"Do you want to go home now?" At the end of every revolution I had to ask this, and I held my breath every time with the sad knowledge that she would have to say "yes" eventually. But most of the time, she would smile at me and say "Let's go around again" and I would press harder on the gas pedal in case she changed her mind.

We had started doing this after one of our tutoring sessions at the nearest bookstore coffee shop. Driving back to her house, I had remarked that I didn't understand the concept of grace. It was difficult for me to wrap my mind around the idea that admittance into heaven only required a declaration of faith. We seemed to talk about religion a lot; perhaps it was because we were both at the age when spiritual curiousity peaks (now I understand there is another peak in mid-life). As it turned out, Sally absorbed her religion from fanatically religious grandparents, both born-again Christians who had substituted a relationship with Christ for their mutual dissatisfaction with marriage. They helped raise Sally and Samantha when the parents were learning the ropes of franchising gas stations, and their religiosity had a lasting effect on Sally as she was a regular attendee of sunday services. As a result, she always rose to the defense of Christian doctrine. It was clear, however, that she usually did not understand the concepts she defended. Whenever finer theological points came up, she resorted to some vague statement that included the words "Lord" and "love".

That particular night, she was unhappy with that usual line of argument, and so, as my car approached her house, she asked me to take another round trip to the bookstore so we could keep talking. It was, of course, exciting to spend more time with Sally, especially at night and in a car. For some unknown reason that science will perhaps never discover, a moving car after sunset makes the drab buildings and strip malls of our everyday existence appear more mystical, and any music being played becomes suddenly immersive and hypnotic. It was the right environment to start feeling the pangs of love.

But I was glad that we kept talking for another reason. Sally revealed this little gem: "Your focusing too much on grace. Grace is a wonderful thing and you should just accept that God will embrace you if you're faithful. And that's where the answer is: Faith. The thing is that saying you believe in God and Jesus Christ isn't enough. In fact, a lot of people sincerely think they believe in God, but you know, they don't really think about God when they're faced with a tough decision. Faith means believing in it deeply enough, all the way to your bones, so that it affects your every thought and action. It means being so sure there is a hell that you put aside pride, greed, convenience, and even happiness to do the right thing those few times you're tested. If you have that kind of faith, then of course the Lord , in his infinite love, will let you into the kingdom of Heaven despite some sins along the way."

So there it was. All my standard teenage cynicism about organized religion notwithstanding, I had no answer for this simple and logical assessment of the nature of faith and grace. She had even thrown in "Lord" and "love" and yet this time her words were reasonable, powerful, and even uplifting. It stirred me a bit at the time but I didn't become religious then. And now I wonder if I ever will. When things between Sally and I fell apart, I thought about whether her actions when she left me fit with her concept of faith. Did she act out of pride, greed, revenge, self-happiness, or did she act out of faith? Did she listen to the soft voice of the angel on her left shoulder, or did she give in to the devil's forked tongue on the right? I admit my prejudice but I tell you that I thought about this with a separate part of my mind than the part that was yellow, black and brown and oozing blood from her attacks. I concluded that faith did not enter her mind when she did the things she did. And if Sally couldn't be faithful when her test came, what hope is there for the rest of us? What hope is there for me?

And still, I smile when I think about those endless round-trips between her house and the bookstore. On occasion, Sarah did make me a little bit wiser with these small sermons, but our conversations were usually lighter, covering things like the movies or the latest grunge band to hit it big, and I reveled in observing little things about her, like her ability to raise just one eyebrow when I told a bad joke or the way she fiddled with the door lock when we flirted.

It makes me sad to think that I will likely never convince a career-ont to regularly go nowhere in a car with me, despite the opportunities for sharing wisdom and the heightened effects of sight, sound, and speech. And yet, most of the conts are perfectly content to run on treadmills or some variation several times a week for miles at a time, silenty sweating to their ipods. Apparently, unless calories are burning and muscles are tightening, going nowhere is considered wasting time.

My phone is ringing; I already know that it's my mother worrying about me. She was already pregnant when she was 25.

Today was hard and cold. The weather, a blizzard in March, was an appropriate metaphor for how I felt. It is very strange when the rest of the world thinks you should be happy, but your own emotional apparatus doesn't.

I took a year off from medical school to work on a masters in epidemiology. There was no real reason for this decision, other than a deep desire to slow down. Just slow down. The point was not even to find myself or re-evaluate my values or anything else that would be beneficial to me. In fact, if there had to be a point, it would be to avoid things that would be beneficial to me; I'm tired of every decision, every summer job, every contact, every breath being judged under the litmus test of whether it will make me look better, sound better, work better, earn better, and be better. Very tired. So this year, I'm slowing down and wasting time, and thinking; I need more time and space to think. That's the point of making a good living, right? To be unproductive, comfortable, and thoughtful in retirement. So why not start now? And why should I justify it to anyone (or myself)? Yet here I am hiding my true purposes under the guise of earning a masters in epidemiology. Old habits die hard.

Samantha

Noone would have believed that Samantha and Sally had grown up under the same roof, with the same parents, and the same advantages that wealth brings. Despite Sally's occasional meanness, she was kind and generous at the core; as soon as we got to know each other better, she had no problem casting off the prejudices she had borrowed from others and embracing me as a friend, and eventually as someone to love. Samantha, however, was a different story.

It was a perpetual irony that she was the first daughter and yet was destined to live under Sally's shadow. She was not as beautiful, intelligent, or charming as her sister. And while her sister inspired real affection from her friends, Samantha's associations were loose and fueled by expensive gifts. In fact, it was not an exaggeration to say that all of her so-called friends despised her secretly, as most hired entourages do. Her worst quality, which seemed to me like an incurable congenital defect, was her painfully obnoxious voice and the outrageous things she said with it. If anatomists and neuroscientists ever discover a region of the brain that filters annoying utterances from everyday speech, Samantha would surely lack it. She had a complete inability to be modest or graceful when it came to the riches she had the fortune of being born into. It was not an unusual thing for her to squeal in her shrill voice how she preferred Prada over Gucci because of some pointless subtlety in the stitching of the fabric. Or she might casually giggle that she had burnt out the engine in her Mercedes because she had forgotten to get her oil changed at the dealership (tee hee!). Or my favorite, she always spoke with disdain about any homeless person she happened to come across, wondering aloud why they couldn't just be millionaires like her dad.

Noone could figure out whether she was just an entitled bitch rubbing everyone's nose in her wealth, or whether she truly and sincerely didn't realize that the her speech was repulsive. It was even difficult to decide which scenario was more terrible. The sad thing is that neither of these was probably right. My own theory was that she was deeply insecure, and that her constant references to wealth and money were her attempts to sublimate financial worth into self-worth.

Her strategy eventually changed; at some point it must have become clear to her that she could never be as loved as Sally. So instead of transforming into her sister, Samantha put herself to the task of accomplishing the reverse. After all, it is much easier to pull someone down from a height than to climb it yourself.