2

Oliver was lousy for keeping secrets, well, most of them. After gym class, he had biology with Miley and Lily with Mrs. Brubaker, and Jesse was off to his filmmaking class with Mrs. Grey, a red-haired beauty with whom the majority of the male students obsessed. Of the teachers, Mrs. Brubaker had a reputation for being tough and demanding. She gave out more demerits that any other teacher. Class time was a hard time, especially with Oliver holding a secret wrapped with a warning that someone's dual life was about to end. If Jesse Samms with his opportunist ways deciphered his dream that Miley was really Hannah Montana, it would be straight to the tabloids, and Miley's dream life would be over. When school ended for the day, Oliver confronted Miley in a hushed position in the hall with Lily and revealed the truth.

Miley's scream could be heard as far away as the chicken place ten blocks away; her feet were then off and running out of the school, toward the beach and down the wooded street to her home on the bluff.

"Daddy!!!" She charged into the house and ran up the stairs looking for her father.

Standing in the kitchen making soup, cornbread and salad for dinner, Robby Ray Stewart watched and heard his teen daughter charge into the house, storm the stairs and then listened to her footsteps searching the upstairs. A former entertainer herself, he had taken his recent absence from the business to raise his kids and serve as his daughter's manager as Hannah Montana. He looked to his son, Jackson, piling cheese, vegetables and meats on a large loaf of bread, and then looked to the ceiling above him listening to his daughter looking for him hysterical on the wrong floor of their beach house.

"Give her a minute…." He mumbled to his son.

"Daddy!!!" Miley came running down the stairs, noticed her father and veered toward him upset.

"Daddy," Miley pulled herself in to sit at the counter. "I think Jesse figured out I'm Hanna Montana. I'm doomed. He told Oliver he had a dream about my secret identity as a superhero at a Hannah Montana concert."

"You a superhero?" Jackson mugged and chortled a bit. "Yeah, I could see that - Annoying Girl!!!" He gave her a superhero name and laughed under breath prepping a large sandwich.

"Jackson," Robby looked over to his son with that parental glare. "Go find me a barrel ring."

"A barrel ring…" Jackson looked at him. "In Southern California?"

"Go do it." Robby prodded him off. Confused and perplexed, Jackson rolled his eyes wondering where he was going to find a barrel ring and collected his double-decker submarine sandwich before stepping back and then wandering out the back door. Robby took a deep breath and turned back to Miley.

"You're not in trouble yet…" He replied next to his daughter. "It sounds like he's figured out who you are unconsciously, but he hasn't figured it out consciously. His mind is still trying to unravel the imagery from the dream, but I can fix this. You get Lily over here and I'll tell you what we're going to do."

"Is this going to work?" Miley asked.

"Sweetheart…" Robby chopped carrots for the soup he was making. "I helped Uncle Luther cover up his white lightning still for twenty years, didn't I?"

"Uncle Luther had a white lightning still??"

"Whoops…." Robby caught himself. "You didn't hear that from me."

At that moment, Lily and Oliver dropped out of breath on the front landing. The run from school had taken them a bit longer than it took Miley to run it. Lily climbed over Oliver and staggered to Miley before grabbing on to her to keep standing. Miley was obviously in better shape for running a mile than these two. Gasping and fighting for breath, Lily looked into Miley's face and realized she wasn't even sweating.

"I hate you." She was upset at Miley for leaving them in the dust, but she didn't mean it.

"Lily," Robby poured the girl and Oliver lemonade to quench their insatiable thirst. "I got an idea for us to help keep Miley's secret, but you've got a part in it too."

"Will it work?" Oliver pulled himself up on the sofa to reach the lemonade Robby was handing him.

"Of course, it will work!" Robby continued back to the kitchen. "For twelve years in Ridgetop, Tennessee, I never told anyone that Uncle Earl held illegal poker games in his barn after church."

"Uncle Earl had illegal poker games in that old barn on Sundays?!" Miley learned why her father came home late from church back home with more money that he left with."

"Dang it!!!!" Robby caught himself exposing more family secrets.