Miles to Go (5 page)

The Bottom of the Ocean

R
emember Lyric and Melody? Trapped in their bowl? Well, one of the fish died. I’m pretty sure it was Melody. I was upset. I know—weird to get that distraught over something you can’t even pet, but fish were my thing. Then my mom got me another fish. I should have named him Dissonance. He promptly ate Lyric.
(A harsh blow!)
After that, fish weren’t my thing anymore. I had had enough with the strong picking on the weak.

My perfect fishies were gone, but they taught me something lasting. Since then any time I want to write a song, I tell myself, Think outside the bowl.
It’s a reminder to push myself, not to get stuck—not to see the world outside through a glass cage.

“Bottom of the Ocean” started off as a song about Lyric and Melody. But once I began writing, it was about so much more than my silly fish.
(No offense to the fish. RIP.)
It was about anyone’s dreams, boyfriends, a lost parent, an abusive relationship. It’s saying if there’s someone you’ve loved but for some reason you can’t love them anymore, you have to take your feelings, scoop them out, and put them at the bottom of the ocean. Hide them there, carefully and respectfully, in the one place where they can’t ever be found. “Bottom of the Ocean” is a “good-bye” song, a love song. You’d never think it was about fish. Well, except for the “ocean” part.

My friends turned into my enemies, even my best friend. I had no idea why I was the one they hated or what I could do to make it all better. I didn’t fit anywhere. Where does it all go? All the respect, all the friendship, all the love? I was powerless, lost, just kind of floating, and there was no end in sight. So I did what I talk about in “Bottom of the Ocean.” I put all the losses and pain and fear someplace where no one would find them again, down at the bottom of my own personal ocean.
(And if you're wondering about Dissonance—he's long down the toilet.)

And then I got the final call about
Hannah Montana
.
(Peace out, suckers!)

The Call

N
ot to sound like Susie Sunshine, but it just goes to show, when you are ready to move on or if you come to peace with pain, you’ll find a silver lining. Mine came in the form of a phone call.

I was on my cell
(My parents caved and got me some minutes.)
with Patrick, one of my oldest friends. He and I had just discovered iTunes, and he was playing some song off his computer for me. Actually, it was “I Can’t Take It” by Tegan and Sara. I’ll never forget it. My mom was nearby in the kitchen and answered the landline when it rang. She screamed so loudly I thought someone had died. Then, a moment later, she started yelling, “You got it! You got it!”

“It” was Hannah.
It’s a strange and amazing feeling to get exactly what you want. It doesn’t happen very often, so when it does, your brain is kind of like,
Whoa, hold on, what’s the catch?
It’s tempting to dwell on what the downside might be or how much suddenly has to get done. But seeing my mom all happy and jumping—yes, my mom was jumping— I finally had to accept that this was just plain good. I told my brain to just be quiet. This was awesome! I had a part! A character that I loved! I’d get to sing
and
act. It was too perfect. As reality sank in, I started jumping and screaming too. Poor Patrick was left hanging on the other end of the phone. He must have thought a tornado was destroying our home.

The whole morning—my mom answering the phone and screaming that I got the part—makes it sound like I bought a ticket and won the lottery, simple as that. But now you know it was more like a slow-motion lottery, during which there were plenty of opportunities for pain, suffering, and one way-too-long trip to the bathroom. I’ll never forget how it felt to be that girl. You know the one. That friendless girl who sits alone in the cafeteria every day and is clearly just trying to survive, but the other kids go out of their way to pick on her anyway, and half of you feels bad for not doing anything to stop it, but the other half of you is just really, really relieved it’s not you sitting there? That was me. And it was awful.

Getting the part did change everything, suddenly and irreversibly. I was moving forward and leaving the past behind, but I didn’t dare forget the struggle. There was a reason for it. I brought that girl with me, and she reminds me to be compassionate. To not hold grudges. To be supportive. To be there for others when I know I’m needed. My dad likes to remind me of Newton’s third law of motion—that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For all I’d struggled during that year, for all the hours I sat alone at lunch or retreated to my room, writing songs, there was a balance. A balance in my life, just like there is a balance in the world.

I really believe that.

Here it was—one single phone call that was more than payback for sixth-grade hell. The jumping. The screaming. The madness. (Dad just said, “See? I told you. It’s meant for you.”) I had flown to Los Angeles to audition and/or meet with Disney executives at least four times. I had been too small for the part. I had been too young for the part. They wanted someone taller. Or someone older. Or someone with a better singing voice. Or someone with more acting chops. Or someone with all of the above. They had tried really hard to find anybody other than me for the part. I’d been working and hoping for Hannah and warding off a pack of (well, three) teenage bullies that whole sucky year of sixth grade. I was eleven when I first auditioned. Now, after a year, I really was twelve.
(Still not very big, but...)
Now, amazingly, incredibly, impossibly, the part was mine.

