Punishment aka What Is Mine

ONE

She was walking home from school. It was nearly National Day. It would be the first 17th of May without Mommy. Her national costume was too short. Mommy had already let the hem down twice.

Last night, Emilie had been woken by a bad dream. Daddy was fast asleep; she could hear him snoring gently through the wall as she held her national costume up against her body. The red border had crept up to her knees. She was growing too fast. Daddy often said, “You’re growing as fast as a weed, honey.” Emilie stroked the woollen material with her hand and tried to shrink at the knees and neck. Grandma was in the habit of saying, “It’s not surprising the child is shooting up; Grete was always a beanpole.”

Emilie’s shoulders and thighs ached from being hunched the whole time. It was Mommy’s fault she was so tall. The red hem wouldn’t reach farther than her knees.

Maybe she could ask for a new dress.

Her schoolbag was heavy. She’d picked a bunch of coltsfoot. It was so big that Daddy would have to find a vase. The stalks were long, too, not like when she was little and only picked the flowers, which then had to bob around in an eggcup.

She didn’t like walking alone. But Marte and Silje had been collected by Marte’s mom. They didn’t say where they were going. They just waved at her through the rear window of the car.

The flowers needed water. Some had already started to wilt over her fingers. Emilie tried not to clutch the bunch too hard. A flower fell to the ground and she bent down to pick it up.

“Is your name Emilie?”

The man smiled. Emilie looked at him. There was no one else to be seen here on the small path between two busy roads, a track that cut ten minutes off the walk home. She mumbled incoherently and backed away.

“Emilie Selbu? That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Never talk to strangers. Never go with anyone you don’t know. Be polite to grown-ups.

“Yes,” she whispered, and tried to slip past.

Her shoe, her new sneaker with the pink stripes, sank into the mud and dead leaves. Emilie nearly lost her balance. The man caught her by the arm. Then he put something over her face.

An hour and a half later, Emilie Selbu was reported missing to the police.