On The Other Hand...

You know how it feels on a hot summer day to dive into the crisp relief of a cold swimming pool? Well, that's how it felt when I came home from school after a particularly hard day to be told that Disney had called. Margot, a talent agent who'd taken intrest in me, let us know that Disney had asked her to send tapes of all the girls she represented between the ages of eleven and sixteen. They wanted a tape of me reading for the part of Lilly, the best friend of a girl named Chloe Stewart in a new TV show called Hannah Montana.
From the very first time my parents and I read the script, we knew that Chloe Stewart was my dream part. Chloe's alter ego, Hannah Montana, was a rock star. The actress who played both parts would be singing Hannah Montana's songs. Singing and acting. Both were dreams of mine and if I landed this role, I wouldn't have to put either one aside. After my dad read the part, he just kept saying, "That's made for Miley. Miley's made for that.
But, heck, I'd be happy to play Lilly. Or lucky to be Chloe Stewart's talking houseplant, for that matter. So we made a tape, sent it in and almost immediately got a call from Disney asking me to make another audition tape - and this time they wanted me to read the part of Hannah. I was so physched. Seriously, my shrieks probably scared the poor horses out in the fields. In my head, I was already dropping everything to move to L.A. Sure, Hannah was supposed to be fifteen and I was twelve. Twelve-ish. Okay, I was eleven. That was a problem. But still - they knew how old I was and they'd ask for the tape anyway, so it must not matter.
Except it did. We sent the second tape in and the very next day we got an e-mail saying that I was too young and too small for Hannah. I was bummed. No - what's ten times bummed? That was me. My dad said, "Disney just made a big mistake. My intuition tells me that you are Hannah Montana."
All I could think was, So much for Dad's intuition. Now let's return to our regularly scheduled torture: sixth grade.