Petal’s Treasure
Petal Hudson stepped off the bright yellow bus enthusiastically, with adrenaline rushing through her veins as she thought of what was yet to come. She ran up the sturdy porch as fast as she could, but stopped herself at the door before she went inside. Examining the dark red color of the door, she wondered how much blood the builders had used to paint it.

From inside the house, a familiar deep, rough voice called her name. Returning to reality, she immediately burst the door open to see her towering father, Alfred Hudson, waiting for her. Petal slowly looked at her father; from those faded oxfords to his ivory plain tee, she finally stopped at his rich, olive eyes that were identical to her own. The metal heals of her shoes then started to click as she followed her father inside.
Alfred sat Petal at their lavish dining room table and asked, “Would you like cranberry juice or orange juice, honey?” as he headed into the kitchen.
She replied innocently, in a tone her father adored, “Cranberry, please!”
He returned with her cranberry juice and sat down with his daughter at the table. As they chatted about her day at school, Petal replied vaguely, with short answers. After their chat, Petal left the dining room and headed up the stairs to her room.
Now that he was alone, Alfred went to the living room and tuned the radio to the daily news. At last, he received good signal of the station and turned up the volume to hear “Eight-year old William Jablonski from Newton Creek Pre-Academy has gone missing today around 3 pm. If anyone has seen this missing child, please notify the police immediately.”
The name mentioned on the radio jumped around in his head; “Wasn’t this Jablonski kid in Petal’s class? I mean, who could forget that energetic Polish kid?”
Alfred took swift steps to the right corner of the living room, which displayed many photos of Petal and himself on an exquisite shelf. He scanned it with close attention and finally picked up the Petal’s class picture. He started reading the names on the children’s nametags until he finally found William Jablonski. With a meek expression on his face and the dangling arms by his skinny body, William was a goner, for sure.
“How could the poor kid have survived anyway?” he questioned himself.
Finally, Alfred looked back at the photo and observed the smiling, redheaded Petal in the front. His thoughts soon altered due to the realization that Petal had not cared to mention the disappearance of one of her classmates. Without hesitation, he started up the stairs to her room.
Though the knock was quick and soft, Petal still jumped to the rare occasion. She gave a quick “I’ll be right there,” hid her treasure in a little box, and stuffed it under her bed along with the others. Petal unlocked the door and welcomed the surprising guest in.
Alfred stood at the door and instantly asked, “Hey, sweetie, why didn’t you tell me that the Jablonski kid went missing?”
Worried thoughts began to cloud Petal’s mind and she asked herself “Did father see it? Did he see my treasure?”
She chose to disregard her worries, immediately causing her eyes to lighten.
“I don’t know, father. It didn’t really concern me.”
“How could it not? Didn’t you two perform together in the Rapunzel play last year?”
She giggled and replied, “Yeah, more like I was doing the performing and he was just reading lines.”
Speechless, Alfred pondered whether to reprimand his daughter or not, but instead chose to ignore the comment.
“She’s only a little girl; she hasn’t faced anything like this before” he thought to himself as he left the room in silence
Soon after her father’s departure, Petal quickly retrieved a dull knife from the inside of her desk. Returning to her previous chores, Petal retrieved the wooden box she hid from under the bed.
“W-I-L-L-I-A-M” she spelled out, as she carved the name on the box. She examined it with joy and gave herself a nod of approval for her unquestionable smarts.
Outside of her room, Alfred listened in to his peculiar daughter, uttering the letters of the missing kid’s name in her childish voice. He began to walk away, but soon stopped himself when he heard a clank of a wooden box, dropped to the floor and slid somewhere in the left side of her room. Alfred immediately knew he had to find this box.
That night, Alfred tucked Petal into bed and walked to the door, until he was stopped by the little voice, “Daddy, do you love me?”
“Well, of course, Petal sweetie, why wouldn’t I?”
“Nn…Not enough heart?”
“Not enough heart doesn’t mean not enough love, hun.”
Her father’s reply angered Petal.
“He was obviously wrong. Everyone knew that heart was love, didn’t they? He was just so stupid.” She shook off her anger, and closed her eyes, drifting off into sleep.
By midnight, Alfred crept into her room, in search for the wooden box. After searching for what seemed like an eternity, he realized that Petal’s ingenuity tricked him and started to look for the box on the right side of the room.
“Where would she hide a wooden box? What’s in the box? Maybe a diary, perhaps? Other girls her age had diaries, however Petal is not like other girls,” he thought as he scurried through the right side of her room.
Finally, he got to the gigantic bed that was so big his redheaded angel only took up one-fifth of it. He reached under her bed into the dusty depths of darkness and what a surprise, a wooden box! As he stretched to get a firmer grip on the box, he felt another wooden box and then another. Alfred was soon lying on the floor, eyeing the countless wooden boxes under her bed. Afraid of what was next, he lay there, contemplating how she was even able to get all these boxes. In the end, he made up his mind and started taking out each box one by one, reading out each name out loud.
“Charlotte…Nathan…Penelope…”
Though unaware of what they held inside, Alfred was eager to continue.

His hands lingered to the next wooden box and he whispered “William?”

Though Petal had clearly mentioned the name earlier, Alfred was still shocked to see it on her treasure. Alfred then became conscious of the fact that he had been shivering the whole time. He dropped the box to the floor, backing away from it in fear. His eyes were filled with utter shock when out came the slimy, red leftover of what used to be the blood-pumping organ of William Jablonski. As the seconds passed, Alfred’s eyes quickly shot up directly to the evil-grinned Petal, standing at the foot of her bed; ready for more heart.

Sara Zakrzewski, Age 15, Grade 10, New Explorations Into Science, Tech and Math School, Honorable Mention