Page 32 of The Charade

Carter nodded as he wrote down my answer in his notebook. I smiled when I saw the wordsAva wants a fashion empirein his blocky handwriting, because the wordempirehad so much power in it.

When he was done jotting my answer down, I asked, "And what about you? Do you want to be famous?"

"Nope."

The way he said it was so final, like he didn't even care to entertain for one minute the idea of what it would be like to be famous.

"Why not?" I asked, so curious since I figured most everyone I knew would want to be famous in one way or another. If not famous themselves, then at least have something they created become famous.

"I'm already critical enough of myself that I don't need random strangers nitpicking at my flaws," he said matter-of-factly. "When you're famous, people strangely think that you somehow owe them the nitty gritty details of your life: who you're dating, who you went on vacation with, what kind of toothpaste you prefer. I've seen my dad and Dawn deal with enough crap—and they're only famous in the business world. I just don't need to live under a microscope. I like my privacy too much."

"I must seem really naive to you then," I said, suddenly regretting what I said about wanting to be famous.

And to think I'd just been thinking that these questions were tame a second ago.

When he gave a non-committal shrug in reply, I knew he had to be totally judging me.

Ugh. So much for being on equal ground with this guy for once.

Carter cleared his throat. "Ready for the next question?"

I quickly jotted Carter's answer down in my notebook. "Sure."

Hopefully, I could answer this one without seeming stupid to him.

"Okay, this one’s interesting," he said. "It asks if you ever rehearse what you're going to say before making a phone call."

I squished my eyebrows together, wondering how this was even a question. "Is that actually a thing?" I asked at the same time Carter said, "I do. What about you?"

"Wait— You rehearse your conversations beforehand?" I asked, realizing what he'd just said.

"If I can send a text, I'll choose to do that instead," he said. "But sometimes, when I'm making calls for my dad's company, I'll run through what I need to say ahead of time so I don't mess it up."

"Interesting."

"Not all of us are the social butterfly that you seem to be," he said. "I'm guessing from your reaction that you don't do this."

"Can't say that I do."

Was it possible that my math tutor sometimes came off as unapproachable not because he thought he was above everyone, but because he had some social anxiety?

The next few questions were pretty easy, asking us things like what our favorite color was, favorite thing to do during our free time, and our favorite food.

Our answers were the following:

Me: Pink, hanging out with Elyse and our friends, and pizza.

Him: Blue, reading, and his family chef's famous strawberries and cream crepes.

Apparently, he was a lot fancier than I was.

"The next question asks what your favorite place in the whole world is," I said, after reading from the list. After thinking about all the places I'd ever been in the world, which granted probably wasn't many compared to a lot of the kids at this school, I said, "I guess my favorite place that I've ever been to would have to be Habonim-Dor Beach near my grandma and grandpa's home in Israel."

"Your grandparents are from Israel?" Carter asked. "Does that mean you lived there?"

"No," I said. "My mom came to this school when she was in high school and loved the United States, so she came back again to stay after college. I’ve only ever lived in Ridgewater until now. But we've visited my grandparents a few times when they offered to fly us over."

Things had been pretty strained between my mom and grandpa for a while there. Having him disinherit her when she'd told him she was pregnant hadn't exactly put them on the best of terms. But he'd come around a few years later with the help of my grandma and a huge change of heart, and eventually, they were able to patch things up and have a relationship again.

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