By; Darya Ali

I skipped down the twisted roads of Old Oak Meadow to my special place. It was Sunday and tomorrow was the first day of school and I was really nervous. I had just moved to the Big Apple from a small place called Wisconsin. I had been very upset with the move, I had to leave all my friends behind, start a new school and I also had to leave my father. See my mother and father were having troubles with there marriage, they were always yelling at each other and they were always upset. That meant I was the new family outcast, they had no time for me anymore all they had time for was their bickering. It was like they thought just because they were shouting in there bedroom that I couldn’t here them. I could here it though and it hit me like a ton of bricks, we weren’t a big happy family anymore. I learned the day that they got a divorce that a happy ending was just in fairy tales. So my mother and I moved to the big city to escape the weirdness that came with the divorce. I never forgave my mother for making me move. The only good thing that came with the city was that I found my own special place.

I was wondering around the many streets of New York, where I came to a huge gap between the Eaton Mall and the Sunny Brooke Mall. So I went exploring in there and I came to a big old tree. I love plants and trees, so I recognized it right away, it was a Sycamore tree. I climbed up its long brown branches and sat down in an uncomfortable position. I thought about everything my parents, friends and my new school.  I never realized how angry I was at the world. I went there everyday all by myself and voiced out my anger.

My mom never asked me where I was going because she new that I was angry at her for making me leave behind my social life back in Wisconsin. I got mad at her sometimes because it was like she didn’t care where I was. Even though I knew she really cared.

I woke up the next morning and stared at the alarm clock, it hadn’t gone off. The school bell went off five minutes ago. It was a real great start to a nerve wrecking first day of school. I threw on the first pair of clothes in my closet and rushed towards the front door, I noticed the minute that I reached the school that I put on two different pairs of shoes. I sighed heavily and breathed in all the courage I had which was like none and opened the door to the front door. To my luck it was stuck so I had to run around the school to the office doors, I went up to the administration and asked for a late slip, she hardly looked at me and asked for my name.

 “Not a very good start to the first day school,” she told me.

I grabbed the late slip out of her hand and headed to my first class. The problem was that I was so late I had missed my first class. So I had to go wandering along the many buildings of the school to find my next class. I was so close to fainting when the last bell of the school day rang. I was the first one out of my classroom. I didn’t have much homework because it was the first day of school, so I wandered off to my special place. I started to climb the thick brown trunk as soon as I grabbed the first branch and hoisted myself up. As soon as I sat down on the branch, it broke and I fell down feet first. I heard a loud crunching sound and then a lot of pain flooded into my right leg. Thank god my mom let me have a cell phone for emergencies, but if I called for an ambulance my tree wouldn’t be just mine any more.  I really didn’t care any more about my tree anymore. I called for the ambulance and they arrived four minutes later. They put me on one of those stretchers. Just because they I thought I couldn’t move which I really couldn’t. When my mom met us at the hospital tears were streaming down her face.

“Are you okay,” she asked me.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” I answered

Then at that moment I screamed in pain not because of my foot. I was really just shouting at my so called special place. It was supposed to be a place where I could face my anger. Though today my tree had given me something to be angry and upset about. They rushed me to the hospital to check if anything was broken. It turned out when I had fell I had broken my leg. I was pretty much on my own because my mother was busy weeping in the corner that it was her fault that I had fallen. Three days later I had been released from the hospital, it was very upsetting that I had to wear a cast and limp around the house. My mom was actually making it worse that it already was, from that day on she asked me where I was going, who I was going with and when I would be home. It really bothered me in a way because whenever I mentioned a tree she brought up a bogus story that she needed my help with something. One day I snuck out before my mother had a chance to find a job for me to do. I grabbed my crutches and tip-toed towards the door. As soon as I closed the door behind me I sighed out of relief. It was the first day in a month that I had gotten out of the house on my own. I walked to my special place and found that it had been wrapped in bright yellow tape, with a note saying that it was going to be cut off next Sunday. I was suddenly flooded with the emotion of unhappiness. I really didn’t know why I was so upset, it is because of that tree that had broken my leg.  I ran all the way home and then I sprinted into my room and slammed the door. As soon as Sunday morning I could hear the sound of chainsaws from my bedroom. I jumped out of bed and ran out the door. I didn’t even bother to change or put on some shoes. When I got to my special place I could see big ugly men started to fire up their chainsaws. So I did the only thing I could.

“Stop,” I yelled with all my might.

One of the men looked at me and said

“Little girl you need to move,” he hollered.

“No,” I yelled back.

“Listen you need to move we are cutting down this tree.” He said.

I finally gave up and said

“Fine, but give us a minute.”

Surprisingly they all moved away from the tree. I walked up to it, I felt kind of silly for talking to a tree. I really didn’t know what I was doing there in the first place. So I said the thing I came here to say. It was really stupid because it’s not like a tree has feelings. So shouldn’t this be much easier? I told the tree that I wasn’t mad at it because it was the reason I was wearing a cast. I suddenly felt much better after I said that. As I said before it was really silly and stupid, but I felt like I just took a big bag of bricks off my shoulders. Then I petted the brown bark and went home. The next day I went back to my special place, I had a great idea. I had bought a mini Sycamore tree and planned on planting it in the soil right next to the stump of my Sycamore tree. So it wasn’t really the end it was just a new beginning.