SHORT OF BREATH, twilight

01 - it's brutal out here

Both her mum and mother have said to Sloane, time and time again that there are many upsides to working during your teen years. She sure liked the financial freedom that came with having a job. 

She's been saving up for a car for a little over a sixteen months now and is closing in on the deposit amount she needs to get the little Toyota Camry from Sal's Mechanic's in town.

However, there are also a lot of downsides to working in your teens, especially when the only jobs Sloane found she could apply for as a thirteen year old, having lied about her age on her resume, is a cashier at the general store. 

Within the first week alone, the young girl came to the realisation that it was the most degrading place of work she could think of for a child.

All day long, middle aged customers would yell at her for bags of chips not having enough in them for the prices they were being sold for, or her personal favourite, getting blamed for stock getting discontinued for their store.

Forks is a small town and not all that high on the distribution list for large manufacturing companies. She sure did miss Welch's fruit snacks though, the generic brand made in Seattle tasted awful and was way too sticky for her liking.

Despite the many tears she shed over the complaints and insults thrown her way, the Griffin girl continued to work at the general store until she was fifteen and earned her two years worth of customer service. 

Now at the age of seventeen, being only two months shy of eighteen, she is junior manager at the Port Angeles cinema. Here, she has much more sway to deal with the customers and thoroughly enjoys the power dynamic between herself and angry parent's. 

Now, if they crossed the 'three warning' rule, Sloane had a right to call over the cinema's security guard, Terry, to remove them from the building. This worked in her favour many times when customer's start to get angry with her over sold out tickets or a slow wait on popcorn rather than supplies at the store. 

This was due to a cinema showing being classed as a luxury by the owner, Ms Graham, and whilst she was a pain in Sloane's arse at times over her asthma, she refused to let customer's treat the employee's like shit.

Plus, the pay was thirty cents more an hour with Ms Graham as a boss than anywhere else hiring within the towns surrounding Forks. 

The rich smell of burnt butter assaulted the brunette's nose as she hovered only inches over the stainless steel service of the popcorn machine. Her left hand clenched around the scourer, knuckles turning several shades paler as she scrubs at the hard brown syrup.

The 'cool down' time for the cinema started ten minutes ago and would only lasted another twenty before the second theatre's movie ended. Then the rush would begin and Sloane is nowhere near close to finishing scrubbing down the metal. She's soaking one side with baking soda and vinegar while she's taking a scourer to the other side in hopes the syrup will break down soon enough.

Theatre one was showing Face Punch and theatre two was showing Kung Fu Panda.

With a swipe of her free right hand, she pushes her sweaty fringe off her forehead with the sleeve of her uniform. A familiar tightness begins to form in her chest as she continues to scrub away with fingers clenching into an aching fist.

Here's the thing: Sloane wasn't physically unable to do menial labour such as sweeping and moving the fridges forward to switch the lights off and on, because why would Mr Denning of Denning's refrigeration design an easy to use switch at the front of the machine? Instead, there's an identical plug that needs to be pulled beside the plug that supplies the cooling fan that keeps the ice cream frozen overnight which is constantly mistaken for the light switch but that's another story.