Dial 'O' for Over

Her face turns red. She won't repeat what it said. But that night she was out on the street. "My boyfriend kicked me out in the middle of the night. I didn't think he was going to go through my phone. I forgot to delete it," she says wistfully. Now, she has no worries about deleting numbers or messages: "I don't have a boyfriend."

Instead, she watches her girlfriends spy for unknown numbers in the digital black books of their boyfriends. They "check numbers and they call the numbers," she says. "If it's a guy who answers, they hang up. If it's a girl, they ask what's going on. They get caught because they forgot to delete the numbers."

The DELETE button has the power to alter existence. Now you are there. Push an unforgiving button. Now you are gone, absolutely. (Imagine if the noble Lady Macbeth had within her grasp the noble cell phone. She may not have had so much trouble with the damned spot.)

Bridgett, 22, who doesn't want her last name used because she wants her cell phone business private, is trying to explain. There she sits, hanging out in the mall. Pink shirt, pink lipstick. Gold shoes. Swinging her legs, which are dangling from the counter of a cell phone kiosk. And, yeah, she admits, she has DELETED people. What's the problem with that?

"When you talk to someone like a friend and they do something, you be like, bam ," she says, pushing an imaginary button on an imaginary cell phone. "Like just delete the number from the phone. When you are mad at somebody, take the aggression out and delete all their numbers and all their photos. You be like, 'I'm done.' Then later, you get a call. And you are like, 'Who are you?' "

Apologizing. Making up a story, blaming the lack of communication, the lapse, on technical difficulties. "You know what? My phone got messed up, but I'll put your number back in," she says to the DELETED person, promising to give him existence again in her phone.

But psych !

"I just pretend to put the number back." Because she and her cell phone have moved on.