In 2020

01: party guests

I was sat on my bed amongst my fluffy blanket, a pair of scissors in one hand. The tv softly played in the background, some random channel on.

Strips of cardboard paper were strewn around me. I was currently making little cardboard guests for my Harry cutout's birthday party. He obviously needed guests.
I decided on making every year of the One Direction boys since 2010.

People say I live in denial. People say that I need to get over it, but I can't just get over the fact that the boys' lives have crumbled. I can't get over the fact that they aren't friends anymore. And I definitely can't get over the fact that the hiatus never ended even though they all promised it would.

Eighteen months they said. The hiatus will be for eighteen months.

At first I was okay with it. All of them were having pretty successful solo careers, and I was happy for them. I lived for the occasional pictures of them together.

After a while, those occasional pictures became very rare and soon none ever came. It was pretty obvious to the fans that the boys were no longer friends. With the multiple twitter feuds and some in person fights, it was clear that One Direction was five directions going as far away from each other as possible.

All of them faded from the media except when there was some sort of conflict, but some people, like me, never forgot about them. We still held onto the hope that maybe they could work things out.

Apparently, they all had new jobs although no one has seen them in a while. We can only hope that they are okay.

I had just finished taping 2013 Louis' head to the cardboard body I had made when something on the TV caught my attention. I grabbed the remote to turn up the volume.

"Former boyband member and solo artist Harry Styles ran into fellow former boyband member and solo artist Louis Tomlinson while out in London the other day. This is the first time in a long time that any two members of One Direction have been seen in public, let alone together. Sources say the two shared harsh glares and kept their distance. It's hard to imagine that these two were once best friends. We can only imagine what happened between the five brothers. In other news, President Oprah-"

I turned the TV off after the news about Harry and Louis. I couldn't stop thinking about the pictures shown of them. Granted, the were extremely low quality and far away, but I hadn't seen a picture of them in so long. My heart ached for multiple reasons. The main one being the fact that I got to see a new picture of them. The other for how rough they both looked.

Harry hadn't shaved in who knows how long, his light brown scruff evident even in the low quality pictures. His attire was nowhere like it used to be. He wore what seemed to be cheap WalMart clothes instead of the custom Gucci he used to rock. Same went for Louis. His face was sunken, and he looked extremely tired. His hair was scraggly and unkept, along with a scruffy beard on his face. He wore an Adidas tracksuit, but it was full of rips and faded as if he wore it everyday.

Although this hurt me to no extent, it made sense. When their record labels dropped them, they went bankrupt. They could no longer afford their lavish lifestyle. I assume they had to sell their fancy clothes, expensive cars, and mansions to make ends meet.

I sat there, legs crossed, looking at all the eras of the boys I had created. They all looked happy. They were living their dreams. And most importantly, they were family.

I just wish there was some way for it to go back to that way. When they were happy. When they were a family