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

Chapter 9

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 walk up 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 Francais 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 it very 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.

“Yes, Miss Myers?” Mme. Dubois asked with a sigh. She sounded exhausted already, which I guess was fair, since that was how most people felt about Donna at the best of times. She was a ball of energy that was always talking at the loudest voice possible, and it only got worse whenever she was talking about something she was passionate about—like, say, Take Five.

“Which boys will be in this class?” Donna asked. She clung onto the edge of her desk like it was a lifeboat keeping her afloat as she stared at our teacher with an eager look in her eyes while chewing her lip.

“Ah yes, I was just getting to that,” Mme. Dubois said. She picked up the attendance folder from the desk and looked over it briefly, humming under her breath as she did so. “The boys’ names are… Hudson Shaw and Jude Turner.”

I barely caught anything past “Hudson” because my classmates’ screams. To my surprise, even Sloane seemed excited. She grabbed my arm in her classic death grip and tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear anything.

“What?” I yelled back.

“Hudson Shaw,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable. “That’s the boy you met last week! And the one at the mall!”

Oh, great. The boy who spilled coffee on me last week was going to be in my French class. Could this day get any worse?

Principal Roman knocked on the door and stuck her head into the classroom.

“Is now an okay time?” she asked.

“Yes, come on in,” Madame Dubois said. Principal Roman nodded and turned her head to say something to the people behind her. Then she stepped inside the classroom, closely followed by two boys. The first one was a tall boy with light brown hair, a mischievous grin, and a spring in his step. And the second one… was the boy from the coffee shop.

Sloane tightened her grip on my arm and smiled at me. I tried to force a smile back, but I doubted I could manage a convincing fake one.

Why, oh why, didn’t my mom let me take the day off from school?

“Everyone,” Principal Roman said, “these are two of our new students. Hudson and Jude.”

The class burst into applause, which I guess was better than the screaming that preceded it, but still made me want to curl up in a ball and die from second-hand embarrassment. What were they so excited about? I just didn’t get it.

“These two are going to need guides to show them around the school,” Principal Roman continued. “Do we have any volunteers?”

Before she even finished her sentence, every hand in the room was up in the air. I leaned back in my chair and tried to avoid eye contact with anyone. There was no way I was going to volunteer.

“Okay,” Principal Roman said, shock evident in her voice. I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t expecting this outcome, given everything she knew about the students at this school. They were obsessed with Take Five, of course they wanted to do this. “Hudson, would you like to pick first?”

Hudson stepped forward with his hands clasped in front of him, a mix of a curious and mischievous smile on his face. He looked at each person in turn as if he could learn anything about them from looks alone. I tried to sink even further into my seat, but Sloane wasn’t having it. She put her arm around me, and tightened her grip until she was basically holding me upright, then grabbed my hands, so that I couldn’t hide my face behind them. Regardless, I turned my head toward the wall, so he wouldn’t be able to see my face easily. I wanted to seem like the least enthusiastic person here—which wasn’t hard considering how excited everyone else was .

Even though I wasn’t looking, I felt it the second his eyes landed on me. I hoped the feeling would go away after a second as he continued looking at my classmates, but it remained there. Eventually, I couldn’t stand not knowing what he was doing, so I forced myself to look over at him, my face scrunched up in concern. That was definitely the worse choice, though, because his smile only got wider when he saw my face. With a bounce in his step, he walked over to my table. I saw everyone’s faces drop behind him as they realized he wasn’t heading toward them.

“Would you do me the honor of being my guide?” he asked. I swear I saw Donna sigh, and practically collapse onto her desk at the sound of his soft British voice.

“I…” I desperately wanted to say no because why on earth would I want to spend more time with Hudson Shaw than I had to? It wasn’t anything against him in particular—I would have felt the same about any of the other boys asking me the same question. But I didn’t see how I could say no with everyone staring at me, envy, and anger in their eyes.

“Of course she will!” Sloane said enthusiastically. She dropped her arms from me so fast that I almost fell off the chair. Actually, the only reason I didn’t was because Hudson put his arms out to catch me, his hands landing heavily on my arm and back, then righting me up again. Sloane didn’t even pause to see if I was okay. She grabbed her books and backpack as quickly as possible, then ducked under the empty desk behind us to take up a spot on the other side. When I turned to look at her—partially glaring, partially looking at her like she was crazy, and partially begging her with my eyes to save me from this—she just smiled at me with a thumbs up. I turned back around slowly, blinking a few times in surprise, then looked at Hudson.

“I guess I will,” I said in a strangled voice. I slid over to the chair Sloane had been using so he could sit down, which he did happily.

“It’s nice to see you again, Starbucks girl,” he said cheekily. I held back the groan that was on my lips, and faced forward, not even bothering to deign him with a response.

“Well, okay then,” Principal Roman said, looking as confused as I felt—which was the only natural reaction to watching Sloane climb under a desk, and Hudson Shaw greeting me as if we were old friends. “Jude, why don’t you pick next?”

Jude didn’t even bother to look around the room. His eyes were locked on Sloane and as if moving of their accord, his feet started moving directly towards her. Sloane, for her part, seemed to totally change up how she felt about the band. She flipped her hair over and daintily rested her cheek on her fist while smiling brightly at him. I was pretty sure she was even batting her eyelashes at him, like he was some normal, cute boy that she was crushing on instead of a member of an internationally-famous boy band.

“Hi,” Jude said as he slid into the empty chair beside her. “I’m Jude. ”

“I’m Sloane,” she said. Her voice was a full octave higher than usual. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

I rolled my eyes, so hard that it hurt a little, and turned to face fully forward. Hudson leaned over until his lips were by my ear.

“You’ll warm up to me,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Challenge accepted.