"I wasn't vanishing on purpose."
"I believe you," Ms. Okello said, and the belief sounded like a door cracked open rather than a gift. "Prove it by finishing. Good night."
The call ended. The dark blue holding screen returned. Marcus set the broken phone face down so he would not have to see his own fingers through the cracks.
Yvette put the rice on the counter very slowly. "Marcus. How long has it been like that?"
"Since October," he said. Then, because honesty had already started leaking into the room and there was no point corking it, "Since before Thanksgiving, really. The cracks got worse in December when I dropped it on the bus steps. It reboots when it gets warm. If I type too long, it dies. I save every two minutes. Sometimes it dies anyway."
Zora stood with her hands empty now, the box between them like a small white altar. She pushed her glasses up. "I didn't ask for a new one. Uncle Omar said it was for school stuff. For both of us."
Yvette's eyes closed for half a second. When they opened, she looked at the grocery bags as if they might explain her. "Omar sent money after New Year's. He said get the kids something that helps with school. There was a carrier sale after my shift on Friday. Two lines, one device discounted if you added it that day. Your phone—" she gestured at Zora without looking at her—"your teacher sent that note about the reading app wanting a newer system. And you finished the forty-book challenge. I thought—" She stopped. The sentence did not have a clean ending that protected her.
Marcus waited. He had learned that waiting sometimes pulled the real sentence out of adults better than accusing did.
"I thought you had the Chromebooks," Yvette said to him. "I thought you used them at school and the phone was for texts. I saw the cracks. I told myself you were careful enough and the screen still lit up. I did not ask how you did homework at night. I told myself asking would turn into a fight about money we do not have for two new phones at once, and I chose the story that let me sleep."
Zora's voice was small and steady. "You can still give it to him. I can keep my old one. It unlocks. It calls you. It does everything I need."