What Makes You Beautiful

Prologue + Chapter One

Prologue

    Hi. My name is Ayley Gilbert. I'm 16 years old, and I live close to a little town called Strathroy, Ontario. I'm not what you would call an "average" girl. For starters, I'm kinda short. But that's okay. I have a motto: "being short is better then being tall because when people push me down, I have less distance to fall to the ground than a tall person" and it's so true. Go find two people, one tall and one short, push them both down, and see who hurts more. I got it good down here.

    But my appearance isn't the only thing that separates me from the crowd. I like every genre of music out there. From rock and roll like Guns 'N Roses to pop like Justin Bieber to classical like Mozart to heavy metal like Megadeth to country like Rascal Flatts all the way to British/Irish boy-bands like One Direction, and they are exactly where my story starts.

Chapter One

    "OH MY GOD, AYLEY, I GOT THE TICKETS!" My best friend, Jess Hudson came running up to me while I was standing at my locker at school.

"YOU DID?!"

"YES!"

"OH MY GOD!"

"WE'RE ACTUALLY GONNA SEE ONE DIRECTION LIVE IN CONCERT!" We screamed at the top of our lungs.

    Everyone stared, but we didn't care, we were going to see Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik in a matter of weeks, and breathe the same air as them. It was a big deal. It didn't matter what anyone else thought.

    I was excited. One Direction was a 5-piece boy-band who tried out for the "The X Factor" which was a British TV show where you basically sing your way to the top. Individually, they didn't make it past the second episode, but when one of the judges suggested for them to form a band, they made it all the way to third place. They were a big deal. And they were all drop dead gorgeous. And their accents, don't even get me started. Niall was Irish, and the rest were from England. Jess and I spent hours a day just watching interviews on the internet just to hear them talk with those beautiful accents.

    As our celebrations continued, we didn't hear the bell ring to go back to class. We were too busy holding hands and jumping up and down, classic fangirl reaction. We noticed the halls had cleared, and decided to cease the celebration until after class.

    Our lunch at school was weird. Because we had a lot of students, not all of us could fit into the cafeteria at once, so we had three lunches. Being in grade eleven, my friends and I got the second lunch, so our third period class was split up. Half of class, then lunch, then the other half of class. As weird as it sounds, it definitely made the day go by faster.

    I couldn't sit still all through class. I sat in my parenting class for the longest 35 minutes of my life with my friends who don't really like them (for whatever reason, they're pretty darn perfect), so fangirling over 1D would just upset them. So, because I was finished my work, I asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom so I could walk around and try to release some of my energy.

"You sure can." She said.

"Kay, thanks" and I left. I went to the bathroom, where it smelt like burnt hair, and started walking back to my class. Of course, the whole time, I had been listening to One Direction on my iPod, and Up All Night, a very upbeat dance song came on, so naturally, I had the urge to dance. So there I was, dancing down the hall, music cranked, totally oblivious to all my surroundings, thinking I was alone, when a boy I'd never seen before walked out of a classroom ahead of me and saw me dancing. He gave me one of those "this person needs help" looks, turned around, and walked the other way. Sure, I was embarrassed, but what can I say, it's a good song! So I kept dancing all the way back to class.