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

Chapter 4

four

“Megan, can you set the table, please?” Mom stuck her head out of the kitchen and looked at me with raised eyes when I opened my mouth to ask if I could just finish my chapter. I swore she was psychic—she always knew exactly what I was going to say before I could even think it all the way through. “Now.”

I put my book down on the side table and unfurled myself from the strange position I’d been sitting in on the armchair for the past couple of hours. My legs felt a little wobbly under me as I walked into the kitchen, a result of having them pulled up on the chair whenever I was reading. Any physical discomfort was worth it, though, because I’d gotten through more than half the book since coming home from school.

“Is Dylan home?” I asked as I pulled plates out of the cupboard. My thirteen-year-old brother was the exact opposite of me in so many ways. While I looked like my mom with my fair skin and hair, Dylan took after our dad with dark brown hair and eyes; where I hated any and all forms of physical activity, Dylan was on three different sports teams, and where I was quiet and introverted, he was the extroverted class clown, always hanging out with friends or going on dates. It felt like a miracle every time he was home for dinner.

“No, he has hockey until eight o’clock,” Mom said. She stirred some sort of red sauce in the pan on the stove, and my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t realized until then how hungry I was. When I read, it was like the world disappeared from around me, and nothing other than the story existed.

I grabbed three plates and sets of cutlery and moved over to the table to set it. Even with my back to her, I could feel my mom’s eyes on me. I guess I inherited her psychic powers because I knew immediately that she was going to get on my case about going out more.

“So,” Mom said, “have you met any cute boys at school?”

I sighed deeply but held back a groan. Every couple of weeks, my mom would express her concern about the fact that I never went out. She seemed to think it was weird that I didn’t have any friends other than Sloane and that I didn’t like talking to boys. I think she was worried that I was going to become some weird loner in the future.

“There aren’t cute boys at Summerfield,” I replied, probably a little more snippily than was strictly necessary.

“Sure there is, sweetie,” Mom said. She passed behind me and put down the pot of pasta on the table. As she turned to get the sauce as well, her eyes landed on the collar of my shirt. I looked down as well, and my lip curled in disgust as I took in the large coffee stain that was now on it. It had dried on the way home, and I’d been so distracted by the texts from the boys that I hadn’t changed earlier, and then I’d completely forgotten about it. “What happened?”

“Oh, I…” I waved my hand in the air as if dismissing her worries. “It’s stupid. I went to Starbucks after school, and when I took the lid off my coffee…” I trailed off before I mentioned anything about the boy I’d met. Hudson Shaw. I couldn’t exactly tell my mom that a member of her favorite boy band had spilled coffee all over me. I had no clue how she would react to that . But she was looking at me expectantly, so I just said, “I tripped on my shoelace, and spilled it all over myself.”

“Oh.” Mom frowned. “We should probably get you some more white shirts. All of yours are disgusting.”

She wasn’t technically wrong about that, but I didn’t appreciate her saying it so bluntly. What kind of teenage girl liked to be told her wardrobe was disgusting, right? But I also hated to argue, so I just said, “Okay.”

“We’ll go this weekend,” Mom said.

“Can’t we just order some online?” I asked. I hated shopping in general, but I especially hated it with my mother. I knew we wouldn’t just be shopping for new school shirts, we would also end up shopping for clothes for every possible event known to man, and that was always a pain. She would make me try on shirt after shirt, finding a reason to critique every single one of them, so I only ended up with a couple of pieces by the end of it. Then she would take me into a dress shop “just for fun”and make me try on dresses for formal events, even though I only went to those once in a blue moon.

“No, we’ll go to the mall,” Mom said. She bumped her hip against mine, and I grimaced. “Girl’s trip.”

“Okay,” I murmured. “Sounds fun.”

Mom smiled and ran a hand over my hair, then went back to the kitchen. I pulled out my phone to text Sloane and see if she wanted to come shopping with us on the weekend—I knew my mom would say yes, I was pretty sure she liked Sloane better than me—but I got distracted by new messages in the group chat.

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

Members: Ni-Ni, Bay, Sharky, Tis Moi Luca, Eggo, Not Zesty

Bay

Well that was mortifying

Tis Moi, Luca

It wasn’t THAT bad

Sharky

I’m sorry did you not see the outfits they put us in

Tis Moi, Luca

Okay, so they were awful

But it’s over now

Sharky

Yeah now we just have to see them in magazines for who knows how long

Did this have something to do with the reason they all had to leave earlier? Were they doing something as a group? Something that involved getting clothes picked out for them?

Eggo

I’m gonna need to see photos of these outfits

Tis Moi, Luca

Absolutely not

Eggo

Please?

We’ll be friends forever

Tis Moi, Luca

How dare you use our friendship against me

Sharky

Those photos will never see the light of day

Eggo

But what if they did

Bay

Sorry, but there is nothing you could do to convince us

I frowned at my phone as I tried to think of something to suggest, but I was coming up empty. We all knew that I had nothing to offer them in general, let alone something that might be a fair trade for them to reveal something embarrassing to me.

Eggo

I’ll convince you one day

It may not be today

Or the day after that

Or the day after after that

Bay

Let me guess

It will be the day after that?

Eggo

Omg how did you know??

So why were you getting photos taken anyway?

Tis Moi, Luca

Uhhhh

Just for fun?

Eggo

You dress up in mortifying photos just for fun?

Bay

You mean you don’t?