This had been my dream for about as long as I could remember.
But oddly enough, now that it was actually happening, my excitement wasn’t so much about what I’d achieved and where I was going. It was about escaping. I wasn’t thinking, “Great! I’ve got a part in a Disney show! I finally landed something! I’m going to be a big star!”
Hannah Montana
should have been something I was running to, but instead it was an excuse to run
away
from what had been the worst year of my life. I was determined to get out of Nashville before starting high school. So when I got that call, it felt like God saving me from an impossible situation. My first thought (after the screaming, crazy, holy heck one, of course) was,
I’m outta here!

Chloe Stewart

C
an you imagine being bullied by your classmates, not even having a best friend, then moving to Hollywood and getting to audition crowds of eager girls who want to play your best friend on a TV show?
(Yeah, it rocked.)
The would-be Lilly I had tried out with months earlier—the dark-haired one I’d hurried to change out of my Dr Pepper–stained skirt to meet?—I never saw that Lilly again.

While the new potential Lillys were trying out, my mom got friendly with some of the casting people. They joked about my dad being a hunk. And my mom joked about how they should bring him out here to play my dad on the show. And then (as my mom tells it) everyone was like, “Wait, seriously?”

My mom sat me down at the kitchen table to talk about it. I loved the idea of having Daddy around, but I was worried that if he got the part, people would think that he’d been cast first and I’d been hired because of him.
(After all my hard work!)
Dad worried about the same thing. He said, “This part is meant for you. What if I mess it up?”

But we all really wanted to find a way for our whole family to be together. Dad had been in Canada for so long. He was always traveling back and forth. If the show was successful and they decided to make it into a series, then I’d have to move to L.A. Would we uproot the whole family? How was it all going to work? That’s when Mom said, “Well, we’ve talked a lot about how Hannah Montana is meant for you. What if Hannah’s dad is meant for Billy Ray?” We decided to leave it up to fate.

They had already narrowed it down to two potential dads for me—or rather, Hannah Montana. Now they added Dad to the mix. He came in, took one look at the other dad actors, pointed at the best-looking one, and told the producers, “Hire that dude. Make my daughter’s show a hit.” But then they called him in to read lines with me.

Sitting at the conference table with him was completely surreal. I mean, he’s my dad! We were joking around and laughing together. We did our handshake, which is very complicated and silly. We sang together—I think it was my dad’s song “I Want My Mullet Back.” My mom was out in the waiting room with the two other dads. She says you could hear me saying, “Dad, that isn’t the line!” and everyone rolling with laughter. But apparently it was during “I Want My Mullet Back” that the other dads looked at each other and said, “We’re doomed.”

And they were right. Dad got the part. We’d been praying for a way to keep the family together, and here was the crazy, completely unexpected solution. We’d deal with rumors of who got what part first later. For now, we were just psyched to be in the same country!

Dad’s being cast was great. But the rest of the characters had been determined, and now I had other castmates too. Chloe Stewart (Hannah’s alter ego) had a brother, Jackson (Jason Earles). And she had best friends, Lilly (Emily Osment) and Oliver (Mitchell Musso). And to be perfectly honest—in the beginning, I was intimidated by all of them. Emily had been in tons of commercials, TV shows, and the movie
Spy Kids
. Mitchell had been in a couple of TV shows and movies, including
Life Is Ruff
, which was Disney, so he knew the drill. I had done, um, a few episodes of my dad’s show
Doc
, which was a drama, and a couple of lines in a movie. Once—in Alabama. I’d never done any comedy whatsoever.
So there I was trying to be funny and act and sing and dance and look cool and make it clear that my dad hadn’t gotten me the part, and attempting to befriend my costars while wearing Hannah’s cheap blond wig half the time.
And guess what?—in no time, it all felt easier and much more natural than sitting in that sixth-grade cafeteria.

Oh, and about Chloe Stewart. Doesn’t ring a bell, does it? There’s a reason. You see, my real name is Destiny Hope Cyrus.
(More on that later . . .)
Everybody called me Miley. My character’s name was Chloe Stewart. Her alter ego’s name was Hannah Montana. It was just way too many names. So they dropped the one that was easiest to let go. My character’s name changed to Miley Stewart. And people still get confused. I’m not confused. I’m Miley in real life. I’m Miley on my show (except when I’m Hannah). The only place I’m
not
Miley is on my original birth certificate, which is now defunct since I had my name legally changed. And when that glorious day comes, my driver’s license will say Miley.