A/N: This is a story I've had planned for a while, but just decided to make the plunge to post online.
Here's the background of this story: This first chapter is told from Miley's point of view, but I'm not sure if it will stay like that. This chapter is pretty much the prologue, with no dialogue, but the rest of the chapters will be different. This story is gonna be a long one, probably set up into two or tree different stories incase this one gets too long for my liking. And this chapter does seem a little weird, but it'll get better.
This is Miley (or whoever else's POV you see) reflecting on life from many years later. How many? Well, you'll find out sometime.
If someone asked me if I thought that my life would turn out this way when I was 14, I probably would have just stared blankly and laughed as if it were the most illegitimate question ever.
At that point I thought people with big families had lost their minds when they made their decision to do so.
Have I lost my mind? Well, I very well may have, but I sure haven't regretted it.
Jake and I married right out of high school, because we figured that if we didn't do it then, it would never happen.
In retrospect, my logic was pretty well… un-logical. I figured that if it didn't turn out to be the relationship made in heaven, we could always get a divorce. That never ended up happening, but I still can laugh at how naïve and stupid we were about life.
The date we got married was July 1, 2010. I like to call it a scheduled elopement. We had the date picked out for about 2 months and hardly anyone knew. Alright, so half of our graduating class knew, if not more and some teachers. Possibly the principal, as he seemed to just "know" everything.
But that was all Lilly's fault anyway. We made the mistake of telling her before it actually happened. And the nurse knew all of the details; she was the one who suggested it in the first place. I'm not sure why we actually agreed to what she said, but we were crazy teenagers who didn't really know what we were getting into.
But my point is that my father and brother didn't know, and neither did Jake's folks. Who knew a bunch of seniors could really keep a secret.
We pulled it off as if it were really just a spur of the moment decision, the only people there being the priest and Lilly. We could not risk leaving Lilly alone while something that huge was going on. So we just brought her along. It didn't seem to do any harm.
My father, surprisingly, didn't seem to be too mad about me and Jake "eloping". He didn't even seem shocked. I still wonder if he knew - or Jackson figured it out and told him – and just let us have our fun. Or maybe he just knew it was right. Maybe he just kept his calm until I left the room and he… attacked the couch and mentally cursed us then, or something.
I'm not sure, and honestly, I don't want to know. I'll just pretend he's been happy for us all these years, even if he really hasn't.
We agreed not to have kids until at least five or ten years after our marriage, so we could go to collage (we both ended up getting into UCLA) and so Jake could continue being an actor, and I could continue being Hannah Montana for a few more years, which I thought would be my last.
The whole "5-10 years" thing didn't really happen. On April 1, 2013 my oldest child, a daughter, was born. What an April Fools day surprise that was. She was born 3 weeks early, so I was convinced that it wasn't really happening, but Jake was the one who said "Just in case, Miles, I think this is real," and got me to the hospital in time.
During this pregnancy, early in it of course, I still decided to be Hannah as long as I could last. I was careless and realized why I had spent all that time in previous years making sure the wig was truly on. The world was pretty shocked at first when they found out Hannah was Miley, or Miley was Hannah.
I got a lot of hate mail within that next year or so, but eventually they let me come back, or I let myself rather. Every once in a while I'll do a concert, and I release albums every two years or so.
The beginning of the story I'm trying to get across starts in early September 2021, so I'll describe my kids as they were at that time.
My oldest, Taylor Samantha. She had always been my mini-me, from the day she was born, Jake said that there were probably no differences about us. He started worrying about her teenage years at probably the same instant. From the curly brown hair, precisely the some shade, to the greeny-blue eyes, our looks were the same.
She was a trickster – a trouble maker – but she meant well. She wouldn't really mean to hurt a person, for instance, but sometimes it just happened. She kept me alert, because I never knew what exactly would happen. She and I did a lot together. We always seemed to get along well. People told me that she was the perfect child. Others told me she was an unruly child. All I figured is that she was mine, and that was all that mattered.
