Miley Stewart woke up. For a second, she couldn’t remember where she was.
Then she heard familiar sounds: a wave crashed. A seagull squawked. An umbrella rustled in the breeze.
She realized she was lying on a lounge chair on the beach. There was a towel balled up underneath her head for a pillow.
Ahhhhh, she thought dreamily. She closed her eyes again and dug her fingers into the soft, warm sand. What could be better than waking up to another sunny afternoon in Malibu? she thought.
“Agua de coco! Agua de coco!” a man’s voice boomed from above.
That doesn’t sound like Malibu, Miley realized.
Miley sat up. She opened her eyes. She blinked into the shimmering sunlight. Then she remembered.
She was on the beach, but she wasn’t home in Malibu, California. She was on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. As in Rio, as in the second largest city in Brazil. She was there because she was on a world tour as Hannah Montana.
As Hannah, Miley had been jetting across the globe, traveling from one glamorous city to the next. Her companions were her security guard, Roxy, her brother, Jackson, and her father, Robby. It was the trip of a lifetime for Miley, and the tour couldn’t be going better. So far, they’d been to Rome, Italy, and Sydney, Australia. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was stop number three.
“Agua de coco! Get your agua de coco!”
“Duas, por favor,” said Roxy, in what sounded to Miley like perfect Portuguese. Roxy was a whiz at many things: security, athletics, knot tying. She also seemed to have a knack for learning foreign languages.
“Well, hello, lazybones,” Roxy said when she saw that Miley was up. “Have a coconut milk. They’re super refreshing.”
“Thanks,” Miley said. She noticed two empty lounge chairs next to her. “Hey, where are Dad and Jackson?”
“Your dad is at his bossa-nova lesson.”
As Hannah Montana’s manager, Mr. Stewart wrote most of Hannah’s songs. So he was going to spend a lot of his time in Rio de Janeiro learning about Brazilian music, including flamenco, the samba, and the bossa nova. He was hoping to get some ideas for Hannah Montana’s next chart-topping hits.
“Where’s Jackson?” Miley asked. “Wait, let me guess. Surfing.”
“You know it,” Roxy replied.
Jackson had been dying to hit the waves since Italy. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a beach in Rome. Then Sydney had been a bust. It had a beach and megawaves, but it was too cold to surf since it was winter. Now Miley and her family were in a sunny climate on one of the most famous strips of sand in the world. It would be impossible to separate Jackson from his beloved surfboard. Even though it was winter there, too, Rio was still warmer than Sydney. Plus they were having unusually high temperatures. Miley would be surprised if she saw her brother at all this trip.
Roxy opened her can of agua de coco with a pop. “Ahhhhhh,” she said, taking a sip. “This is the stuff. Okay, I’d love to stay and chat, but it’s time for me to run.”
“You’re leaving me, too?” Miley asked, surprised. It seemed as if everyone had somewhere to be. Everyone except her.
“See those people over there?” Roxy pointed down the beach to a circle of people. They were dressed in loose-fitting white cotton clothes, and they were moving in unison. What they were doing looked like a combination of karate and dance. “They’re performing capoeira,” Roxy explained. “It’s a special kind of Brazilian martial art. I’m training to be a mestre. That’s ‘master’ in Portuguese. I’ll be only a few steps away. You get into trouble, just holler.”
“I will,” Miley assured her. It was hard to imagine how she’d get into trouble lounging on the beach. They had three days before Hannah Montana’s first show. Even though she loved performing as Hannah, Miley was psyched to have time to relax. So what if everyone else had somewhere to be? She did, too—right here on the beach. Chilling.
Miley took a decisive sip of agua de coco. Roxy was right. It was refreshing. She took off her T-shirt and lay down in her bikini. It was a new blue one she’d gotten at the mall on her last day in Malibu. Might as well show it off, Miley thought.
She readjusted her lounge chair, put on her headphones, and lay back down. She placed her can of agua de coco on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes again.
Halfway through the first song on her playlist, Miley felt a spray of sand. Through the music playing on her headphones, she could hear the distant sound of guys shouting. Then something hit her. Directly in the stomach.
Ooof!