Chapter 4
I woke up around 8 the next morning and wandered down to the kitchen where my mom and Tess were already eating breakfast.
“Why didn’t you wake me when you left? I could have already started eating.” I ran my fingers through my tangled, messy hair and grabbed the orange juice out of the fridge.
“I wanted to make sure you got all the sleep that you could. The next week or so is going to be the most hectic of our lives.” Tess downed the rest of her cereal and headed upstairs to take a shower. I took a seat across from my mom and poured myself a bowl of Cheerios.
“So, how are you going to get your nails done?” My mom looked up from the morning paper and took a bite of her toast.
“I’m not sure, maybe something silvery to match my shoes.”
“That’s a good idea. Tess said something about getting hers done to match her skirt. Are you going to get anything done to your hair?” She stood up and laid the paper on the counter.
“No, I think I’ll just let Tess do something simple to it, I don’t want to over-do it. I’m nervous enough as it is, I don’t want to be stressing about anything else, especially something as small as my hair.”
“Good point. We’ll leave when Tess gets out of the shower. Go get dressed, she should be done soon.”
I finished my cereal and put my bowl in the sink. On my way up the stairs I heard the water stop in the bathroom, meaning Tess would be out in a few minutes. I walked over to my closet and looked through all of the clothes I’ve never really given much thought to. Now, getting ready to meet the biggest sensation in the world, I realized that I needed a major wardrobe update.
I pulled on an old camp T-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts and my black converse. I pulled my semi-straight hair back into a ponytail and straightened up my bed. Tess bounced into the room wearing cut-offs and a plain black T-shirt. She tossed her dirty clothes to her side of the room where her possessions lay scattered everywhere.
“Are you ready to go?” I fixed a few loose strands of my disobedient hair and motioned to the door.
“Yeah, let me just grab some shoes and we can head out.” She rummaged through one of the many piles of clothes, shoes, and many random other things until she found an old pair of flip-flops. I nodded in response and headed down the stairs to the living room where my mom was sitting on the couch waiting for us.
“Tess is just about ready; we can go in a few minutes.” I plopped down next to her and looked out the window.
“I think we’ll go down to the salon by your dad’s house so we can pop in and tell him we won’t be home for a while.”
“Sounds good,” I answered as Tess walked down the stairs.
“I’m ready, let’s go.” She walked straight out the front door, obviously forgetting us.
My mom chuckled. “Looks like someone is pretty impatient.”
“She’s just really excited for tomorrow. We’re one day closer to meeting our idols.” I turned and walked out the door after her and took a seat in the front of the car.
We headed downtown to where my dad lives and stopped by his house for a quick visit.
“Hi, Dad.” I hugged my dad as soon as we walked through the front door.
“What’s up, Daddy D?” Tess high fived my dad – their usual greeting.
“Nothing much, Little T. What’s with the surprise visit?” He sat on the couch between Tess and me, one arm around each of us.
“We just have the most amazing news is all. I convinced Chloe to enter a contest a couple of weeks ago to meet One Direction and her entry won so we’re getting ready to go get our nails done so we can look approachable when we meet them.”
My dad looked at her with his eyes wide, waiting for her to finish. When she did, he turned to me and raised his eyebrows as if asking me to verify this information. I nodded and told him that we would be leaving tomorrow for a week or so.
“Girls, that’s fantastic! When I was your age, I was lucky if I could even get nose-bleed seats at a concert.”
“Yeah, Mr. Douglas, but that was in the stone-age. We’re in the 21st century now.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” my dad replied sarcastically. “Really, this is great; I hope you have a lot of fun. And if one of you hits it off with one of the boys, I would love to meet them. They’re the reason you’re so happy all the time.” He squeezed my shoulder and stood up. “You should probably get going so you have enough time to get all beauty-fied and pack and get ready.” He turned to my mother, “Take good care of them. Make sure they stay out of trouble.”
My mom kind of rolled her eyes and half-smiled. “You know I will. I’ll let you know when we get back and I’m sure the girls will tell you all about it.”
We said our good-bye’s and headed down to the salon. When we got there, two ladies began with our nails while my mom got her hair done.
