Some more goddess

We’d been sitting together for three weeks, and actually having lunch with each other for two, when we decided to create the world.

“Don’t eat that,” she ordered me, pointing at the substance on my lunch tray (even now, years later, I still hesitate to call it food). “It’s nastier than a swamp of dog poo.”

“A…what?” I looked down at the greenish tray and stuck out my tongue. “Great. Now I can’t eat it.”

“Throw it out,” she told me, and handed me half of her own sandwich. “You ought to start bringing your own food; this stuff will make your face swell up again. I’m still convinced it was cafeteria food that did that to you in the first place.”

“I think if it was, more people would have turned into bloated toads,” I commented. “And parents would have complained. Parents always complain, like they think that changes anything.”

She nodded, and we spent a few moments contemplating the silliness of adults.

“Anyway,” Megan chomped on her sandwich and poked her bookbag as if checking to make sure she’d put her most recent book back in properly. “I bet the cafeteria does have some kind of disease they put in random students’ food, to test what happens to them.”

“Why the heck would they do that?”

“Because they’re trying to create an army of mindless zombie warriors to take over the town, and they’re testing out the formula.”

“I didn’t become a mindless zombie warrior.” I reached up to touch my face, reassuring myself that it was, once again and at long last, completely normal. If a bit scrawny. And uneven. And…well, I was a teenager. My face would never be nice enough.

“Nope – you just got real ugly,” she shook her head as if this made her point exactly. “Yours was a bad test. They probably got files somewhere saying but a failure that particular cafeteria lady was.”

I tried to imagine the fat little woman at the lunch line as a mad scientist slipping manufactured zombie-drugs into unsuspecting high-schooler’s food, and couldn’t quite get around the concept. “Tell me,” I asked Megan, feigning awe, “how is it you know so much of the ways of the world?”

“Easy,” she shot back, accepting my mock praise with dignity. “I’m a goddess.”

“A goddess? What, like the Goddess of Good Grammar?”

She glared at me. “No, doofus, not like a goddess of anything. Just a goddess.”

She sat back – no, it was more like a slam – and folded her arms. Even in as little time as I’d spent with her then, I’d already begun to learn some of the signs. She looked angry for no good reason, which meant that she’d just said something that she expected would turn into a fight.

“So…” I bit my lip, debated what to say. “How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re a goddess.”

She shrugged, frustrated and uncomfortable. “I write stuff.”

I thought about that for awhile. I, like most bookworms, had a deep love for stories. And I had tried my hand at writing my own several times – with varying results. I had invented creatures, people, and worlds often enough to think of myself as a creative individual…but I’d never thought of myself as a creator. It was a new, startling concept for me. “I think I’d like to be a goddess too.”

“You need training,” she told me sternly. “I’ve seen you writing in your notebook, and you always leave off halfway through a sentence, or you only write a couple paragraphs then turn the page and start over.”

I stared at her – I hadn’t known she was paying such close attention to me during our quieter lunches.

“Then…will you train me?” I held my hands out and bowed as much as I could from a sitting position. “Oh Divine One, wilt thou show me thy ways of power, yea verily, unto great renown and so on.”

Megan eyeballed me. “Are you mocking my divinity?”

I shook my head. “No! Well, maybe. But just a little.”

“Get your paper and pen,” she ordered, sitting up straight. “Exercise number one: if the world were perfect, what would it be like?”

“Perfect for you or for me?”

“Perfect for everybody. Duh.”

I scratched my head, making a show of thinking hard. “But your definition of perfect might not match mine.”

“Perfection is not subjective,” Megan pointed a finger at me. “That’s why it’s perfection.”

“But it’s impossible to create something that everyone likes!” I waved my pen back at her. “There’s always gonna be someone who doesn’t like it, no matter how good it is.”

She pointed at the blank paper. “Try.”

“Slave driver,” I muttered.

“Less whine,” she shot back. “More write.”