But I am too busy short-circuiting to properly process it.
"SANITY!" I shriek, loud enough that the associate blinks. "Etienne Laurent, Beatrice was SURVIVING."
I yank my current phone from my jacket pocket, brandishing it at him like a lawyer presenting evidence in a murder trial.
"See? Beatrice is fine. She is a warrior. She has been with me through communal housing and three campus moves and being dropped on concrete twice. She is a survivor. A fighter. A testament to the durability of budget smartphone engineering."
Etienne arches one eyebrow.
"Uh..." He points at the screen. "Was that crack there this morning?"
I frown.
I turn Beatrice around to inspect her face and nearly drop her in horror.
The screen is split. Not the hairline fracture I have been ignoring for weeks. A full, catastrophic split running diagonally from corner to corner, bisecting the display into two fractured halves that can barely render the app icons through the spiderweb of damaged glass. Half the touchscreen is unresponsive. The other half flickers with the desperate energy of a patient on life support.
"No!" I gasp, pressing Beatrice to my chest like a mother cradling a wounded child. "She has died! When did this happen? I was using her an hour ago! She was fine! She was responsive!"
"She was on borrowed time and you know it," Etienne says mildly.
"I will NOT accept this slander about my phone in her final moments!"
"Mae. You cannot see half your contacts."
"I can INFER the other half! I have an excellent memory! I know who is in the A section and I can extrapolate the rest through context clues!"
He fights a smile, his lips pressing together in a valiant but failing effort to maintain his composure.
"I suppose it will at least help you see enough contacts to transfer them into your new phone," he offers diplomatically. "You can try to decipher the obscured ones from the partial letters and fill in the blanks."
I groan, the sound dragged from the depths of my dramatic soul.
"Damn," I mutter, staring at Beatrice's fractured face with the solemn grief of a woman bidding farewell to a fallen comrade. "You are good."
He chuckles.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you have to be some kind of manifester or a prophet or a time traveler, because you keep doing the exact right thing at the exact moment I need it. The ice cream when I was craving sweets. The bracelet when I needed to feel valued. The phone the literal day Beatrice decides to flatline. Your timing is either supernatural or deeply suspicious, and I have not decided which."
He smirks, the expression knowing and warm, and before he can respond, the associate reappears with a tray of phone cases fanned out for selection.
I scan the options with the focused intensity of a general surveying a battlefield.
My hand gravitates immediately toward a case that makes my heart skip. Pink with a raised bow design along the top edge, accented with a tiny pair of blue figure skates embossed near the bottom corner. The skates match the charm on my new bracelet, the same crossed blades and delicate detail, and attached to the case is a dangling charm that catches the light, studded with tiny stones in alternating pink and blue that shimmer when I tilt it.
It is perfect. It is aggressively, specifically, tailor-made for my aesthetic in a way that feels like the universe conspired with this phone case manufacturer to produce a product that would appeal to my exact sensibilities.
"This one," I say, holding it up.
Etienne nods his approval, and the associate rings up the difference while I stand there clutching the boxed phone like it contains state secrets. When the transaction is complete and the screen protector is applied and the case is snapped into place, I carry the finished product out of the store with both hands wrapped around it, my grip tight enough to turn my knuckles pale.
He chuckles beside me.
"Are you happy?"
I stop walking.