“Hey, Chloe?” Tess turned to me with a questioning look on her face.
“Yeah?”
“What if they don’t like us? What if we send off some kind of vibe that immediately repels them and makes them want to stop talking to us?”
“That’s not going to happen. They love all of their fans as long as they don’t pick favorites or hate on any of them. We’ll be fine. And, who knows? Maybe one of them will fall madly in love with you and ask you to marry him and you’ll have his children and live happily ever after like in a fairy tale.” I smiled a silly smile and she rolled her eyes, clearly picking up on my sarcasm.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She looked back at the manicurist and told her what color she wanted.
“Don’t worry about any of that stuff. You’ll look stunning in your outfit, I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to pay attention to a flaw for very long if they could even find one.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I do look pretty good in that outfit.” She smiled at me and flipped her hair out of her eyes.
“What are you going to do with your hair?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think maybe I’m going to curl it. What about you? Do you know what you want to do?”
“I’m thinking maybe a fishtail braid on the side. Do you think that would look okay?”
“Yeah, totally. It’d go great with your outfit, too.”
By the time we finished at the salon it was late afternoon so we went home and packed up our clothes and things for the week and got the plane and concert tickets that had come in the mail this morning with the hotel and venue information. We fell asleep fairly quickly since we had to get up early in the morning to catch our flight. Tess fell asleep first and snored lie there was no tomorrow. Shortly after that, I drifted into a deep sleep. The next morning we all woke up a 6 in order to make it to our flight in time. We drove to the Chicago airport and boarded the plane with about 15 minutes to spare. We were all still tired but too excited to fall asleep. The concert wasn’t until tomorrow night so we just threw on sweatpants and old camp T-shirts. All three of us sported messy buns on top of our heads and none of us bothered to put makeup on.
In the few hours it took for our plane to get us from Chicago to New York we had pretty much gone over every little detail about the concert: how our hair would be done, how our makeup would be done, what shades we would use, how we would introduce ourselves. The only thing left to do was actually meet the boys.
When we landed we found a chauffeur holding a sign with a sign that read “Douglas”. We followed him to a parking lot where a black limousine took us to our hotel.
We stepped out of the car and strolled into the lobby, our luggage being pulled closely behind us. The driver pulled away and left us to sign ourselves in. My mother went up to the front desk and got the key to our rooms. She got one for herself and Tess and I shared a room. We rode the elevator up to our floor and anxiously unlocked the doors. Tess ran and threw her suitcase on the bed she claimed as hers and I set mine beside the other bed. I walked across the hall and looked at my mother’s room, which was almost identical to ours. She had left her luggage by the door and flopped down on the bed.
“Do you like your room?” I asked, sitting beside her.
She sat up and turned to face me. “It’s the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. I still can’t believe you won this contest. I was never lucky enough to even win at rock-paper-scissors.”
I laughed a little and headed back to my room. I took a quick shower and changed into a clean blouse and jeans. When I walked into the room, Tess had done the same.
“Hey, do you want to go check out the city? Your mom said she’ll go with us. We can take a cab.”
“Yeah, that sound fun. Let me get some shoes on and we’ll head out.” I pulled my suitcase on top of my bed and dug through to find some shoes.
Tess walked across the hall to get my mom and we walked around New York City. The shops and restaurants were all full of people and so were the streets. Some parts of the area were quite calm while others were full of activity everywhere. Around 3 we stopped at a pizza place and ate some of the best pizza I’ve had in my whole life. After, we walked aimlessly all around the city.
We walked around for hours before seeing that it was almost 9 o’clock. We hailed a cab and went back to the hotel. We ordered room service and watched a movie on the flat screen T.V. that was in my mother’s room. Around 11 p.m. Tess and I went back to our room, changed into pajamas, and went to sleep. We were expecting a wake-up call from the person who was to take us to the venue and introduce us to the boys so we didn’t set an alarm. I fell into a hard sleep and didn’t dream at all. I realized I had fallen asleep only when the phone rang the next morning.
“Hello! This is Paul Higgins, your chaperone for the day. Your ride will be there to pick you up in about an hour so up and at ‘em girls! You have the biggest day of your life ahead of you!”