Page 37 of Celebrities Don't Date Bookworms

Eggo

You don’t share a roomwith any of them?

Bay

Nope

Why would we?

That was strange. I couldn’t think of any houses nearby that would be big enough to have more than five bedrooms. While the houses in my neighborhood weren’t small, most of them had four bedrooms at a maximum. Granted, it was possible that he just meant that he didn’t share a room with anyone, but the other four could be split into pairs. But the wording of his text made it sound like none of them shared rooms. And the only place with houses big enough for that was… Beachwood.

The area neighbored mine, but definitely wasn’t comparable; it was filled with mansions, so big that my mom and I often wondered who could possibly need that much space. Properties with indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, guest houses… everything that I saw in movies, but didn’t think anyone had in real life. Bay couldn’t live there, could he? There was no way his family was paying for him to live there without them, right? But then again, his living arrangement wasn’t typical at all, so was this that much of a stretch? Maybe there was some reason they could afford it. All five of their families were probably pitching in.

Eggo

How big is your house??

Bay

Oh

Um

Big

I guess his awkwardness in answering told me everything that I needed to know. A second later, he sent a voice note. My thumb hovered over the play button for a second before I pressed down.

“Hey,”the voice note said. My heart melted a little at the sound of his voice. Even though we had a lot of international students at my school, including a lot of boys with British accents, there was something about his accent in particular that really spoke to me. Amusement was in his voice as he added,“Sorry, I didn’t think about what I was going to say.”

I laughed a little before I recorded a message back.“Don’t worry about it. But if you don’t know what else to say… why don’t you tell me another secret?”

I’d enjoyed sharing our secrets the other day. Even if they weren’t deep secrets, I liked learning about him. Knowing things that nobody else knew. And I guess he did too because he got back to me almost right away.

“This is a stupid secret, but Fi—um, I guess you would know him as Sharky. I accidentally bought the same shoes as Sharky, and we’re the same size, so it’s easy to get them mixed up, so we keep them in different spots. But a few days ago I stepped in this awful puddle, and got my shoes all wet, but I knew I had to wear them for a thing that night, so I swapped mine and his, then never told him. To this day, he has no idea why his pristine shoes were suddenlywet and muddy.”

Well, that secret was a step up from “I don’t like long noodles.”

“Please tell me you switched them back after,”I sent back.

“Okay, so that was the plan…”he laughed.“But then he blamed Luca for it because he likes pranking us a lot, and he got revenge on him with another prank, so then I felt like I couldn’t own up to it. So if the guys ever mention a prank war in the group chat, you’ll know it was because of me.”

“I mean, on one hand, that’s awful, but on the other hand, it’s kind of hilarious. Especially if Luca was already pranking you guys.”

I couldn’t imagine what it was like to have five teenage boys under one roof. I was sure it was constant chaos.

“I just consider it as the kick in the pants Sharky needed to finally get back at Luca. It was about time.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the nicknames we had to use to describe the other boys. “Luca” was at least a normal one, but the idea of a sixteen-year-old boy named Sharky was hilarious. Although, talking about them like this made me think of a lot more questions I had about them. I wondered whether he would be more open to revealing some of their secrets today.

“You know, it would help me to imagine this if I knew what the guys sounded like,”I said in my next voice note.“Any chance you could send a… I don’t know, video of them talking? Without their faces visible somehow?”

There was a long pause before Bay responded.

“I can’t find any good audios that show their voices. But I can tell you that we all have different accents.”

Interesting. While we did have a fair number ofinternational students at Summerfield, the fact that all five of them were from different places seemed like a strange coincidence.

“Okay, I have a new theory,”I responded.“I think you’re all exchange students. Or at least the other boys are. I’m not sure how you fit into this theory since you’re from Canada, but I’m guessing that the rest of them moved in together as part of the exchange program. And that explains why you’re all starting at the same time.”

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