Miles to Go (4 page)

Make Your Own Dreams

I
couldn’t escape school but I
could
focus on other things. We had a huge cheerleading competition coming up, so I threw myself into training and tried to forget about bullies and auditions. My life only sucked from eight a.m. to three p.m. Then I went to the gym and pushed it all out of my head.

And then, when I had just about really and truly given up hope, we got another call from Margot the talent agent. Disney wanted to see me
again
. What were they doing, cutting one girl at a time
American Idol
–style? This time there was no shrieking and disrupting of the animals’ peaceful farm life. Instead of feeling excited, I just felt tired of it all. I told my mom I didn’t want to go back. I figured it was going to be the same thing all over again. I was completely focused on cheerleading. My team wanted me. My team
needed
me. My team didn’t make me fly cross-country over and over again only to send me home with nothing. My mom was over it too. She said it stressed her out. But then Margot told us that Judy Taylor, the head of casting, had said, “You can’t pass on this. They’re really serious about Miley. They’ve seen so many girls, and they keep coming back to her.”

Missing this competition would mean dropping off the team.
I had to choose between cheerleading and auditioning.
To this day it’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. My mom said it was up to me, but she wanted me to have perspective, to make an informed decision. She said, “Honey, are you
sure
? I think you’re amazing, but the chances of getting this role are still slim to none. You have no experience. We already know they think you’re too small and too young. You have the rest of your life to do this. If you go, you may end up sacrificing cheerleading for nothing.”

My dad’s advice was simpler: “You have to go. This part is meant for you.” (He really has a lot of faith in that intuition of his.) They told me to take my time and think about it really seriously.

So I thought long and hard. Cheerleading wasn’t just my passion. It was my salvation that year. It was the only way I was surviving sixth grade. If I quit and then didn’t get the part, which we all knew was the most likely sequence of events, I’d be left with nothing. But I didn’t plan to be a cheerleader for the rest of my life. This was my chance. And I was scared out of my mind.

I have always believed that the greatest opportunities in life come with fear and risk. I realized that taking the risk was like soaring in a cheerleading stunt and having faith that someone would catch me. Maybe cheerleading had been training me for this moment.
I knew it was too much to hope for, but Hannah Montana was my dream role, and it was closer than ever. I wasn’t about to give up now.
It was back to L.A.

* * *

This time there were only
two
other girls in the waiting room. One of them was Taylor Momsen, who had been in
Spy Kids 2
and now stars in
Gossip Girl
. She was gorgeous, with long, blond hair.
(Things did not look good for me.)
The other one was sixteen years old. I was like a foot shorter than both of them. When I got called into the audition room, I read scenes for the executives over and over again. I sang songs for them. I talked to them so they could “get to know me.” I read more scenes. I sang more songs. I read songs. I sang scenes. I would have hung wallpaper while wearing a tutu if I thought it would prove I was meant to play Hannah.

It was a long day, and
finally
it was over. My mom, my maternal grandmother (Mammie), and I were staying at the Universal Studios theme park so we’d have something fun to do if the trip turned out to be a bust. Auditions done, we went to dinner at a restaurant there called Daily Grill. We sat down, got our drinks, and I promptly spilled Mammie’s entire Dr Pepper all over my white skirt.
(See? Life imitates sitcoms imitating life.)

As I was yanking paper napkins out of the dispenser as fast as I could, Margot called. She and my mother talked a little bit, then my mom hung up and turned to me. “They want us to go back to the studio
right now,”
she told me. “They want to test you with another girl they have for Lilly. Margot said we should drop everything.” I looked at my Dr Pepper–soaked skirt and said, “I thought I already did.” I couldn’t go like that! But they were sending a car for us! We sprinted back to the hotel so I could change before the car came.

My heart racing and palms sweating
(I know. Real Professional.)
, I tested with the Lilly actress, a sweet girl with very dark hair. She and I whispered excitedly. We were the ones! Weren’t we? It seemed so promising. At the end I thought they were going to tell me I had the part. Instead, they just said thank you and sent me back to Nashville.

At first I made my mom call the agent every day to see if there was any news, but there was never any news. Weeks went by. Finally, we just stopped calling.

The Cafeteria

I
never told anyone at school that I was auditioning in L.A., but it seemed like my torturers had a sixth sense about it and knew I was going somewhere. When I came back from L.A. the second time, the girls took it beyond normal bullying.
(Can bullying be normal?)
These were big, tough girls. I was scrawny and short. They were fully capable of doing me bodily harm. As if they weren’t already scary enough, then they sent me a note threatening me if I showed up in the cafeteria at lunch the next day. I’m not going to give any bullies out there ideas by saying exactly what they threatened. Let’s just say it wasn’t nice. And I know it sounds kind of silly and clichéd to be scared of a little note. You just have to trust me. These girls weren’t messing around.

