Page 1 of Celebrities Don't Date Bookworms

prologue

I could hearthe giddy screeching all the way from the football field. It was so loud that, for the first time ever, it made me happy I was in gym class because it meant I was as far away from it as possible without actually leaving the school grounds.

“She couldn’t have waited until the end of the school day to announce it?” Coach Reynolds muttered, shaking her head. “Nobody is going to focus now.”

“She’s got that right,” I whispered to my best friend Sloane, who nodded back with wide eyes.

Sloane and I were stretched out on our backs—pretending to do sit-ups whenever our gym teacher walked by but really just soaking up the last of the summer sun—when the announcement came out on the PA system.

“Hello, everyone, this is Principal Roman here.” The audio was crackling because the outside speakerssucked, but they worked well enough for us to be able to make out the words. “My apologies for the interruption, but it has just come to my attention that one announcement was left off the list this morning.”

Sloane’s face scrunched up in confusion as she looked at me. I just shrugged back. In all my time at Summerfield Prep, I’d never had this happen. With the fast-paced curriculum we had here, interruptions were costly.

Principal Roman cleared her throat, sounding a little uncomfortable as she said, “Starting next week, on September 17th, the school will have some new students. I expect all of you to treat them with the same respect and dignity that you treat all your other classmates—this includes respecting their privacy and personal space, not asking for autographs while at school, and not impeding their learning in any way.”

Sloane propped herself on her elbows, her silky light brown hair falling across her back. Her Southern accent was especially strong as she looked at me and asked, “Did she say ‘autographs’?”

I just nodded , too confused to even piece together a real response. If I hadn’t recognized Principal Roman’s voice, I would have thought this was some sort of prank.

“I’m sure you are all wondering who these students are,” Principal Roman continued. She sighed like she was pre-emptively expecting the reactions of everyone in the school. “And it gives me great pleasure to tell you all that the members of the famous boy band Take Five will be starting at our Summerfield Prep this coming Monday.”

That was when the screeching started.

one

12 HOURS EARLIER

The first text came in at 1:34 in the morning. Normally, I wouldn’t have even heard it—my mom was always on my case about having my phone on silent overnight so the notifications weren’t constantly going off and “ruining my sleep” and “bothering everyone else in the house” (as if anyone could hear it through the walls). But as it was, I’d completely forgotten to put it on silent, and I just happened to be lying in bed, wide awake and with nothing to do.

I groaned and rolled onto my side. For some reason, my phone’s brightness was still at maximum, even though I’d been in a pitch-black room for the past three hours, so I had to squint as I turned it on and waited for my eyes to adjust. New notifications were coming in every second, making my phone chirp constantly, and the messages stacked on top of each other so fast that I couldn’t read them. Only one thing remained consistent: the group name.

Group name:I promise this isn’t a group chat, Dad

Members:Ni-Ni, Bay, Sharky, Tis Moi Luca, Zesty

I frowned. Who the heck had added me to a group chat, especially in the middle of the night? I wasn’t exactly wildly popular at school. In fact, the only group chats I’d ever been added to before this was for group projects, and even those were pretty dead, even when the projects were still going on.

I opened the chat but didn’t bother to scroll up to the top to see the beginning of the messages. There were already over thirty messages from the last minute, and it wasn’t worth the effort to go scroll that far to read them. I just started from the place where it opened up automatically.

Ni-Ni

Whoever set my name to be this…

Get ready to pay in the morning

Bay

You’ll have to figure out who did it first

Sharky

Feel like that would be pretty easy to check

Ni-Ni

Only if you idiots quit blowing up this chat

Tis Moi, Luca

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