Chapter 16

“Hey, babe, what’s up?” she said, sounding out of breath but in a good mood.

I’d called close to the end of her pool time, so she must have either just gotten out, or someone heard the ringer and told her. I felt bad interrupting her time, especially if she was having a good day, which it sounded like she was. The closer she got to the summer and the Olympics, the less of those she’d been having.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt your training time, but we have another problem.”

“What now?” she said.

She didn’t sound mad, just suddenly tired. That was the hardest thing for me with seeing my career finally start to take off. I could take the toll, since this is what I signed up for, but I hadn’t been prepared for what it would do to those around me, who just happened to be in my life. Hanna was in her own world and didn’t seem to notice, but Mrs. Phillips and Kat both seemed to be getting worn down from it. And it was my fault.

“There’s going to be more pictures of me and Alina. They got us as we were coming out of the restaurant where I met her, which I told you about. But ... they asked questions about us dating. I know Quinn said just to ignore them, ‘cause anything I say could get twisted, but I was still going to deny it, when Alina spoke up instead.”

“What did she say?” Kat asked cautiously.

“It’s not what she said, but how she said it. She gave a no-comment answer, but the way it was worded, it could very easily be interpreted as a non-denial denial.”

There was a long pause. I could hear Kat breathing but she wasn’t saying anything. I didn’t push her, but it worried me a little. I did want to help Alina; she was actually nice and could use a friend, but not at the expense of my relationship.

“Do you think she did that on purpose?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it, since I can’t exactly call up the paparazzi and tell them that we’re not dating, or that they wouldn’t just twist it anyway if I could. I just wanted to give you a heads up before you see it splashed all over the Internet.”

“I appreciate that, Charlie. And you know I trust you, right? I know there’s nothing going on with you two.”

“Yeah, I know, I just...”

“But...” Kat said, cutting me off. “You’re going to have to deal with this. It sounds intentional. If it isn’t, then fine; but if she’s giving people the wrong impression on purpose, you need to set it straight. Before it gets worse.”

“Yeah. It feels weird to accuse someone of something like that over the phone. We’d talked about meeting up again in a few weeks, since it looks like we’ll be in the same city. I’ll do it then.”

“Good. And Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

When I got home on Monday, I had a couple of surprises. The first was that Mrs. Phillips had finally found me a tutor. She was a former teacher who’d started doing part-time teaching and ended up on a list somewhere for a bunch of child actors, which led her to becoming a go-to online tutor for kids who were essentially homeschooled, since they couldn’t make it to an actual campus.

Besides knowing how to do remote learning like that, she was also just very easy to talk to. She had the same knack Kat had for being able to explain something in a way that made sense, and I could follow. We talked for almost thirty minutes, just discussing what I was having trouble with and where I needed the most help. In the end, it seemed clear my biggest problem wasn’t just finding time to study, but was still from the deficiencies in my early education. I’d managed to make it through when I was in class by really focusing, but I was basically coming up with my own ways of doing things instead of the best way, since I had never learned those.