Chapter 31

An unexpected call from my publicist saw me making emergency plans to find a studio to train at in London; the boy band One Direction wanted me to dance in a music video for them! I was not a fan of the group but Ursula and Melody were. Neither could get out of school to go with me, much to my amusement.

"You're not good at pop culture, why are you the one getting these opportunities?" Ursula complained.

"I guess I'm the more attractive one," I teased, grinning at my girlfriend, who feigned a shocked reaction.

"No!! How dare you!"

"You're right, we're both equally beautiful," I conceded.

The band themselves met me at the airport in London, accompanied by many excited fans. They were truly quite young, with Harry Styles as the youngest at 17 and Louis Tomlinson as the oldest at 20. They all shook my hand and led me to the limo that waited outside, weaving through the crowds.

"How was your flight?" Harry asked me eagerly. "Not too long, I hope."

I shrugged. "Seven and a half hours. I had the same for the Adele video and schoolwork to do, so it was fine."

"I hope that we're not interrupting your education," Liam frowned.

"Oh, no, I've been homeschooled for a few years," I replied. "It just works out better for me."

Simon Cowell, the band's manager, greeted me when I arrived at the hotel that I would be staying at. I'd seen him on TV because Melody loved the Got Talent shows, and thought that he seemed quite mean, but shook his hand politely regardless.

"It's lovely to meet you, Miss Ziegler. I have a dinner planned for tonight, in a private area to avoid any fans if possible, with you and the boys. Tomorrow, the limo will be by at nine hundred hours to pick you and the band up for rehearsals. I understand that you have studio space reserved for after filming each day."

"Yes, sir. The YAGP semi-final is next week so I need to put final touches on my dances."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Have a good night, Miss Ziegler, and it was nice to meet you."

I enjoyed dinner with the band that night, and got to know them a bit better. Harry lived in Cheshire, England with his parents and older sister when he wasn't with the band. Liam was from Wolverhampton and had two older sisters. Zayn was of Pakistani descent and lived in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Louis was from Doncaster, South Yorkshire and had four younger half-sisters.

"I live with my aunt, cousins, sister and my aunt's fiancé in Pennsylvania," I told the band. "Aunt Melissa and Greg are getting married just next week, though. He's a nice guy."

"So you're busy the next few weeks," Louis noted.

"Yeah, I'm set to head home for the wedding rehearsal on Saturday, then the wedding itself is on Sunday. I leave for France on Tuesday to try and get back to the YAGP final."

"Best of luck," Zayn said to me. I did some homework and got some sleep that night before waking up early to mark through my ballet dances. I'd learned the music video piece, a Jazz solo to the song "Live While We're Young." The initial idea of the video had been to have the band try and get me to dance with them on a date, but given my age I would be dancing as they sang to an actual legal adult. None of them were very good dancers, it turned out, so then I didn't have to work off someone with poor rhythm.

I wasn't a fan of cheesy pop music anyway and by the end of the first rehearsal, I was beginning to strongly dislike the song. Their voices were good, at least.

The first day was just blocking and there was plenty of time where I was required to just do any dance to give them a sense of how it would look, so I was able to run my YAGP dances quite a few times as I had plenty of room to move.

The band was really just messing around vocally in between takes, and I gained a deeper appreciation for their voices. Louis had a great high range, while Harry probably had the lowest voice. Zayn appeared to have the biggest range. They worked quite well in harmony with each other.

"So do you guys write your own songs?" I asked them over the lunch break.

"Sometimes. None of us wrote this particular song, but Liam and Louis have contributed the most songs to the album that we're making. This song is going to be the single and the album should come out in September," Zayn told me. "Are you a singer?"

"No, I'm horribly tone-deaf, but my sister's pretty good and I play the piano. My sister's a huge fan of yours," I answered. "She threatened to move out of our shared room if I didn't ask for an autograph."

"We'd be happy to give one," Harry said gracefully. "What's her name?"

"Melody. It wouldn't have been good if she hadn't been at least a decent singer," I joked.

Liam was staring at me as the others passed a shirt around to sign.

"You know, it's rude to stare," I told him. "If you're looking at the hearing aids, they're because I went deaf a few years ago. I was lucky not to get worse head trauma, really."

"I'm sorry to hear that. So do you know sign language?" Liam asked.

"I know ASL, but don't use it too often since I can hear very well with these in," I replied openly. "They're the best that the U.S. has to offer."

"One of my sisters is deaf," Louis put in. "She was born that way, though."

"It's not so bad, but I imagine that not having access to proper healthcare would be challenging. Healthcare is free in the UK, right? So that would be less of a problem than the U.S." "I can't believe that Americans have to pay for medical care. It's ridiculous," Harry scoffed.

I nodded. "I lean conservative and I think it's silly. Free healthcare may be a socialist idea, but it's the right thing to do, no one should be left without healthcare if they need it."

"You lean conservative? Didn't you mention having a girlfriend?" Louis asked. The others glared at him. "I'm not trying to be mean."

"No, you're just asking. I'm a Catholic so I'm more conservative by definition. I'm not really here to talk about politics, though."

"No, this isn't the time or place," Liam agreed. "I suppose I should have figured out your religion from the cross necklace."

I shrugged. "It doesn't really matter to me if people that I'm not close with know about my religion or not. Especially in a professional setting."

I got along quite well with the band and had dinner with them again that night, though this time the fans found us at the hotel restaurant. I turned my hearing aids way down as soon as I noticed the pack of mostly young women and girls.

"See, being deaf has its advantages," I told Liam. "I don't need to suffer through crazed fan screaming."

"You're not one to obsess over a celebrity?"

"No, that seems silly. Maybe the music, I certainly have artists whose music I love, but I need to focus on myself, not a stranger."

"That's quite reasonable. Here they come," Liam sighed.

Security had to escort the fans out, and our and everyone else's dinner was sufficiently disturbed. "We're sorry," Liam said to the table next to us, an older couple.

"I didn't recognize you at first," the man said. "You're that new popular band. Our grandchildren like you. I didn't know that you had a new member.

"Oh, no, sir. I'm dancing in a music video to one of their songs," I explained.

"An American. I hope they're being gentlemen, you can't be more than fourteen," the woman said to me.

"I'm twelve, ma'am, and they've been great. Thank you, though, I really appreciate it."

Filming of the actual music video started the next day, and that dragged on because the person who was playing the girl that the band had a crush on kept missing her cues. At one point I was allowed to leave the filming area so that the directors could get a clear view of where she was going wrong.

The actual making of the video wasn't particularly fun, as it involved some dancing and mostly having the band get yelled at to move to their positions quicker. They had a dance break too, and weren't particularly good at it. I wound up running a mini-lesson to get them up to speed.

"Why didn't we learn this before?" Harry complained to Mr. Cowell.

"I thought that you were better dancers than this. I won't make that mistake again," Mr. Cowell grumbled.

The week flew by, and soon enough I was saying goodbye to the band and heading back to Pittsburgh in time for my aunt's rehearsal dinner. Myself and Melody were a part of her bridal party while her daughters were the flower girls. Every Elite Team parent except for Jill (of course) was invited, as were their daughters and a few other families from the studio. The wedding was lovely, and my aunt already seemed happier with Greg that I'd ever seen her with Kurt, who attended (sans his new girlfriend) as an act of friendship. I was very happy that my aunt had found the right person for her.