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Jenna curled her hands tightly around the hem of her sweater. Coming into the craft store was always so tempting, but that was why she did it. She'd learned online that the way to deal with a phobia was to expose yourself to the thing until you didn't feel afraid of it anymore, and she was trying to apply the same principle to her kleptomania. Hence, going to the craft store, staring at things, and determinedly not picking anything up.

It was hard. It was so hard, because there were glow-in-the-dark pony beads and little silver heart charms and little pink stars and they were all just sitting there in open bins and no one would notice if she took just one or two but...

But that would be bad, she thought, sighing heavily, and this was a new year and Jenna was going to be good. If she played her cards right and kept her hands to herself, it would be her first full year being good and she needed to make the best of it.

Maybe she could just... look at them?

Resolve weakening, she inched her hand towards a bin on plastic rubies.

And then the door to the shop opened incredibly abruptly, and Jenna yanked her hand away as if stung. Her attention whipped towards the girl who'd just walked in.

"I didn't do anything!" she stammered. "I didn't touch it!"

Which was probably a weird thing to say when there wasn't anything immediately wrong with the scene. It wasn't like she'd spilled beads all over the ground or anything! Mentally kicking herself, Jenna forced her hands back to the hem of her sweater.

"I mean," she said, "what."

Jenna did her best to smile like nothing was wrong and she was not fighting the battle of the century. Would this be the year that she shaped up and became a productive member of society? Or was she going to slip back into old habits and a life of petty crime? Only time would tell.

"Yeah," she said, following the other girl's gaze. "Sure." Focus on the task at hand, she thought, reaching for the high bin. The beads were ceramic, cool to the touch. Take one, she thought.

Her hand closed around a small handful.

Take one, she thought again, firmer this time, and relaxed her hand. She picked up a single bead and held it out to the other girl, pony bead bracelets clacking on her wrists as she moved.

"These ones are really nice," she said. "I like the color. Do you - do you make jewelry?"

Jenna looked down at her bracelets. "No - I - maybe?" she said, sounding uncertain. None that she remembered making. She knew for sure that she hadn't come by all of them honestly, and she didn't remember making any of them, but that didn't mean she hadn't. Several of the bracelets she wore now were the same ones Gemma Hudson had been wearing when she quote-unquote disappeared.

Feeling self-conscious, she put a hand over her wrist and spun the beads between her fingers.

"I mean, thank you," she said. "For saying they're cute."

She looked back to the wall of beads. "I keep thinking I'd like to try," Jenna admitted, "But then I look at all the options and get overwhelmed. I mean - what if I pick colors that don't look good together? What if it turns out ugly?"

Jenna nodded, her hands returning to the hem of her sweater. This other girl might not have thought the selection was up to snuff, but that didn't mean she wasn't tempted by it all the same. Her need to collect wasn't governed by quality, just by the need to have things.

"Who do you make them for?" she asked, peering curiously over at the other girl. For friends? Or... it seemed terribly cool and mature of her if she was selling them.

"Do you sell them?" she asked. "That's really cool. You must be really good at it."

She looked back at the bins of beads and thought about how much she wanted to stick her hands in all the way up to the wrist and then take one of everything but that would be bad.

"I think I need to leave this aisle," she said, swallowing hard.

Jenna clenched her teeth, feeling as though she'd been caught in the midst of something terrible, or at least as though her bluff had been called. "Nnno," she replied, sounding uncertain. "I - I'm not looking for anything specific. I'm just... looking."

She sighed heavily, feeling just about ready to either metaphorically spill her guts or actually, literally puke. Normal people didn't have this much trouble talking to complete strangers at the craft store, she was sure, but she was also sure that normal people didn't go places just to stare at stuff and tell themselves not to steal anything.

"Sometimes I take stuff that I shouldn't," she confessed hurriedly. "And I'm trying to stop. So I go places and I look at things I want and I tell myself not to take it until I don't want it anymore. I read about it online, but... the article I read was about phobias, so I don't actually know if this will work, or..."

She flattened her hands against the front of her jeans. "I'll be okay, really," she said, looking away from the wall of beads. "I think."

How embarrassing.

Jenna sighed, feeling stupid more than anything, despite the other girl's reassurance. "I guess so," she said, trying to take the compliment. Maybe if she said it enough times, she could make it true? Make herself actually brave about this, like she was handling her problems like an adult and not just being silly? She'd be eighteen this year, she thought. The state of Virginia considered her a legally emancipated minor. It was time to step up her game.

"I just decided I didn't want to do bad stuff anymore," she added with a shrug. "I mean, I know it's not - it's not really bad, in the grand scheme of things, to take a few beads here and some eyeliner there and a few pennies from the leave-a-penny dish but it still makes me feel awful afterwards and a lot of the time I don't realize I'm doing it..."

That, she thought pointedly, was probably oversharing. She forced a smile.

"Did you get everything you wanted?" she asked. "I can wait if you're not done. Really. I'll just stay over here and if I get too close you can tell me to stop."

Wait-- Jenna meant to say, as Shelley made her way towards the checkout line, but the words died in her throat. She cast a doleful look back at the wall of beads, told herself NO very forcefully, and then turned and followed behind the other girl so quickly that she very nearly stepped on the backs of her shoes.

"Um," said Jenna, trying to do as she was told while Shelley paid for her beads. She pulled her hands up into the cuffs of her sweater and balled her fists there, eyes scanning over the chocolate bars and mugs and candles stacked around the register.

"Do you think that dolphins think that land is as mysterious as we think the ocean is?" she asked, eyes narrowing at a sea life-printed coffee cup. "If dolphins drank coffee, would they put scenes of humans hanging out on mountains on their mugs?"