Miles to Go Page 6

  My mom was backstage with my manager, Jason. They looked at each other and their mouths just dropped open. What? This was out of control!

  So little time had passed since I’d been in sixth grade, holding back tears on a daily basis. (My lowest low.) Those girls had made me feel completely worthless, invisible. But this was it: the equal and opposite reaction I had been hoping for. Here it was, proof that they hadn’t stopped me. If anything, they had pushed me forward. For all that darkness, it wasn’t over. Now a light was shining on me. I was lifted up, not so much by success or fame or anything to do with Hollywood status as by the moment. My heart was flying. My soul was soaring. I felt radiant.

  Sure, if I could do it over again, I’d rather not suffer through those sixth-grade moments. But now, now that it was over, somewhere in the cruelty of those girls there was a gift for me. I’d put all the memories at the bottom of the ocean, but now that past floated back to me like a message in a bottle. I looked at it, felt happy, respected it, then threw it back again.

  As I hit the final chords of “I’ve Got Nerve,” I thought, “This is for them.”

  Even the hard times are part of your life story. If you acknowledge them and move past them, they eventually add up to the experience that makes you wise.

  I didn’t stop to question what the audience’s response meant about the show’s popularity or my career. I recognized what was happening from my dad’s concerts. Kids were singing along with every word. Parents were dancing with their kids. I looked at their faces and I saw joy. My dad always says that at that moment—when you, the band, the audience, when you all make music together—you become one. That’s harmony. And that is what it is all for.

  Life can be unpredictable and hard. There are plenty of bleak things in the world that we all could be thinking about. Maybe we should be. But on that night, in that moment, all singing along with each other? That was something we all shared, and while we were singing, whatever problems there were in the world, whatever troubles people were having at home, whatever bullies were waiting after school for some other kids in the crowd, to me it felt like maybe we’d put that all out of our minds for a tiny bit of time and just enjoyed one another’s company. I brought the audience a little light. I had found a way to make people happy. That’s as good as it gets.

  I played twenty shows for The Cheetah Girls in one month, finishing on October 14 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ten days later the Hannah Montana sound track—all music from the TV show—was released. My life was starting to feel like the best Christmas ever— each present was a new opportunity or news of a success I’d only imagined in my wildest dreams. The sound track debuted at the top of the Billboard charts.

  Heck, yeah! Hannah Montana was no longer an opening act. She was a headliner. My dreams had come true. I was a singer. And an actor. So what if the dream come true had a straight blond wig glued on top? This girl wasn’t complaining. You know that old expression: A wig on the head is better than a head in the sixth-grade toilet. Okay, maybe it’s not the most common expression. Let’s just say I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth!

  Bad Luck in St. Louis

  Before we went on The Cheetah Girls tour, my mom made one demand. Usually when you’re on tour for a concert, the whole crew stays on buses together. I was sharing a crew with The Cheetah Girls, so the total group was big—about a hundred people divided among maybe four buses. The dancers, two boys and two girls, were all in their twenties. I was thirteen years old. Mom said she didn’t care if I didn’t make a dime on the tour. She just wanted to make things as normal as possible for me. So we paid for an extra bus for just me, Mom, Mammie, and Noah. (The rest of the kids stayed in school.) After the show I’d come back to the bus, do schoolwork, then watch a movie with Mom and Noah. It was all weirdly normal. If there’s such thing as normal when you’re a teenager doing a twenty-city concert tour.

  I was psyched that my mom went for the bonus bus. Being with the crew is fun for a little while, but it’s impossible for me to live like that. I have to have space. I need the downtime. And it was more than just mental. Like I said before, weird or not, I’m okay being alone.

  Even though the tour bus situation was sorted out, not everything was perfectly smooth on that tour. To be specific—two words represent how NOT smooth things were . . . St. Louis. I have nothing against St. Louis in principle, but I can’t say I want to go back.

  My bad luck in St. Louis started on that tour, and hasn’t let up since. I was onstage in the middle of singing “Who Said” when I started feeling really sick, like I was going to throw up. I ran off the stage. It was really bad. My dancers just kept going. They didn’t even notice I was gone! (Thanks, guys!)

