The balmy night air heaved an audible sigh and let fall sudden torrential rain as I placed foot before foot behind the flouncing sphere of my hand held light. Calmness broken, the sky fell around me, releasing a brigade of plummeting drops that diverted my eyes from the foggy forest of unknown landmarks. Hearing the exaggerated reverberations of my uneven march, I knew the river of campground asphalt remained beneath my feet, though I could not see it.

My pace quickened as the violent onslaught of droplets seeped under my pallid skin. Soaked to sanity in minutes, my fierce squint pierced the pounding night air, searching for the weakest signs of illumination that held the comfort of a warm, dry sleeping bag. Salvation still many road-bends away, I settled for the brilliant blue of the campground convenient store.

The hinges screamed from moisture and misuse as the door slowly revealed many quaint wooden shelves and their sparse occupants. A croaked welcome immediately interrupted my dripping inspection, asking me to join the others who also sought my refuge. Moving towards the uninterested crowd, my first tentative step greeted the company with the screeching salutations of my wet soul on the tiles.

As I wandered I felt a familiar rise of fluids from deep inside me, congregating somewhere above my intestines, to leap towards my temporary roommates with an almighty growl. The sounds of hunger - I hadn't eaten since breakfast! Damn my weak bladder for taking me away from the comfort of my tent and damn the designers of the campsite for building a restroom so far away! So here I stood, stuck in aisles of tantalizing snacks, hungry to the point of ravishment without so much as a dime. My eyes passed longingly over the pile of packaged pastries before taking a furtive glance around my sanctuary. Having stood still for minutes already, my presence no longer drew attention, and I felt a sudden urge - one driven to suppression during the last five years...

If only I could take the sugared treat - how much better my life would be. Yes, a better life, or so the prize of thievery always appeared when a seemingly insignificant object would solve all my short-term problems. This sudden and misguided answer losing opposition each second, I fought my temptation and forced my gaze in another direction, focusing my mental energy on the reflective pool beneath my shoes. But I saw a familiar greedy face below me and I shuffled slightly, rippling the crude image and bringing myself back to the events of one December day.

I've always thought it strange that such a memorable event - perhaps both the best and worst of my recollectable life - would also take claim to my tenth birthday. No fan am I of holidays or birthdays, and this unfavorable event - conveniently December 24th - contained the usual trip to visit my grandparents in the outskirts of Chicago. After rolling into the long driveway with the exciting proposal of a family outing, my mother went immediately to her parent's side only to find herself fending off nonchalant refusals.  She sulkily pulled us from the humble suburban abode moments later as we had come - without our elder relative.

Outing still intact, two generations stepped from the battered vehicle into the mall - an endless labyrinth of merchants. My eyes widened as my feet first touched the imitation cobblestone alleyways that greeted me with a gentle clip-clop, clip-clop. The pleasant acoustics of the large passages gave way to a vast, echoing center square where festive musicians played near a lit fountain. Amidst all the merry cheer, stood carts containing every trinket ever devised by the hand of man; each encircled by a massive jumble of noisy shoes. I licked my lips with the hungry anticipation of a spoiled child only days from Christmas and I set off on my own faster than one could mutter "happy birthday."

Sauntering imperiously from store to store I indulged my habit -

My secret habit.

I hated to call it stealing - perhaps due to the sharp vowel sound - it didn't seem like anything that harsh. I took things - that made it simpler. The perceived sophistication in the act of taking, surely a more advanced skill, allowed me to believe (in my own childish way) that I was good at it. After all, surely not every nine-year-old could take a hat full of dime-store candy and get away with it, right? Well, I've never claimed to be anything higher than an idiot.

But, regardless of the painful angle of my downward spiral, my false images of glory were very much in control on the first day my age counted two digits. Greeting cards and other cheap presents flew into the drooping pockets of my weathered denim jacket as I clipped from stone to stone and clopped from store to store. Smiling keenly at dizzy holiday shoppers, my eyes danced circles around the square, searching, like a stalking lioness, for a target worthy of my precious effort.

Leaping suddenly before me, my prey lit the air with sparkling refractions. Rings.

Hundreds of rings. The variance of metallic hues drew my greedy eyes from one to the next, up and down the tidy rows of leaping dolphins and blooming roses. The vitality of each new shape threw me into envy of the very cushions supporting these tiny hollowed cylinders. I stared in awe - a strange reaction seeing as how I didn't wear rings - at the stainless-steal masterpieces, and again I wet my lips in hungry apprehension. The prizes were spread beneath my waiting fingers and I decided without thinking to employ my taking skills.

I leaned with a callow nervousness over the glimmering selections as I glanced quickly around and slipped an unknown design gracefully into my pocket. Turning on my heals, my frenzied, yet controlled, footfalls made a beeline for the nearest food court where the clip-clopping of the shopping stampede drowned out the booming of my heart. I raised my chin in sudden triumph, stroking the rare metal treasure that my stealthy hunt had secured...