The next two, Christine Leslie and Micaela Marie, twin girls, were born on May 12, 2016. Christine, or Christi as we've always called her, was smarter than I could even imagine. She had a high IQ, borderline genius, and she was tested at age 4. She could read and do integers at 4. She ended up skipping kindergarten because we knew that she would be bored there. She was always so charming and loving. Christi had the best hair. Dark blonde, thin, and silky soft. It was straight, but if I played with it while it was wet I could get it to curl up easily. She rarely let me do that because she was never into "girly stuff" so she wouldn't let me do anything to it.
Micaela, who ended up being called Caela and then Shaela, was always so talkative. She started talking before she was one and hadn't stopped since. She could literally talk from the moment she woke up until she mumbled herself to sleep. She had always entertained us with the phrases that she said. She'd always been able to talk herself out of a situation (occasionally into one). Shaela was the social one, while Christi was quiet and preferred to be alone. Unlike Christi, Shaela loved her brown hair looking "pretty", so I often French braided her and Taylor's hair.
When Shaela was almost 3, we realized that she wasn't growing a much or a fast as Christi was. I thought that she was just going to be short, like Taylor was short. But I realized that Taylor was always small, Shayla started out pretty big – in the 95th percentile for height, she just didn't stay that way. On April 14, 2019, after days and days of tests, she was diagnosed with Pituitary Dwarfism. That is when the body doesn't produce enough growth hormone to keep growing. She had to have nightly shots of artificial growth hormone for years.
Christi and Shaela did look a lot alike, even if they weren't identical. Besides their height difference and their hair color, you could really tell that they were sisters. Their face shapes were identical as were their blue eyes and skin colors. They always seemed to even tan the same way at the same time.
Jessica Suzanne was born September 25, 2017. She was always such a happy child. The terrible two tantrums never really happened with Jessi. The middle name "Suzanne" came from my mom, Susan, "Jessica" from Jake's mother. She always reminded me of her, my mother I mean. Not only did they look a bit alike, apparently she that the same cheery disposition Jessi had. I like to think she got it from me, but actually, not that I think about it, I think I might have gotten it from her. She was so easily loved, I remember around this time she told me "Everyone loves Jessi," and she was right. I told her this when she was older and all she could say was "Well, it's true."
She had thick dark hair that was as straight as could be, like my mom. I'd have to remember back to that class I took as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for two blue eyes people to produce a brown eyed child, but it happened for us. God knows where Jessi's chocolate brown eyes came from. Jake was convinced that she wasn't his at one point, but alas she is. It would make life a little more interesting if she wasn't, though.
That September, my youngest was Alyson Denise, born January 1, 2020, only about 20 months old. Nici, what we often called her, was a pretty good baby, actually more of a toddler at that point, basically took was we gave her. The terrible twos for her, we were hoping would go like Jessi's. At 20 months she was more interesting in mobile skills than verbal ones. She could probably could say a lot more words than she did, but at that point she would only say about 3 words on her own, maybe 5 others on command. She had a few words that had a double meaning, like I remember "Lala" was both juice and Shaela.
But she loved to run and climb on everything. I remember one day I found her jimmied up a curtain. She could kick a ball farther than I could and had a great overhand through. She had bright blonde hair that curled slightly, that came from Jake's side somewhere, and the rest of the family's (besides unique little Jessi) blue eyes.
When Shaela was diagnosed with Pituitary Dwarfism I though tit was the end of the world. I knew it wasn't life threatening, but that didn't mean much to me. There was something wrong with my baby. Something that would affect her for the rest of her life.. She would always look about two years younger. Her bones were just that size.
"Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days…" Now that I think about it, I've had an awful lot of those days in the past.
September 2021. That's when the story begins. When I reflect on this part of my life I like to label it "The Beginning of The End."
When I was writing this, I was nearly done when the power conveniently went out. I stupidly didn't save any of it, so I had to rewrite it. So I really hope at least someone wants more. Or I would have wasted a lot of time. I have the first chapter too, but I'm not posting it until I'm almost done with the 2nd and so on.