Six Days

Before the Storm

When I first started at 7-Eleven, I didn’t expect to like it. I’d worked enough jobs to know that convenience store work wasn’t glamorous, but it paid, and paying the bills was the only real non-negotiable in my life at the time.

The store smelled like every 7-Eleven smells — a strange blend of burnt coffee, chlorine mop water, sugar glaze from donuts that went stale before lunch, and the faint tang of hot dogs that never left the rollers. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was constant.

I met my boss on my first day. He was only four years older than me, but he acted like that four-year gap was the Grand Canyon. He had this thin smile that was more for himself than anyone else, and eyes that didn’t quite match the friendliness of his words. Back then, I didn’t know the signs. Now I do.

I learned quickly — how to stock the beer cooler without freezing my hands, how to do cigarette inventory without losing my place, how to keep the lottery ticket crowd happy without letting them slow the line. I was good at the job, and I thought that would be enough.

I didn’t know then that being good at your job isn’t a shield against someone’s pettiness.

The Cracks Appear

It started small.

Little digs in conversation. If my till was off by a penny, he’d make a joke that wasn’t a joke. If a customer was upset, he’d imply I should have handled it better — even if I’d followed policy to the letter.

I let it roll off. I needed the job.

Then I noticed the pay discrepancies. At first, I thought maybe I’d miscalculated my hours. It happens. But it happened again. And again. And the missing hours were always in my favor — meaning less money for me.

So I asked him about it. Not confrontational. Just:

“Hey, I think my paycheck is short. Could you check?”

He brushed it off. “Payroll glitch. It’ll fix itself.”

Well what do you know, It didn’t.

I asked again the next week. His answers got shorter. His tone got tighter. I could feel his resentment in the air every time I came into work.

The Withholding

Two weeks before the arrest, I got no paycheck at all. Not shorted — withheld entirely.

I went to him directly. He leaned back in his chair, smirking. “You’ll get it when you get it.”

That was it. No explanation. No apology.

I worked that week anyway, thinking maybe it would resolve. But by Sunday, I’d had enough. I didn’t show up. He had to cover my shift himself.

He tried texting my cell phone and I ignored most of them. Enough had come through and finally I had to reply. After that I got one last text from him that day.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” he said.

I didn’t realize how literal he meant it.

The Arrest

It was a rainy, Florida evening — the kind where the air feels heavy in your lungs. I had just gotten dropped off at home, around 2:30 in the morning. Before I could get my feet through the threshold of the doorway, my roommates were stumbling over each others words.

“Four cops were just here looking for you,“ shouted Thomas.

“They got a felony warrant for you or something,“ Simon added. I just floated into my bedroom from the hallway. Trying to recall why cops would be here for me. By the time my thoughts crossed the finish line, I heard the knock. Not the casual knock of a neighbor. A sharp, controlled knock. Loud and accompanied by officers in unison shouting,

“Polk County Sheriffs Office Open the Door now!”

Four officers.

“Jane?”

“Yes?”

“You’re under arrest for scheme to defraud and unlawful use of a two-way device.”

Legal jargon. What it meant was: your boss says you stole from him.

They cuffed me. The metal was ice cold, biting into my wrists. My stomach dropped so fast it made me dizzy. I wanted to scream my innocence, but their faces told me they’d heard it all before.

Booking

The jail intake process, or booking, is like being erased.

They take your mugshot. Your fingerprints. Your clothes. Before being handed a faded uniform that smells faintly of bleach and sweat, you have to humiliate yourself by squatting and coughing. You sit in this part of the jail for hours upon hours. It’s cold and the metal seats they offer you to sit on are colder and somehow made to be the most uncomfortable thing you have ever sat on. After about 6-8 hours of waiting there you get hauled into a transport van. Each of your wrists are handcuffed to another inmate. Females to females and males to males. The van is all white on the outside and the inside is a void. No windows, another cold metal slab for a seat, no seat belts. It’s a twenty minute ride to the jail.

Once you arrive and end up in your assigned building, you get told which dorm and which cell in the dorm you are to go to. You get a mattress so thin it’s basically a tarp, and a blanket that’s more holes than fabric.

The cells were small. Concrete walls sweating from the humidity. A metal toilet in the corner with no privacy. Lights that never went off — just dimmed enough to make your eyes ache.

Six Days Inside

Day 1:

The shock keeps you upright. You don’t feel hungry. You don’t cry yet. You’re just trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Day 2:

Reality sets in. You realize this isn’t a quick mistake they’ll fix overnight. The noise — metal doors clanging, voices echoing, ventilation humming — becomes a constant throb in your head.

Day 3:

You stop looking at the clock. Meals come on plastic trays: lukewarm oatmeal, watery soup, bread that crumbles in your hand. The air smells faintly of sweat and disinfectant.

Day 4:

You start thinking about every bill, every plan, every person who now thinks you’re a criminal. You wonder what people are saying about you outside.

Day 5:

The boredom gets heavy. Your thoughts get sharp. Every sound irritates you. The mattress feels harder. You can’t get comfortable.

Day 6:

Bond. The word feels unreal. When you step outside, the sunlight hits like a slap. The air is too bright, too loud, too free.

Status Conference

In court, they read the charges again. Scheme to defraud. Unlawful use of a two-way device. It felt absurd hearing them out loud.

Eventually, they dropped it to petty theft. Misdemeanor probation.

It was lighter than what they’d started with, but it still stuck to me.

Supervised Aftermath

Probation meant check-ins, rules, a constant reminder of something I didn’t do. It meant being looked at like I was one wrong move away from proving them right.

I thought about him — my boss — more than I wanted to. I pictured him at some rave, pupils blown wide, bragging about “handling” me.

But I also thought about the fact that I walked out of it alive, still myself.

He thought he’d burned my bridges.

All he really did was give me the fire.