  As soon as I started to feel better—about five minutes later—I hurried back onstage. I said, “Sorry, guys. I had to hurl.” (Later my mom was like, “Real classy, Miles. Guess you’re never having dinner at Buckingham Palace.”) Then it happened again. I had to run offstage during “Best of Both Worlds.” So much for “the show must go on.” I thought it was a stomach bug, and by the next day (we were still in St. Louis) I was feeling better, so I went on that night.

  It happened yet again. Somehow I made it through the show this time, but in the next city, Dallas, I went to a doctor. He said I was fine, but at the show that night I felt bad again. This wasn’t normal. And it wasn’t nerves. Nerves meant having to pee when it was too late to go. This was different. Something felt really wrong. I went to another doctor, and this time they did an echocardiogram. (An echocardiogram uses ultrasound to look at your heart. It’s totally painless. Like when they look at a pregnant woman's baby, except if they see a baby in your heart you're in big trouble.) They found a hole in my heart (and this was before my first breakup!), but they said the real problem was tachycardia.

  Tachycardia means my heart rate speeds up and the rest of my body can’t keep up. (Tachy means too fast and cardia means heart. When I told Brazz my diagnosis, he said, “You sure it’s not tachymouthia?”) It just figures that if I had a problem, it would be that part of my body works harder than it should and goes too fast. I’ve always been an overachiever.

  The type of tachycardia I have isn’t dangerous. It won’t hurt me, but it does bother me. My heart rate increases a lot just from going up a flight of stairs. It’s worse when I wear a wig. I get hot, my body tries to cool down, and my heart goes extra fast. When I wear that wig in a concert, it sometimes gets so I can’t breathe and can’t think. I feel claustrophobic. There is never a time onstage when I’m not thinking about my heart.

  Psalm 43: 5

  WHY AM I DISCOURAGED?

  WHY IS MY HEART SO SAD?

  I WILL PUT MY HOPE IN GOD!

  My diagnosis stopped me in my tracks. On that tour, I felt like it was really important to me to look great. I wasn’t eating much. Some days I’d eat one Pop-Tart. That was it. Not good. I’ve always struggled with my weight, but when I found out I had a hole in my heart—there was no way in heck being skinny was worth sacrificing my health. I was scared. Like lots of girls my age, I can be self-conscious about my looks, but it was immediately clear to me that I’d much rather be healthy and normal-sized. The minute I got home from that tour, my dad took me to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, Panda Express. He said, “You have a hole in your heart, child. We’re eating food.”

  I always thought that working as hard as I possibly could was the path toward achieving my dreams. But my body has limits that I have to respect. I have to take care of myself, or I’ll feel sick. Now I make sure to eat well, get enough sleep, and avoid caffeine before shows. (That one was the only really hard one—I love Coke!)

  On that tour, I learned that I can push too hard. It’s easy to do. The fans would cheer me on, and the producers would cheer me on, and my family and friends would cheer me on. But I’m the one in the driver’s seat, and if anyone applies the brakes, it’s got to be me. It was an important lesson for me to learn. In a way, I think it’s a ki
nd of blessing that I have to be careful, because I should be taking care of myself anyway. It forces me to keep things in balance.

  Yeah, and about St. Louis. The next time I went there—to sing the national anthem at a Cardinals game—the game got rained out. And St. Louis was the venue for the first show of my tour with the Jonas Brothers, which you would think was a good thing . . . but more on that later.

  A “Normal” Day

  After the tour with The Cheetah Girls, it was back home, and back to work on the set of Hannah Montana. That first morning home, I woke up at our house in Los Angeles to the voice of our alarm system saying, “Entry door open.” That meant someone in my family was up walking the dogs. I dragged myself out of bed, brushed my teeth, showered, then opened one of my two closets. (You read right—two closets!!!) Both are stuffed with more clothes than I could wear in a year. Half of the stuff is clothes I bought at Forever 21 and Walmart, and half is gifts from designers like Chanel, Gucci, and Prada that I began to get as the show took off. It’s a quick glimpse of the two sides of my life—what I pick and choose and what people want to see me wear—all smushed together and tough to sort out in those closets.

