Note to self: learn social skills

Chapter 6

Up and at 'em little girl."

"I hate you." I mumble at my mom's chirpy behavior too early in the morning.

"Come on, we have breakfast in the big house this morning."

"Uggh." But I get up anyhow. I have no idea what one wears to a breakfast where one might find out that one's life is ruined, so I pick jeans and a polo and follow mom out of the door.

"It's freezing." I mutter, "Why couldn't we live in Florida?"

"Because you wouldn't have nearly as much fun in Florida. And you hate bikinis."

"They objectify women!"

"Well, there you go. Florida is all year bikini land." She stops me outside the door, "Remember Katie, no matter what happens, you're still my little girl, and I'm still your mom. You can't change that, even if you want to."

"I don't want to... much." I say with a smile, giving her a hug.

She holds my hand as we walk through the kitchen entrance and towards the dining room where the family is waiting. I see them sitting at the table, with papers strewn around. Mom walks ahead, but I falter. I'm scared that if I walk into the room with them, my whole life will change. Or maybe it already has and I'm too scared to catch up with it.

I walk into the dining room slowly and Hal groans audibly.

"Oh, you're here! Lovely!" Mrs. Monroe cries, sitting me in seat in front of the biggest stack of papers.

"I had my people print out the information." Mr. Monroe says.

I pick up a paper in front of me, then another, and another. All of them have a common theme of pictures of Hal and me: at dinner, in the lobby while he holds my hand, teaching me tennis. The pictures are not surprising. What is surprising is the captions: "Hal's intimate lunch with new girlfriend", "Hal teaches girlfriend tennis" "Hal Monroe's new girlfriend." This confuses me. Who is this girlfriend person? Not me. Definitely not me.

I begin to flip through the pictures faster, with a growing horror as I notice they all dub me as Hal's girlfriend. As in the girl who sits in his lap, sticks her tongue down his throat and in general makes a slut of herself. Then, I have a whole other horrifying moment when I see a few pictures of me grabbing my boobs, falling on the ground, and in general looking like an idiot.

"Mommy." I whine.

She looks over my shoulder at the pictures and snickers until I glare at her.

"Well, the way I see it, we have a good opportunity here." Mr. Monroe says.

Hal and I look at him like he his mad. He is. Absolutely crazy if he can think of a good thing to come out of the entire world thinking I'm dating the spawn of Satan.

"This isn't a business deal." Hal mumbles.

"Every deal is a business deal, Henry. So, here's what we can do. I see here a son who spends too much time on the front page because of his partying and other...erroneous activities. I see a pretty, sweet girl who could do a lot of PR work for him."

"Uh... I'm not really the... PR type." I say.

"Katharine, what do you want to do after you graduate?"

"Go to Julliard." I mumble.

"Well, a bit of notoriety will certainly not hurt your chances of a good music career. And you can help Henry clean up his image a little, and then, after you graduate, you both part ways naturally and no one will be the wiser."

"Well... see..."

"Oh, it's perfect!" Mrs. Monroe coons.

"See... the problem is... I'd have to date Hal." I say stupidly.