Free Miles to Go by Miley Cyrus

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 kind 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
     
    A fter 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
     
    M y 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