Page 44 of Celebrities Don't Date Bookworms

“Not unless I want my momto kill me,” I said.

Bay sighed deeply. “I guess that’s a good reason. Can I call you again soon?”

“Of course,” I said. “Soon. I promise.”

“Oh, before you go,” Bay said quickly. “You have to tell me a secret.”

Crap. He was right, but I could hear my mom walking around with her shoes on downstairs, which meant she wanted to leave literally any second, and if I didn’t come down right away, she would come up here, which would not end well. I needed to think of something fast.

“I want to meet you,” I blurted out without thinking. I didn’t know where that came from—I guess my fear of him possibly knowing my name led to that. “I mean, I?—”

“I want to meet you too,” he responded. I froze. What did this mean? If we both wanted to meet each other in person, where did we go from here? I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that. “But… I think we should wait.”

“You do?” I asked hopefully.

“Just a little longer,” he murmured. “Is that okay?”

“Yes,” I said.Just a little longer.Would we actually go through it one day? “Yeah, that’s okay.”

nine

“Quit dragging your feet.”Sloane laughed, and pulled on my arm, forcing me to stumble along behind her as we walked to the back stairwell of the school. I tried to resist by making myself dead weight, but it did nothing to deter her. She was determined to get to class on time, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Honestly, what are the chances that they’ll even be in our class?”

“How many of them are our age?”

“Three.”

“Our school doesn’t have that many grade eleven classes going on at once, Sloane. I’d say the chances are pretty high.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Sloane said. When we finally made it to the bottom of the stairs, she let go of my arm and sighed. “On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t go.”

Of course, it was the annoyance of having to walkup a flight of stairs that was convincing her not to go to class instead of anything that I could say.

“I told you we should have bargained to get lockers on the main floor,” I said. We didn’t really have any say in which lockers we got, but it was possible to ask the administration to let you switch spots if there were any left available. We briefly considered it at the beginning of the year but decided against it—we’d lucked out enough getting lockers next to each other already, we didn’t want to risk getting spread apart again, even if it meant being on the main floor instead of the basement.

Sloane sighed, and slammed a foot down on the first step, then another on the next. That was how she walked up the stairs whenever she was tired, no matter how ineffectual it was. It was even worse in the ninth grade when we had gym (which was on a floor beneath the basement believe it or not) then had to climb three very long flights of stairs to get to science class on the third floor. It would have been bad enough to do that from any class, but from gym, it was the worst.

“Do you think they’re here yet?” I asked.

“Do you hear any screaming?” Sloane asked.

“Good point.” There was a lot of excited talking that morning, but as of yet, there hadn’t been the actual screaming that we guessed would accompany the arrival of the boys. I sighed and followed her up the stairsto our French class. These back stairs were nice for usually being emptier than any of the other ones, and being almost right beside our classroom.

“Bonjour, Madame,” Sloane said to our teacher as we walked inside. Mme. Dubois smiled and greeted her back.

Once we were sitting at our desks, I whispered, “Kiss up.”

“Excusez-moi, on parle Français dans cette classe,” Sloane said in a broken French accent. It was required for us to start taking French in the fourth grade, but that didn’t mean any of us were any good at it. I wasn’t even sure if what she said was close to being grammatically correct. Our teacher didn’t care much, honestly, as long as we were trying to speak French. From what I could tell, at some point in her career, she learned that every student in this school was completely useless at French.

“Okay, class,” Madame Dubois said after the bell, and morning announcements. It wasn’t unusual for her to give us instructions in English—none of us would understand if she said a single word in French, honestly—but something about her tone made me think this was going to be something different from usual. “I’m sure you all remember the announcement from last week that the Take Five boy band will be starting at Summerfield today.”

Almost everyone sat up a little straighter at the mention of Take Five. I swore there was some shift in energy in the room, like everyone who previously wanted to still be sleeping was now alert and ready to go.

“And it is my pleasure to tell you all,” Madame Dubois said in a voice that made itvery clear it was not a pleasure at all, “that two of the members of the band will be in our class.”

I could feel every girl in the class holding their breath, waiting to hear who it was. I narrowed my eyes and glared at Sloane, who shrugged back helplessly. Of course, I knew it wasn’t her fault, but I needed someone to blame, and she was the easiest target right now, and she wouldn’t care enough for it to start a fight between us.

“Madame?” Donna Myers was practically standing in her seat, with her arm stuck straight up in the air, and waving to get Mme. Dubois’s attention, as if she could have possibly missed it—there was only twenty of us in this class, and she was sitting in the front row.

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