Love and Other Four-Letter Words by Carolyn Mackler

broken.

 
    P hoebe was the only one in the dog run when I arrived the next morning. I spotted her from half a block away, sitting on a bench with Dogma on her lap.
    “Sammie and Goobermeister!” Phoebe shouted, waving. “I was hoping you'd come back.”
    I lingered near the gate while Moxie galloped over to Phoebe. As Dogma hopped onto the ground, Phoebe slid over on the bench, patting the empty spot next to her.
    “Are you trying to goober up my tennis ball again?” Phoebe asked Moxie, who was nosing at her backpack.
    Joining Phoebe, I noticed she still had that brace on her knee. I bet she's torn a ligament or something.
    “How was your week?” Phoebe asked, tossing the tennis ball across the dog run.
    I shrugged.
    “Not so good?”
    I shook my head as I fiddled with the metal gadget on Moxie's leash.
    “Me neither.” “Why not?” “I asked you first,” Phoebe said.
    I paused. Part of me was tempted to spill the emotional beans, like those tell-all families on daytime talk shows who curse, throw chairs at each other and eventually make up. I wondered how Phoebe would react if I told her about Dad taking off for California without me. Or the fact that Mom had been curled in the fetal position under her sheets when I'd left the apartment a few minutes ago.
    “I just moved here this summer,” I finally said, “so I don't really know anyone in the city.”
    “Really? Where did you move from?”
    “Ithaca. It's a town in central New—”
    “I know where Ithaca is! My older sister went to Cornell.”
    “Really?” I couldn't believe it! Maybe she'd even taken a class with Dad. Supposedly his American lit class was so popular that undergrads audited lectures
just for fun,
a notion that always struck me as bizarre.
    “She went to the vet school, but now she lives in Tucson. Guess what she specializes in.”
    My mind flashed to Oscar Mayer Wienermom, who I remembered was going to work at the vet school. Which then led me to Oscar Mayer Wienerette and the droves of guys lining up at
my
front door. I can see it now, with them saying,
Who lived here, again? Samantha who? Never heard of her.
    “Dogs,” Phoebe continued. “We're a big dog family.”
    I glanced over to where Moxie and Dogma were digging a hole.
    “I mean, we're big
into
dogs, but the only dogs we've ever had are
small
ones.”
    I had to laugh.
    “By the way, now you know one person in New York City.”
    Just then Dogma bounded over and leaped back into Phoebe's lap, smudging dirt all over her legs.
    “And one dog,” she added.
    Phoebe didn't tell me about
her
bad week until we were in Riverside Park, where she suggested we go after the dog run was invaded by three snarling boxers and a springer spaniel. Or at least that was the type of dog that Phoebe deemed the guy who corralled them in on a web of knotted ropes.
    Riverside Park turned out to be on a narrow stretchof land bordering the Hudson River, overflowing with families, mutts and little kids teetering on their bikes. I could have ridden Mariposa here, if I'd been able to bring her. As Phoebe and I walked up the promenade, I discovered I'd been wrong about her on two counts:
She's going to be seventeen in September, so she's nearly a year older than I am. I must have looked surprised because she laughed and said,
Don't worry, people always assume I'm younger because I'm such a runt.
Her knee wasn't injured, as she confessed during part of
her
bad-week story, which went something like this: Earlier this summer her parents had sent her to a six-week tennis camp where her older siblings had thrived, even though she hates the sport. But three days in, opportunity knocked when she tripped on a tree root and twisted her knee. The sports doctor banned her from the courts. The camp offered to reimburse tuition. Phoebe hopped the next bus home. But now her parents are saying she has to return when her knee heals, so Phoebe is faking a limp whenever she's in their presence.
    Phoebe was still