Celebrities Don’t Date Bookworms (Texting the Boyband #1)

Chapter 1

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

Can’t stop, won’t sto p

I clicked on each of the names in turn to see the phone number associated with them, but I didn’t have any of them saved in my contacts. The only information I got from it was that they all had the same area code as me, so they had to be local. It still didn’t explain why they had my phone number, though, or why they all seemed to know each other when I didn’t know them.

Was this some sort of prank? It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to me, though I didn’t see how this could be one. Maybe it was some new version of a prank phone call with more steps. It didn’t seem funny, but then again, I didn’t find prank calls funny either.

Zesty

Not to interrupt but

Who are you?

I frowned in confusion as my name appeared on the screen. Who was Zesty? I mean, obviously, nobody had their real name in this group chat, but the rest seemed to be at least somewhat related to real names from what I could tell, and Zesty was nowhere close to Megan. Ni-Ni could be a real nickname, and it seemed like a fair guess that Tis Moi, Luca was somebody named Luca. Sharky and Bay were strange ones, but the people who had them seemed unbothered. Was it an inside joke of some sort? Mine certainly wasn’t.

Ni-Ni

Good one, Z

Zesty

Who?

Tis Moi, Luca

Hey did you guys get that email from George

Okay, so either this was a really elaborate prank, or they thought that I was someone else. Someone who actually had friends who would add them to a group chat like this. Someone who would understand the joke behind the nickname and who knew who this George guy was. Someone who wasn’t me.

I had two options: try to tell them yet again that I wasn’t the person who belonged in this chat—possibly feeding into whatever the stupid prank was if it was one—or just act like I was meant to be there. Considering they had ignored me the first two times, telling them that I wasn’t Zesty seemed like a waste of my time, especially if this was a prank. The second one was probably a little stupid, too, but what the heck? It wasn’t like I could sleep anyway.

Bay

The one about the school?

Tis Moi, Luca

Yeah. What kind of name is Summerfield?

I blinked in surprise at the mention of my school. Even with their phone number being local, there wasn’t a high chance of them talking about Summerfield; it was just a small prep school in a mid-sized city.

Zesty

Summerfield Prep?

That’s my school!

Tis Moi, Luca

Yeah we’re all going to school together dude

Bay

Except he’ll be a senior

Ni-Ni

And I’ll be a sophomore :)

Tis Moi, Luca

Such a baby

So whoever this Zesty person was, they were a senior, and they either went to my school or were going to be starting at my school in the near future. That didn’t narrow it down much for me, though, because I didn’t know any seniors. Not to mention that even if I did, I would have no way of guessing who this person was. One of them had referred to me as Z, but I wasn’t sure whether that was because of this person’s real name or the nickname Zesty .

Maybe if I talked about myself a little, they would figure out that I wasn’t who they thought I was. And maybe if I was lucky, they would tell me a little about themselves, too. From what I could gather, with Zesty being a senior and Ni-Ni being a sophomore, the other three were probably juniors. Or at least, Tis Moi, Luca was. That meant he was the one I was most likely to know, and if he told me anything more about himself, I might be able to identify him.

Zesty

Are the rest of you juniors?

I am too

Bay

Why are you acting so weird Z?

Tis Moi, Luca

He just knows how to commit to a bit

Ni-Ni

Since when?

Tis Moi, Luca

Let him live

Okay, so that plan hadn’t worked out. I still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t all part of a prank somehow—like they were trying to confuse me for some reason. I still just didn’t understand what it was or why they would target me in particular. That is if they were targeting me specifically. Hardly anybody had my phone number, so it was more likely that they had just typed a random one in and hoped for the best. Regardless, going along with it was probably the best way to get out of this without embarrassing myself.

Sharky

More importantly

Quit texting

And let me sleep

Bay

Quit being a grump Fi

Tis Moi, Luca

Yeah sleep is for the weak

Sharky

Guess I’m weak then

Because I have to wake up at 5am tomorrow

Tis Moi, Luca

Ew why

Sharky

Training for that 5k remember?

Tis Moi, Luca

And I repeat

Ew why

Sharky

Because heart health is a serious issue

Zesty

That’s a nice story grandpa

Tis Moi, Luca

I like this new version of you

Zesty

;)

Ni-Ni

Not to side with Fi but

I also need to sleep

And you probably should too

Tis Moi, Luca

Ughhh you guys are the worst

Bay

Honestly

Zesty

Who needs sleep

That’s what boring classes are for

I really only said it to be funny because I’d never actually fallen asleep in class before. I’d been tempted loads of times, but I was way too much of a rule-follower to actually do it. Sloane, on the other hand, slept through at least one class a day.

Bay

You’re so right

But whatever see y’all tomorrow

Zesty

Night

I let my phone drop back down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling with a smile. They would probably figure out that I wasn’t who they thought I was by tomorrow, but at least they gave me something fun to do tonight while I couldn’t sleep. After a summer of seeing almost nobody, it was nice to feel like I had a few friends.

Even if it was only for tonight.