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she has the flu,” Brenda tells her. “She said she hasn’t felt well all day.”
    “You should have said something. I would have figured out how to get you out of this situation,” Mom tells me, but not like she’s angry or frustrated with me. Just like she wants me to know it would have been okay for me to ask for help.
    She guides me to my feet and then encourages me to lean against her as we start to move. “I’m taking you home right now. Brenda, tell Kristen and John where I’ve gone, and that I’ll be back as soon as possible. They’ll just have to hold up the bridal dance until I manage to get back.”
    Mom leads me carefully toward the car….
     
    Now I know…. It’s getting too far from a lost object, leaving it behind, that launches me back to Is. I can’t remain indefinitely in my life. The Universe only lets me stay there until I’ve found the object or moved a certain distance from it.
    But, thankfully, it lets me return as many times as I want to a moment if I never find the object.
    This makes me glad the flowers have been left behind. I’m able to return and return and return to this moment. The nausea, the vomiting, the humiliation, all of it’s worth it to reexperience the feel of Gabriel’s grip on my arm when I’m falling, and of Mom’s hand gently brushing my hairaway from my face when I most need her.
    And by the time I’ve gone through this experience several times, I discover that as long as I’m not trying to change anything while I’m there, the living me doesn’t feel that creepy sense of being watched.
    Strange, huh?
    But here’s something even stranger: After about my fourth time visiting this moment, I actually begin to like Brenda.

random acts of existence
    age 13
    I’m digging through a little plastic bag looking for a purple rubber band to attach to my braces. I’m hoping there’s one more. I’ve already put one on the right side. The colors of my rubber bands have to match, right? Green, yellow, red.
    I’m standing at the end of a row of lockers, and Sandra, who’s supposed to be blocking me from everyone’s view, starts to move away. “Hey, get back here,” I say. I don’t want the whole world to see me digging around in my mouth for the after-lunch-rubber-band-replacement session. What if Paul walks by?
    I find a purple rubber band. I reach for it and start to loop it around the hook on my bottom row of braces.
    “Ooohhh…Oh, nooo!” The disappointment in Sandra’s voice distracts me. I pull a little too hard on the rubber band. It snaps and flies out of my mouth.
    How humiliating.
    Then I see what Sandra’s just seen.
    Incredible. Awful.
    Paul’s walking down the hallway with Mary Kramer. And they’re holding hands.
    Sandra sees the look on my face and reaches out to touch my arm. “I can’t believe he’d do that, go back to his ex-girlfriend that way.”
    Sandra might not be able to believe it, but I can. Mary Kramer is about a million times prettier than I am. She never needs to worry about whether the rubber bands on her braces match because she has the world’s most perfect teeth and will never need orthodontics.
    Sandra’s going on. “Besides, you didn’t really like him all that much, did you?”
    Past tense. As if I have already stopped liking him.
    The irony is that Paul was only my boyfriend for two weeks. My first boyfriend. And that’s more because he picked me than because I picked him. I didn’t even like him two weeks ago when the rumors started going around that he liked me. But I wanted a boyfriend, so I gave hima chance, got to know—and really like—him at Amber’s party a week ago. We even kissed in her basement.
    And, wow, I guess that was a huge mistake. It was my first kiss and I failed at it. Paul laughed at me and said, “That’s not what you do,” before trying to teach me the “right” way to kiss—which had something to do with sharing his gum.
    I bet Mary Kramer’s a better kisser than I am. That’s