by Daphne Rice

Delete.

Much easier than erasing. No messy crumbs. No lingering word ghosts. All gone. No more. Poof. She smiled at her bare fingers resting on the keyboard.

######

Her first journals were leatherette, key-locked diaries, the kind her brothers could jimmy open with a paper clip. Mundane little recountables of weather, school events, family gatherings, dreams, wishes, that sort of thing. Changed things she didn’t like, erased things she didn’t want to remember.

A sweet girl, really. Never caused trouble. She grayed around school; invisible to beautiful people, a shadow to block-headed jocks and academic bean brains. Equally transparent to nerds and outcasts. Hated high school, loved writing, so spent her time in word worlds.

Until late spring, her senior year, at that leadership camp just across the state border from Spokane. She met a tall, dark-eyed fellow, legs clear up to his Adam’s apple, battered old cowboy hat, and beat-up guitar. An apprentice saddle-maker from Bozeman; always a crowd around him, requesting favorites, singing along with his rattly-voiced twang. Sometimes he looked her way when he sang.

She recorded every glance in her journal. Wrote a couple of her own songs of love, heartbreak; the usual country themes. Eventually got up the nerve to sing one of her ballads at an evening gathering.
“Lock eyes four seconds, look down.” She had read a column called “Flirting Tips That Do The Trick!” in a teen magazine. That tip worked like a charm.

Her words pulled him in, tied him to her heart. Letters flew back and forth from Oregon to Montana. Montana to Oregon. She read the lines, between the lines, beyond the lines. Recorded each moment of this long distance romance, captured in her journal like fireflies in jar.

A sparkling diamond was her Christmas gift.

That June she moved cross-country. Felt right at home, volunteered to judge baked goods at the county fair. Making conversation, the Decorated Cakes judge noticed her engagement ring and asked who the lucky fellow was. “You don’t — I mean, he was just out at our ranch yesterday— with his girlfriend— ”

######

She left Bozeman. Ripped up his photos, but he still haunted her dreams. Burned his letters, but memories of him faded only around the edges.

Some people let go easy. She didn’t.

She kept the engagement ring. Wore it like a nasty scar. Hated him.

######

“Write it down, get it out, get over it.” Where had she heard that? Oprah? Dr. Phil? Opening her laptop, she tapped, then beat, until the keys spat out her heartbreak.

Finished, she opened her browser. Googled. Pretty slick, that Internet. Like bugs pressed flat beneath glass, the bold, black letters spelled out his name. She touched the screen. Sighed. Thought about e-mailing him her story. Shook her head. Closed the browser.

On, then off, on, then off— right in time with the wall clock’s steady ticking, the cursor winked at the end of her tale.

Something clicked.

Tentatively, she tapped the delete key back to the words ‘engagement ring.’ Fifteen more keystrokes.

A quick breath. No diamond glittered up at her. All gone.

With rapid urgency, her finger pressed delete until the story became a blank screen with only a cursor’s heartbeat. No more.

Not breathing now, she reopened the search window. Typed his name.

It was taking longer this time.

She squeezed her eyes closed, pinched the bridge of her nose.

‘Your search – did not match any documents.’

Poof.

She smiled.