Love and Other Four-Letter Words by Carolyn Mackler Page B

the laundry room and ATM machines running out of cash. There was just so much to remember that my brain felt like our wearied old fan, whirring night and day in a cycle like this:
Is there anything to eat in the apartment? Answer is often no, which means I have to make a shopping list and trek to several grocery stores in an attempt to hit all the sales advertised in the windows.
2. Has Moxie been fed and walked? And why does she keep gnawing that raw patch on her back?
Is today a day I have to remind Mom about alternate-side parking? And what if another episode like last Thursday happens? I hadn't been able to rouse her in time, so as the street cleaners advanced, I'd grabbed her car keys and begged the super to move the Volvo while I hyperventilated from the sidewalk.
    The only times my mind slows down are when I'm playing guitar or hanging out with Phoebe. We've been meeting in the dog run every morning. Sometimes we just sit on a bench, chatting as Moxie and Dogma horse around. Other times we wander around Central Park for hours, until Phoebe “limps” off to physical therapy.
    I guess I'd say we're becoming friends. It's strange. We haven't exchanged phone numbers and I still don't even know her last name. And it's not like we make plans to meet; we both just show up at the dog run at nine, an unspoken agreement. In a way, the fact that we're completely unattached allows us to talk about things you ordinarily don't when you've just met someone.
    Like on Friday afternoon, as we were walking around the reservoir, Phoebe told me that after herrelease from tennis captivity, she'd assumed it was going to be a lonely summer. Most of her friends were counselors at sleep-away camps, or with their families out in the Hamptons, which she described as these swank beach towns near the eastern tip of Long Island.
    “If you can call them friends,” she added, scuffing her sneakers in the pebbles.
    “What do you mean?”
    And that's when Phoebe told me about her stuffy private school, where the kids believe that a hefty allowance + designer clothes + a country home = high status. Phoebe's parents often forgo vacations to cover tuition because they believe that education equals enlightenment. What they don't understand is that all the teachers talk about is how education equals good college applications.
    “Can't you tell them you want to transfer somewhere else?” I asked.
    And that's when Phoebe told me how her older siblings, both in their midtwenties, had gone there too. And how her sister had excelled at Cornell; her brother was a nuclear physicist “with more degrees than a thermometer.” And how her parents pressure her to live up to that precedent, not realizing that to the rest of the world these wunderkinder aren't exactly normal.
    The next morning, while we were sitting on a pier in Riverside Park, I told Phoebe that I understand what it's like to live in someone else's shadow.
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
    And that's when I described Kitty. How she has the brains and the beauty and the boys. How I once compiled a list of all of Kitty's assets (seventeen) and all of mine (two), which I then shredded into pieces and stuffed in the trash. And how, next to Kitty, I often wind up feeling second-tier.
    Phoebe's eyes had been closed as she aimed her face toward the sun. I think she was trying to dry up her acne, which has gotten worse over the past few weeks.
    “Sammie.” She sat up abruptly and looked at me. “You are
anything
but second-tier.”
    It could have just been the sun making its way over the Manhattan skyline, but I was suddenly overcome with a warm sensation inside. I knew that, whether or not it was actually true, Phoebe meant what she said.
    I got a similar feeling a few days later, when I showed up at the dog run racked with a lousy, crampy, moody case of PMS.
    “You need chocolate,” Phoebe said matter-of-factly.
    But when we scavenged around in our pockets, we didn't have enough collectively to