveway, standing almost on the same spot where I had been waiting for Kathy. It was a Thursday, and she was wearing a dress that had to be four inches shorter and heels two inches taller than the dress code prescribed. I liked her vest, though.