The memory of that long lost glory faded into the present as I held the cream-filled wonder that would absolve all the hunger in the world. The delicate wrapping crinkled with my anxious muscle spasms, creating a lively counterpoint with the plunking of rain drops on the store's tin roof. Though the signs of my intentions were painfully obvious to my own guilty ear, no one else in the sweltering room so much as glanced my direction. Take it, take it, my mind chanted. I grasped the treat protectively, imagining the joy I would feel when masticating the light, glorious cake and filling. But as my other senses kicked in, I tasted the sugary lacquer spilling down my throat, choking me with my own selfishness and greed. A new picture centered in my thoughts that pushed the drive of hunger aside...

I don't know what made me think I could return for another ring - I've found the mysterious power that compels one to take does not require a name - but it was powerful. Unknowingly tormented by an imperceptible longing, my exuberant pacing had guided me back to the scene of my final crime. My attention fell upon it - the miniature sea creatures that first leapt from their stainless steal perches to catch my yearning. In a burst of captured energy, the shimmering mammals leapt towards each other, each molded muscle of the reflective torsos calling for the perch of a swift finger. Clipping my foot on the stones in an anxious tapping, I reached for the frozen burst of life locked within a stainless steal moment.

Unfortunately, my glazed ogling of the brilliant beasts, too, seemed to catch the eye of a customer. Wrinkled tissue surrounding her binocular vision, my surveyor bobbed with my every move, squeezing her bloodless lips together to convey her severe disapproval. Clasping my treasure with obvious relish, my awareness of the weathered woman extended only to a blush of annoyance and a childish disdain. Only from the corner of my eye did I notice her beady lenses drilling through my transparent intentions as she stepped purposefully past me to share secret words with the cart owners.

I saw it all. Of course I did, yet I continued to saunter away, slipping my prize somewhat less easily into the waiting denim black hole at my side. Each cobblestone represented a step of security as I escaped slowly with my sculpted treasures. Upon reaching the edge of the square where I readied myself to expel a long-held sigh of relief, a callused hand fell on my shoulder, driving my frantic heart into the fake rocks like a knife into bread. Swiveling slowly on my clumsy heals, I gulped as I looked up at two unfamiliar oriental faces glaring down at the pathetic little birthday girl whose pockets were moments from being emptied...

My grip loosened on the packaged delight as the horrible event played vividly through my mind's eye. Five years had passed between this wet night and that fateful evening in which I had vowed to bury my taking habits for good. Peering down at the glossy wrapping, I now saw my intended prize for what it was - an unlikely temptation thrown into my life by the very fates that first pulled me from the grimy bottom I had hit. The odd test before me glistened as my nerves shook, receiving opposing signals from my unsure intentions.

Was I ready to give up all my hard work for one frosted snack whose very implications would make me sick anyway? Could I give up the worthy lesson of a night spent (figuratively) scraping at the moldy dungeon stones of my mental prison to later discover my fingernails cracking and filled with the slime that symbolized the essence of me? Does one ever forget hitting rock bottom - even at the tender age of ten? Was I willing to throw away my newfound pride? My ethics? How could I pretend to be moral when I myself took the possessions of others whenever I felt the desire? Could I let myself forget the night I found what my years of stupidity had made me - a middle class girl from a nice neighborhood with one bucket of toys and two buckets of misery? And could I, after half a decade lived happily without crime, fit back into the dirty clip-clopping shoes that defined my nothingness?

Future in question, I let my treasure fall. Yes, I remembered the day, even after years of trying to hide it. But after living it over and over and imagining the millions of ways to have gotten away with the act, I would not change it - not for the world. Though I could never be proud of what I did, I could be proud of the way in which I changed my life afterwards. Who could have asked for a better lesson in humility - a stronger turning point - a better birthday present? Of any toy or package I received that year, it was the firm, stinging slap in the face that I needed more...

After finding the treasure stash in the void of my pocket, the clammy hands released my dazed form, mercifully letting my embarrassment punish me instead of a cruel law-enforcer. Running blindly through my plummeting tears, I flew to the nearest restroom and tried to lose myself in the timeless abyss of salty water and the porcelain blur of my prison. Creating torrid puddles on the roughly tiled floor, I traced the lines of mortar back not only to the minutes of my imagined demise, but to the months and years that led up to this final downfall. Each stained crevice pulled me to another distant memory of sorrow and failure, until my eyes darted wildly around, searching for something to contradict the worthlessness I saw in a mosaic of tears. Even in my stupor of thwarted Christmas bliss, my thoughts returned to school - to the awful mid-term that announced my shameful grades - to the teacher who discovered my daily lies - and past school to my emotionless post in front of the TV, the god I stared at lest I have to do anything on my own.

Engrossed in the cobblestone valleys and left alone to sort out the jumbled pieces of my childhood, I tossed and turned in the uncomfortable hotel bed I later found myself in. I woke to find my pillow damp and my eyes parched. I knew then the necessity of change, just as I knew the artificially stoned floor would haunt my future dreaming, and made what was perhaps the first conscious decision of my life.

Five years later I make the similar decision of walking away empty-handed. Smoothing out the nervous folds that distorted the pastry design, I grasped it gently once more before proudly dropping it onto the pile. Breathing at last the deep sigh denied to me years ago, I faded into the charcoal of night, under a sky that no longer wept for my future. As a line of uninterested eyes observed my magical disappearance past the circle of blue light, the storeowners knew not what to think of the strange blond-headed girl who had wrinkled their inventory.