by Alef Tav
Hearing the key in the front door as she came home from school, he shouted his usual "Hello!" but instead of going straight up to her room as she normally did, she turned into the living room. It struck him immediately that something had to be wrong; her face was pale and she was dragging her feet behind her.
"There's something I have to show you," she said in a thin, flat voice and handed him an inconspicuous little book. She had stuck her index finger between two pages to make it open in the right place. Only when he looked inside, he recognized the little message book used for notes between school and parents. At first he only saw the small notes in his own handwriting from the times she had been sick or was to be excused from gym, but then he noticed a message in a different handwriting in the bottom corner. It continued on the next page, but he got the gist of it before he turned the page.
"Cheating!" he said, "You have been caught cheating on a geography test?"
With a timid smile she replied, "I didn't mean to cheat, but I had forgotten to put my notes in my bag, and the teacher assumed I had them on my desk to cheat."
"That was quite careless at best," he said, "but this note indicates you were not the only one?"
She swallowed. "Yes, no, not quite..."
"Someone I know?"
"Yes... Margrete also got caught," she said and blushed.
"Margrete? Didn't you go to study with her the night before?" A nod was all the answer he got. "According to the note this will be on your report card, and you will probably get a D in geography as you couldn't answer any of the questions after the test!"
She blushed even more and replied, "I really could, but I was so nervous because of what had happened that my mind just went blank!"
"And Margrete didn't remember a thing either?"
"I don't know. Not much, I think."
He looked closely at her. "So you had really studied, then? The only reason you were allowed to go to Margrete the night before was because you were going to study for the test!" She nodded and looked even more unhappy. He suddenly thought of something. "But that test wasn't today, it was yesterday!" He looked down to check the date on the note. "Shouldn't you have delivered this note yesterday?" She nodded. He said, "But then Margrete's mother must already know. I think I'll give her a call."
"No, no, don't do it!" she pleaded.
"Why not?"
"Because..."
"Because what?"
"Because..." she hesitated. "We weren't at Margrete's that evening. Margrete got a phone call and then we went out to meet..."
"To meet...?"
"Some boys."
"Well, you didn't study then? Perhaps you didn't really know that much geography, did you?" She did not answer. "From now on you better stick to the truth!" he said. "You lied to me when you said you had been at Margrete's house, didn't you?" She nodded almost unnoticeably. "Did you also lie to me when you said you did not cheat?" She nodded again. "So that's how things are with you - you skip your homework, go places you are not allowed, cheat on tests, and tell lies to people!" She said nothing, just continued her study of the carpet. "You understand that this will have consequences ... serious consequences?" She still didn't utter a word. He shook his head in exasperation. "I think I'll give Margrete's mother a call after all. And in the meantime you remain exactly where you are."
She just stood there, tense, trying to reconstruct the conversation from what her father said, but it was impossible to make much sense of it. She had asked Margrete at school if she had delivered the note, and Margrete had said yes, but she had seemed so distant and clearly didn't want to talk about it. Margrete's parents were very nice but also quite strict and old fashioned, and they had probably grounded Margrete for a couple of weeks - at least that's what had happened a few times before.
She was desperately hoping not to be grounded herself as it would mean missing out on everything she had planned for the weekend. But what alternatives were there? They could suspend her pocket money, but that would be almost as bad as a grounding as far as her plans were concerned. She hated just standing there not knowing what was going to happen to her.
"Really?" she heard her father say to Margrete's mother. "She really chose that alternative? That's a possibility I hadn't even thought of, but I can't say she didn't deserve it! Well, well, I'll see what we end up with here, but I promise you she won't get away with it any easier than Margrete did."
He hung up, and she looked straight at him for the first time since she got into the room.
"Margrete tried to talk her way out it just like you," he said. "But she also had to admit to everything in the end. Have you talked to her today?"
"Not much, she didn't want to talk about it."
"So you don't know how she was punished?"
"No," she answered, swallowing twice at the thought of being punished. "She didn't say anything about it."
"She got spanked," he said, looking straight into her eyes.
"WHAT!" she said in disbelief.
"She got a spanking," he said as if the slight change in wording would make it easier for her to understand.
Her head was spinning, and she suddenly had a vision of proud, beautiful, sophisticated Margrete stretched across her mother's lap with her bare butt in the air getting spanked like a naughty little girl.
"But nobody gets spanked any more," she retorted.
"It was her choice. It was either a good spanking or two weeks' detention, and she chose the spanking."
Suddenly, she had a terrible suspicion: Margrete had taken the spanking in order to fool around with Torgeir while she herself was locked up in her room, grounded. She wouldn't have had much of a chance against Margrete in any case, but now...
Looking closely at her, he continued, "I think it's only fair that you get the same choice." She just stared at him, and he went on. "If you choose to be grounded, you will only be allowed to go out for school and practice during the next two weeks. The rest of the time you'll spend in this house with no visits from friends."
"At the weekends, too?" she asked.
"Obviously," he replied, and she saw all her plans vanish into the blue. "If you choose a spanking," he continued, "everything will be over with tonight - you'll be sent straight to bed afterwards, but tomorrow you will be free to do as you please."
"Will... will it be a hard spanking?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"Well, it should obviously be the equivalent of two weeks of grounding." That probably meant a lot more than a few swats on the seat of her pants!
She was terribly confused; she definitely did not want to be grounded while Margrete ran around capturing boys, but she had never even been close to getting spanked before, and had no idea what it would be like.
"Do I have to decide right away?" she asked.
"You may have some time to reflect," he replied, "in the corner over there!" He pointed to the corner at the other side of the room: "Put your nose as close to the wall as possible."
She walked slowly over to the corner and put her nose to the wall. There were so many strange thoughts in her head. She could not get rid of the mental picture she had made of Margrete across her mother's lap. Soon she might be in the same position herself ... she who had never done anything really wrong before. She had been sent to the corner once for teasing her sister till their mother got sick of her, but otherwise her parents had hardly needed to talk to her - a stern glance would more than suffice. And now this idiotic attempt to cheat! Margrete had said it would be a piece of cake, and then it had all gone totally and horribly wrong.
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