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The first thing I did that rainy Sunday morning was to head out to the strip mall and buy myself another new phone. In hindsight, I could have simply asked Megan to use the burner phone she'd used to blackmail me, but in the meantime the folks at Sprint got to fleece me all over again. It was ironic, in a way. I mostly used my phone for social media and email, but this whole past week, I had been totally unplugged. No news from the outside world, no updates on middle school acquaintances' babies or memes about political grievances had penetrated my bubble. Evidently when one is busy maintaining a stable of seven, there simply wasn't time to squander updating my status. (Seven, I insisted to myself. The eighth didn't count.)

The saleswoman recognized me, to my surprise. It had only been two weeks since replacing my last phone, the one whose screen had shattered when Megan's all-caps threats caused me to drop it. This new one was prompted by a text from Tabitha that was waiting for me