Girl Next Door (Complete)

Chapter 9: Sang

The rest of the morning was pretty relaxed. We had a few more customers come in, but none of them were as attractive as Kota and Victor, leaving me to believe that their arrival on my first day was some kind of fluke.

When lunchtime came around, i decided to pick up a new phone, as well as my lunch, instead of waiting until after work. When I told Cassie my plans, she decided to lock up for lunch and join me on my search. Once outside, she directed me to a powder blue Volkswagen Beetle that was in the parking lot, and unlocks the doors. Reigning in my surprise at her choice of car, I slide into the tiny passenger seat and buckle up.

She drives for a few minutes, before pulling into the parking lot of a smaller shopping outlet that contains a phone shop, two eateries, and a few small clothing stores. After parking, I go into the phone shop, while Cassie goes into the small chinese buffet to get us a table.

With a quick look around the store at the different phones, I realized two things. One, I'd need to learn how to work a smartphone, but really, how hard could that be? And two, the good ones are seriously out of my price range.

"Hi, do you need any help?"

I turn at the sound of a mousy voice behind me.There's a tall, wiry guy standing there with short cropped dark brown hair, green eyes, and thick black framed glasses. The nametag on his button up shirt says Wil.

"Um, yeah," I reply. "I need a phone, but these are kind of pricy."

"Well, you don't have to buy the phone outright. If you sign a contract when starting your plan we can separate the payments into your bills."

"Well, how long would the contract be for?"

"Our usual contracts are two years."

"And I'd be paying monthly right? How much would the bill be?"

"Well, our base plan is sixty dollars a month, and it includes unlimited texting, talk, and two gigs worth of data. But that's before taxes, so what we'd do it divide the price of the phone by how many payments you'd be making, in this case twenty-four, and then add that on top of the sixty, plus the tax."

"And generally, how much extra is the tax?"

He tilts his head to the side as he thinks of the calculations before answering, "About an extra fifteen dollars, give or take. Not including additional data charges if you go over the two gigs. What will you be using the phone for? Work? Personal? How much data do you think you'll need?"

"Well, I don't really use the internet that much so I don't think I'll need more than what's included. What would you recommend?"

"Well, if you're not looking to spend too much today, I'd say you should go for the contract."

"But I'd be locked in right? Like I wouldn't be able to end the contract early for any reason?"

"Well," he hedges. "I mean...you could. You'd just have to fully pay off the phone plus the early termination fee."

"Wow," I laugh. "That's not inspiring a lot of confidence."

"Yeah," he gives a nervous laugh, scratching behind his neck. "It's kind of the same anywhere you go. The prices might only be slightly different though."

"So my best bet would be to just get the contract?"

"Kind of," he shrugs.

"Ok, contact yay. I guess if I'm going to sell my soul I should probably get a good phone right? What kind of phone would you recommend?"

"Well," he looks over his shoulder nervously before taking a step closer to me. "Look, you seem like a nice girl, so I'm gonna level with you. My boss wants us to push the new IPhone 7 since it just came out, but the older versions aren't that different. The 5S is the cheapest one we have right now, its one hundred and fifty dollars. So, if you get that one, your bill would be around eighty a month give or take."