  As soon as I was dressed, I wrangled one of the legal-to-drive members of the household into taking me to the Hannah Montana set in time for 8 a.m. rehearsal. We broke for lunch at 12:30. My costars Emily, Mitchell, and I caught up, spilling out the lowdown on our lives in record time, then got back to work.

  After rehearsal, I headed to a photo shoot for a cover of Seventeen, then went home to work on a song that needed to be ready for the next week’s recording session. I had dinner with my family—except Dad, who was out of town, and Brandi, who was at her apartment—then went to my room to check e-mail.

  I signed on to AOL and saw a candid shot of myself as the home page—not bad this time! Then I logged on to Miley World to read my fan mail. (Yes, I too have a password to the Miley World web site.) Then it was to bed, sleep, rinse, and get ready to repeat.

  It was the second season of Hannah Montana. It was safe to say—my life had changed.

  The Rest of Us

  My new life didn’t affect just me. It affected my siblings, too. But they are troupers. My little brother, Braison, is two years younger than I am. He’s the sensitive one—he’s very careful with other people’s feelings. Brazz will come to me with anything, and we do our secret handshake over the most serious secrets. I’m not going to lie—I’m usually not good at keeping secrets. But when Brazz trusts me with something, nothing could make me break that trust. Someone could put a knife to me and I would not tell. Brazz and I became closer friends about a year ago. I don’t want to pin it all on fashion, but I think it was when he got a pair of Converse sneakers. I was like, okay, you’re not a wannabe preppy kid anymore.

  Noah’s the baby of the family and the comedian. She’s a tough little cookie, and nothing gets past her. When Noah was four years old, a friend and I asked if we could do her makeup, and proceeded to paint her like a clown. We gave her bright pink circles on her cheeks and outlined a huge blue mouth. To this day she won’t let me forget it. If I ever ask to put makeup on her, she says, “You’re gonna make me look like a clown!” and refuses.

  Noah wants her room to be like Noah’s Ark. She’s got a huge stuffed giraffe in one corner and a huge stuffed horse in another. She has fish, birds, and a dog. Noah wants as many animals around her as possible. That’s what she and I (and our mom) have most in common. Nobody loves animals as much as we do.

  Last year my mom and dad and Brandi went to a concert, and I stayed home to babysit Noah. As soon as they left, Noah said, “You’re the fun one. I want to do something really fun.” Who was I to argue? So I got out a big bowl and dumped in maple syrup, Coke, ice cream, whipped cream, some waffles, and sprinkles on the top. I gave Noah a spoon and said, “Let’s see how much sugar we can get into you.” She ate until she felt like she was going to throw up.

  Then, to give her digestive tract a little time to recover, I decided to indulge her senses with a gentle and soothing spa treatment. I concocted a special custom facial for her out of eggs, honey, bananas, and . . . pretty much anything else I could think of. When my parents walked in the door, my mom said, “What’s that smell?” The kitchen was a mess. There was food everywhere. And Mom was right, it didn’t smell quite right. But in the morning, the first thing Noah did was put her hands to her cheeks and say, “My pores are so clean! My skin is baby soft.” I was like, “That’s because you are a baby.” I am so glad I still get to experience moments like those. I would hate to miss them.

  My older siblings are out of the house now, but they’re still around a lot, and when they are I drop everything (except school and work) to spend time with them. Brandi is the angel of the family. She’s the most honest and trustworthy person you’ll ever meet. I mean, she’s edgy—but she’s also a really good girl. Trace is the carefree one. He doesn’t worry what anybody thinks of him. Trace is super rock ’n’ roll—I love his band, Metro Station. If I had to categorize our family, I’d say he’s the one who’s the most like me. Or, I guess I’m most like him, since he’s the older one.

