Page 8 of Celebrities Don't Date Bookworms

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

Bay

I’m going to do some errands

Text if you need anything

Sharky

Want to meet us at Sunset?

It’s a little crazy, could use back-up

I chuckled to myself as I read the text. They were probably either swept up in the mass of Take Five fans or they were there for the same reason as them.

“What is it?” Sloane asked.

“Nothing, just more of the group chat,” I said. I slipped the phone back into my pocket. “Anyway, do you have your car today, or do we have to walk?”

My mom usually drove me to school, but I was on my own to get my way home. Sloane and her older brother traded off who got to use the car every day, so I was never sure if we had to walkor not. It seemed like it was always the days that I wanted a ride home the most that she didn’t have it.

“Walk,” Sloane sighed. “Tom insisted that he needed the car today.”

“What for?”

“Dunno. As a rule, I don’t take an interest in his life.” She paused as we stepped outside the front gates and put her hand on my arm. “Hang on, I want to change my shoes.”

“I’ve never understood how you find your flimsy sandals more comfortable than sneakers,” I said. This was a daily occurrence; even though our shoes weren’t part of our uniform, we had some rules about what we were allowed to wear, and the major one was that they had to be closed-toe, which Sloane hated on principle.

“I just hate sneakers,” Sloane said, disgust clear in her voice. She did sometimes wear boots to school instead, but she claimed that she couldn’t do that before it was officially fall. She was very conscious about her fashion choices, even if they didn’t follow any known fashion rules—she just made them up as she went and insisted on following them for some reason.

She pulled a pair of sandals out of her backpack and dropped them on the ground, then tightened her grip on me while she pulled off her white sneakers and slipped her feet into the new shoes. I thought that after months of doing this, she would have gotten better balance, but if anything, it seemed like it was getting consistently worse.

“Thank you,” she said, releasing her talon grip on my arm. I gently rubbed at the now-red spot while she stuffed her sneakers in her bag. It seemed like too much extra work to me, but if it made her happy, I wasn’t going to say anything. She glanced at her watch. “Come on. If I hurry, I might be able to stop at Starbucks with you.”

She linked her arm through mine, which would have been a kind gesture if she hadn’t immediately started pulling me along, basically ripping my shoulder out of my socket.

“Hi, uh, just a little reminder,” I said as I stumbled along and tried to match her pace. “You’re half a foot taller than me, so I can’t walk as fast as you.”

“Maybe you should learn to walk faster.”

“Maybe you should get a shorter stride.” I pulled my arm out of hers but continued trying to match her pace. Her parents were really strict about the fact that they expected her to be home within thirty minutes of her classes or extracurriculars ending, which could be difficult considering how far away she lived.

“I still can’t believe that Take Five is coming to school with us.” Sloane shook her head. “It’s insane, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” I muttered. I seemed to be the only person in the whole school who didn’t think this was all that cool. They were just regular people, right? And they were probably total snobs too—celebrities always were. “But I bet they’re not even going to, like, talk to anybody but each other. They’re probably just going to a regular high school for goodPR or whatever.”

“What good would that do?” Sloane asked. We paused at the edge of a street with no stop sign and waited for the cars to slow down. Sloane groaned and tapped her foot impatiently. “Why is this street always so busy?”

“It makes them seem like regular people.”

“What?”

“The PR,” I clarified. “They seem more down to earth if they’re going to school. And isn’t one of them from here originally? So, it’s not even that cool.”

There was a brief break in traffic, so we ran across the street quickly, only slowing down once we were fully on the opposite sidewalk.

“I don’t think he’s from here specifically,” Sloane said. “It’s Jude Turner you’re thinking of, right? I think he’s from Ontario, but not Bibridge. Anyway, I heard that they all live in a mansion with his older brother acting as their legal guardian right now, since they all need to live here and none of their families are here.”

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