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when I entered her room after dinner in search of the new miniature horses she’d gotten as her consolation prize when Mom decided to switch jobs with Grandma.
    I ignored her warning and took the dapple gray with the English saddle.
    Tiffany grabbed my wrist and seized the horse, prying it loose from my fingers.
    “That’s mine!” she said through gritted teeth.
    “That doesn’t mean I can’t play with it,” I said.
    “Yes, that’s precisely what it means. You’re in my room and I make the rules here,” she said.
    Now that Tiffany was ten and nearly grown up, Mom had let her take down the childish fabric that had covered her walls for years. All that remained now was the stark white paint that had hidden underneath and few pictures of horses she’d put up with Scotch tape.
    “You can play with this one,” she offered, handing me a horse she’d had for a while and no longer played with. It was a small bay with a tall white sock and a chipped tail.
    “I will name this one Princess,” I said.
    “That’s a stupid name for a horse. And you already have a cat named Princess. Don’t be a moron.” She went back to reading a magazine at her desk, but she shifted in her chair so she could keep an eye on me.
    I put the horse in a stall in her play barn and went back for the gray.
    “Don’t be a pest!” she said as she smacked my hand away from her horse. “I don’t care what they give you on the set. In my room, these are my toys. Now get out!”
    “Why are you being such a jerk?” I asked, confused.
    Tiffany turned her back on me and said nothing. Then she faced me again. “Why don’t you just take all the horses and get out! They’re for babies anyway.” She put a tape in her tape deck and blasted the music before I could say anything.
     
     
    On the set of the new sitcom, I may have been the baby, but I felt like a real professional. We rehearsed for a few weeks to work out the kinks, and then taped the pilot. The network brought in a real audience off the street to sit in metal bleachers and watch us perform the show while three large cameras maneuvered around the studio floor recording the scenes.
    We’d do the whole show all the way through twice for two different audiences in one night, and then the producers sliced and diced the two versions together to make the final episode that would air a few weeks later. They called the genre “three camera live” because we performed for a live audience, but the show was actually taped.
    The applause and laughter and feedback overwhelmed and thrilled my senses. The warm-up comedian would call out the cast members one by one before the show started to introduce us to the audience. He saved me for last, and the crowd would laugh and cheer when I came out. So small in comparison to the six actors who had preceded me, I was like a tiny dot of punctuation at the end of the list of cast members.
    Nerves fluttered through my limbs before he shouted my name, but the crowd yelled and clapped so loud each time I got out there, I looked forward to it after the first try.
    I loved being part of a team with a goal to accomplish. We played our parts and put on our show, and soared on a cloud when the final scene ended. Mom wasn’t the only one addicted to showbiz.

    We finished the pilot near the end of December, just after my seventh birthday, and the network invited the whole cast to the NBC Christmas party. The celebration took place at a sprawling studio on the Metromedia lot in Hollywood that they’d turned into a winter wonderland. All the stars from all the NBC shows—early ’80s hits like Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life —promised to show up. The network even sent a limo to our house to get us there and back in style.
    Mom dressed Tiffany and me in brand-new holiday dresses from Saks for the occasion. They were both hunter green velvet, though mine was shapeless and short with a round collar, and Tiffany’s was nipped at the waist and more