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us. By default, she became B. J.’s nanny, as well as mine.
    As much as I missed Mom and Dad, the time away from them wasn’t always bad. Some days, Taryn would invite her friend Heather, whose parents were also at Int, to our apartment. I loved pretending I was a princess, so the two girls would dress me up in costumes and fancy dresses, fix my hair, give me a wand and a crown, and make me beautiful.
    Justin also liked to invite friends over. Mike, the son of our father’s secretary Rosemary, and Teddy, a friend whose mother worked with Mom on the Ship Project, were two of his favorite guests. They would practice their karate on B. J. and me. We would pillow fight them back. Teddy and Justin liked to go skateboarding, and they’d bring B. J. and me along to watch.
    My father made it down to Los Angeles most Saturday nights. Usually, he would try to make the weekend visits as special as possible by bringing me little gifts or doing something fun with me on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, we would relax at home, but at other times we would go out for breakfast, hang out at Griffith Park near the Santa Monica Mountains, or look around the mall. Because of her work, my mom was able to come less often.
    One Saturday night, though, she called ahead and told me that she and Dad had a surprise for me. I tried to wait up, but I had fallen asleep by the time they came in. The next morning, I ran into their room. “Where’s my surprise?” I asked excitedly. Mom reached under the bed and pulled out a kitten, a silver tabby, absolutely adorable, but scared to death. I named her Sarah Kitty. At first, B. J. and I were scared of her because she was vicious, but eventually we made peace with her.
    B. J. and I were at the apartment one afternoon when Sarah Kitty suddenly came sprinting out of the dollhouse to investigate a newcomer, a boy around Justin’s age whom I had seen around the Base before. He had barely stepped into the living room when Sarah Kitty dashed up to him and climbed him as if he were a tree. He was screaming, partly in fear and partly in pain at having been scratched, so B. J. and I ran to grab her. Once we had her and our laughter under control, we stood staring at the boy, wondering who he was.
    Justin was home and made the introductions. “This is Sterling,” he said to me. “He’s your brother.” I knew that Justin had a friend named Sterling, but I didn’t know that he was actually his twin. He and his family had been living in L.A. for several years and were also members of the Sea Org.
    It took me a while to get used to the concept of having another brother. Although Sterling and Justin looked nothing alike, they both loved sports and got along fairly well. He even started picking me up from the nursery some nights and stayed until Pat arrived.
    Dad, Mom, or both left L.A. every Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. When they left, Justin and I liked to be outside to wave them off. I’ll never forget the Sunday when my parents were backing their car out of the garage and B. J. and I were riding the garage gate. My leg got caught in between the bars as it was sliding to the right to let the car out. Justin tried to pull me off, but I misunderstood his intention and thought he was teasing me as usual. The gate had no safety stop and my leg got stuck between the gate and the wall, and I was trapped. In unbearable pain, I started to scream my head off.
    My dad jumped out of the car and literally bent the metal bars with his bare hands to free my leg. I was crying uncontrollably as he carried me to the elevator and back upstairs. My parents called a local Scientology doctor, who instructed them to ask me to try to walk. When I couldn’t do it because of the pain, she told them that unfortunately my leg was probably fractured, and that I should get an X-ray in the morning.
    Mom and Dad stayed with me for as long as they could, but they had so many urgent phone calls from Int that they were unable to stay past dinner.