Shelby called out “Bye!” just before she slammed the front door shut, but I wasn’t able to respond, as Karen came back on the line.

“Juliet?”

“Yes?”

She had me verify some of my personal information to locate my account. Once she had, she read off the suspicious charges to me. There were small purchases at two drugstores first, the criminal probably not realizing they’d spent a good percentage of my “fortune” on ChapStick and Slim Jims. Their next stop was at a gas station and a liquor store, where they’d bought enough alcohol to make an entire frat house blackout drunk. Then once they saw that there was no alert on the card, that I hadn’t reported it as stolen, they went online to a jewelry store website and tried to purchase a six-thousand-dollar pair of earrings.

Which my bank’s algorithms noticed, because I was so broke that they probably would have sent me an alert if I’d ever tried to buy two-ply toilet paper.

When I denied all the charges, Karen told me she had canceled my debit card and would mail me a new one. She then told me that the bank had up to ten days to investigate the fraudulent charges and that once they’d determined they were in fact fraudulent, they had another business day to replace the missing funds.

“But my rent is due in four days,” I told her. I didn’t have however many days they were going to take to give me back my money.

“It could be worse,” she told me sympathetically. “You reported it within two business days, which means your liability is limited to fifty dollars. If you’d waited more than sixty days, your liability could have been up to five hundred dollars.”

“Wait, what? Someone stole from me and I’m liable for fifty bucks?” I know it didn’t sound like much, but it was a lot of money to someone like me.

“Because they used your debit card and it was processed as a debit instead of a credit transaction, it’s not under the same sort of protection, and you do have liability.”

My mom had told me once to always use my bank card as a credit card, and now I was finally understanding why. “But isn’t that why the cards have those chips in them? To force them to input my PIN?”

“Not every vendor has an updated card reader, and there are places that will take a swipe instead.”

I put my head in my free hand. What was I going to do? I felt totally defeated. “Okay. I guess it is what it is.” It didn’t sound like there was a whole lot I could do. I assumed Karen was only doing what she was supposed to do. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing, Juliet. Is there anything else I can help you with?”