I snorted. Mom looked at me in confusion over her shoulder, and I just waved my phone in the air a little as if that explained everything.

“Are you texting Sloane?” she asked.

“No,” I said without thinking. “It’s just some group chat.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Any… boys?”

Gosh, what was her obsession with getting me into a relationship?

“I think there might be a few?” I said as if I didn’t full well know that they all were boys. I didn’t want her to get concerned or ask questions about how I’d met all these people. I didn’t want to outright lie either, though. “It’s just some people from school.”

They’d mentioned the other day that they would be going to Summerfield, so it wasn’t a total lie, right? Technically, they were people from school—I just hadn’t met them that way.

“Good,” Mom said. Her face softened as she smiled at me. “I’m glad you’re making some new friends.”

Could I count them as friends if I didn’t know them in real life and knew almost nothing about them? It was probably a liberal interpretation of the term, but I was going to roll with, if only, so that I could consider myself as having friends, plural.

Eggo

Okay new theory: you’re all models

Tis Moi, Luca

You are soooo close

It’s actually a little painful to watch

Eggo

Let’s review all the information we’ve got

a) you all live together (but not related?)

b) you’re in high school, and will be attending Summerfield

c) you do photoshoots that get published in magazines

Tis Moi, Luca

All correct

Bay

Any more guesses?

“All right, hon, phone away,” Mom said. She carried the rest of the food over to the table. “You know the rules of family dinner.”

“I’m not sure it counts as family dinner if we’re missing a quarter of the family,” I said, indicating Dylan's empty seat. At least my dad would be here tonight, though. Dinner was always awful when it was just me and my mom. We had so little to talk about, and she refused to let me go on my phone or for us to eat in front of the TV, so we would just eat in silence instead.

“Your brother’s busy,” Mom said. There was some clear subtext of the comment: your brother has a life, and you don’t. She sat down in her spot and called upstairs, “Stephen! Dinner!”

I heard a muffled “Coming!” from Dad’s office upstairs. Mom seemed to take that as a good enough sign for us to start eating as she put some food on her plate.

“I need to eat quickly,” I said. “I told Sloane I’d call her after dinner.”

Well, actually, I told Sloane I would call her sometime tonight, but there was only a small window of time that was ideal to call her, and it happened to start in twenty minutes. Sloane’s evenings were very routine, and she did not like anyone messing them up. Mom just nodded in response, accustomed to this routine.

“Good evening, ladies,” Dad said as he walked into the room and sat down at his place. He looked at me as he served himself. “So, Megan, I hear that you have some special newcomers to your school.”

I choked on my spaghetti and started coughing to dislodge the feeling of it in my throat. What did he mean by a special newcomer? Was he talking about the boys? But why would he care about that? Maybe, more importantly, how would he know?

“What?” I asked between coughs.

“We got a newsletter from the school asking all parents to talk to their kids about the importance of being calm and respectful around celebrities,” Dad explained. My heart rate started to go back to normal as I guzzled down some water. That made a lot more sense—he was talking about the boy band starting next week, nothing that had to do with me specifically.

“I hadn’t read that yet,” Mom said. “Why would they need to send such a thing?”

“Well, it seems that a certain boy band will be starting at Summerfield,” Dad explained. There was a twinkle in his eye as he looked at Mom like he anticipated her excited reaction to the news. It wasn’t surprising in the least, considering how much she liked Take Five. She was the only mom I knew that loved their music; from what I knew, most other parents were just annoyed that their kids were playing the music so much.

I started shoveling down food as fast as I could. Now that my dad had brought the band up, they were all my mom was going to talk about for the rest of dinner. She would go on and on about how they seemed like such great, stand-up boys, and how good their music was, and how they deserved all their fame. It was a speech I’d heard a thousand times, and I didn’t want to hear it again.

“I’m going to call Sloane,” I said after I ate the last of what was on my plate. Good thing there hadn’t been much. I grabbed my plate and jumped up to put it in the sink.

“What?” Mom asked. “But you just sat down.”

“I told you I’d have to eat quick.”

“Well, I know, but I didn’t think you meant that quick.”

I just shrugged and made up an excuse on the spot. I hated lying, but sometimes, it was necessary to avoid hurting her feelings. “She mentioned that she had to help her mom with something tonight, so she wanted me to call her as soon after dinner as possible.”

“Oh, well okay, then…” Mom said. I felt a twinge of guilt as I saw the disappointment on her face, but I held strong. It wasn’t going to help anyone for me to just sit here, bored out of my mind and ready to scream at my mom to just shut up about Take Five already.

“You know, Sloane told me that some of the boys in the band are my age,” I said. “Maybe I’ll end up in a class with some of them.”

Mom immediately perked up, and she started rambling about the boys who were my age to my dad. I took the chance to escape, running upstairs and jumping onto my bed like my life depended on it. I barely even glanced at my phone screen as I selected Sloane’s contact and pressed call. It probably would have been better for me to wait for the right time like I usually did, but I didn’t want to risk my mom coming upstairs and asking me more questions about what was going on at school if I wasn’t on the phone.

“Hello?”

I froze—because that male, deep, British voice definitely did not belong to my best friend. Without saying a word, I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at the contact I had called. For a second, I hoped that I had just mis-dialed, but that wouldn’t have made sense because I didn’t even dial anything, I just pressed on her contact.

And the name on the phone screen did not even resemble my best friend’s.

Current call: Bay.