I’d been trying to handle the bullying all by myself this whole time. I didn’t want to show my fear, not to those girls or to my friends or to my parents. I never cried
(in public, at least)
. I didn’t tell my parents. I tried everything I could think of. Sometimes I tried to defend myself. Sometimes I apologized. Sometimes I just walked away. I always felt alone. But the night I got the cafeteria threat it seemed like Operation Make Miley Miserable was escalating to a new level. More like Operation Take Miley Down. I was so scared that I told a friend from cheerleading about it on the phone. Should I pretend to have the flu? Should I skip lunch? Should I arm myself with a ketchup bottle and prepare for battle?

As soon as I hung up the phone, my dad came into the room. He sat down on the foot of my bed and told me he had overheard my conversation. I rolled my eyes.
(The mean girls were rubbing off on me, I guess.)
Dad wanted to know what was going on. I showed him the note, and told him I was pretty much scared out of my mind. Still I begged him not to do anything. I knew if he told my mom, she’d call the principal. She’s that kind of mom. If she called the principal, that was it. They’d destroy me. Dad listened, and said he understood. But then he added, “You know I gotta tell Mom.”

I followed Dad straight to Mom and said, “Mom, I will never speak to you again if you say anything.” But I could see from their faces that as soon as I went to bed, they were going to have a Conversation.

I went to lunch the next day, unsure of where the Conversation had ended. What else could I do? If I hid from the girls today, they’d just get me tomorrow.
It was like an afterschool special about the runty girl who gets beat up. But instead of having a happy ending with an uplifting message about overcoming adversity, this plot would end with my living out the rest of my days a twelve-year-old hermit, friendless and alone.

As soon as I sat down at my empty table in the loser boondocks of the lunchroom, three girls strutted up and stood towering over me. My stomach churned. I clutched my grilled cheese sandwich like it was the hand of my best friend. It pretty much
was
my best friend those days. I was done for.

They started cussing me and telling me to get up.
(You know, like “Get up and fight!” Aaagh!)
I sat there, frozen. I didn’t know what to do. I looked over and saw one of the girls’ mother sitting at a nearby table. A mother! And she was laughing.
(Had I entered an alternate dimension?!?)
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t a chicken. What could they do to me? I was surrounded by people. I stood up, still a foot shorter than they were
(Why am I a foot shorter than everyone?)
, and said, “What’s your problem? What did I ever do to you?”

Before they could say or do anything, the principal walked in and interrupted, saying, “Girls!” That one word from the principal and all the kids in the lunchroom went “Ooohh.”
(As in: “You’re all in big trouble.”)
Talk about embarrassing—and relieving!

It turns out that after the Conversation, Mom had gone ahead and called the principal. At first my mom had thought it wasn’t that big a deal, girls will be girls or whatever, but Dad had told her, “You never know. Things happen in schools all the time.” Of course, that got my mom freaked out. And when it came down to it, I guess I was pretty relieved that my mom had stepped in.
(Let’s keep that between us, though.)
I honestly don’t know what those girls would have done to me, even with one of their mothers watching it all go down. The principal brought us into her office and forced us to “make up.” As if we’d been in a two-sided argument about who stole whose pencil, when we all knew perfectly well that this was a straightforward case of torturing the innocent.

Only three girls were picking on me that day in the cafeteria, but I got a sense that the other kids enjoyed the show. I’d always gotten some teasing for having a well-known father. Classmates would say, “Your dad’s a one-hit wonder. You’ll never amount to anything— just like him.” I just ignored it. I thought of him as successful and happy with his life. Maybe they thought I was snotty for being proud of my dad (well, he
is
the most amazing man ever), or for wanting to be my own person, or for wanting to be an actress and a singer. Maybe they just smelled insecurity. Maybe that was why they singled me out. Whatever the reason, to this day I still don’t know what it was. I probably never will, and at this point I don’t want to.

I don’t really blame my former best friend, Rachel,
(Again, names have been changed!)
for betraying me. She was never outright mean to me. Honestly, I think they bullied her into dropping me and ignoring me. I like to think I wouldn’t have ditched a friend the way she did, but I have a feeling she was as scared of her new friends as I was—the difference being that she was scared from
inside
the group and I was scared from
outside
.

I always find comfort, guidance, and answers in my faith. I turned to my Bible then as I often do now, and found this Psalm.

After the talk with the principal, the biggest threat was past, but I was still alone. And after bailing too many times for auditions, I didn’t even have the comfort of cheerleading anymore. I just got by. I started hanging out with some older kids and tried to put it out of my mind, but the bully girls continued to give me a hard time every day. I hated school. I never turned my back to open my locker without being aware of who else was in the hall. I never lingered between classes or after school. Every time I went to the bathroom or walked around the corner, I was on edge. I didn’t feel safe.