  Now that I’m so busy I’m very aware of exactly how much time I have with my family. I want to make sure I make the most of it. It’s not like we sat down and made rules like “Everyone has to be home for Tuesday pot roast dinner” or “Nobody talks on their cell phones in the living room.” Our house is a loud, busy place with family and friends and animals coming and going. But, just like most people, we try to keep the stress—and definitely the work—out of the house. At home, I’m not a celebrity. Everyone still knows my name, but instead of chanting it at a show, they’re shouting up the stairs for me to get my dirty laundry. At home, I’m just someone who has a job sooner than most kids do. The nice thing about our family is that everything I’m doing now is all stuff my dad has done for so long that when I started doing it, nobody paid much attention.

  Homebodies

  My dad has to travel for work, but when it comes down to it, both my parents are homebodies. Maybe that’s why they get along so well. When my dad was touring with his mega-hit song, “Achy Breaky Heart,” my mom stayed home with the kids. Dad was gone a lot, but even when he was home for as long as six months, my parents never went out on group dinner dates or had parties; they never entertained celebrities or schmoozed. They liked to be with each other and us.

  I’m pretty much the same way. I like going to small parties and over to friends’ houses, like ten people hanging out, maybe going for a swim. I’m always careful because of my heart. I guess my idea of a good party is someone getting their face smashed in a cake—not getting smashed. I don’t drink and I would never smoke. I always say that for me, smoking would be like smashing my guitar and expecting it to play. I’d never do that to my voice, not to mention the rest of my body. My mom wants us to be careful not just about smoking, but about second-hand smoke too. What Mom doesn’t? Both of my granddads died of lung cancer (even though Pappy’s cancer came from asbestos, not from smoking), so I get why Mom is extra worried.

  Too bad we get invited to lots of cool parties, because it’s kind of wasted on us. After the Oscars last year, we were supposed to go to Elton John’s party. We were invited to Madonna’s party. There was some other dinner party that was a big deal. We had every ticket in town. It was dazzling and flattering. But after the awards show was over, my mom and I looked at each other. I said, “I’ll go if you want to go.” And she said to me, “I’ll go if you want to go.” There we were on Hollywood’s biggest night, all dressed up, with every hot invitation we could imagine. So what did we do?

  We stopped by our favorite local diner, Mo’s, got barbecue chicken pizza, and went home to change into our pajamas. We were chowing down in the kitchen, talking about how much we like barbecue chicken pizza, when we paused for a moment and I said, “Should we have gone?” Then we shook our heads: Nah. When it comes down to it, we’d rather be home in o
ur jammies.

  It’s easy to be the same family we’ve always been when we’re hanging out at home. But it’s a little harder when we’re out and about. Then the fame thing gets in the way. We like to go to church on Sunday and then to lunch together afterward. People will sometimes come up to us while we’re eating. That’s when my mom will say, “It’s Sunday. We’re eating. She’s only sixteen years old, and she’s not allowed to do that right now.” I get embarrassed. Why can’t I just do one signature? It takes five seconds. It’s no big deal. But my mom says it’s family time, and signing autographs can wait. She wants to make sure there are times when I’m just Miley, hanging out with my family.

  Another thing that happens is that sometimes we’ll go to Universal (the amusement park), and fans will gather, wanting to take a picture or to get an autograph. I don’t mind doing it, but my family doesn’t want to stand around for an hour waiting for me. They want to ride the rides. And suddenly I’m the sister who’s slowing us down, and they’re as annoyed as you’d be if your brother had a tantrum in the parking lot of a movie theater. Those moments, they remind me I’m still just Miley and I’d better get a move on.

  Miles per Hour

  When Hannah Montana proved a hit, life sped up for me and my whole family. It used to be that if I only had an hour to shop at the mall in Nashville or wherever, I felt rushed. How could I be expected to score the perfect jeans under such strict time constraints? Now I saw how much I could accomplish in just one hour. I could give an interview. I could write a song. I could learn calligraphy. I could get to level Hard in Guitar Hero. (I’m stuck at Hard. I’m not even that great at Hard, and I play Guitar Hero for at least twenty minutes everyday.) A free hour was now a huge amount of time to myself. It was a luxury. You start to respect time a lot more when people constantly want to take it from you and you’ve got to decide what to do with it.