Tree Girl

Chapter One

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I love the trees. I always have.

Everyone at my school makes fun of me for it, throwing leaves and sticks at me during gym classes.

I usually go outside for lunch, sitting in the woods alone. People laugh at me from the windows, but I don't care, as I carve the days into the trees with a pocket knife I have hidden under a rock. I count the days until I get out of this stupid high school, and everyone leaves me alone.

It's been 3 years and 27 days, 153 days to go.

You could almost tell that I have been here so long, ever since we planted a small tree freshman year, it now triple the size it was before. There on the now almost fully grown tree, I have pinned a Polaroid picture of when it was first planted, just to remind myself of the times before everything sucked.

My mom and dad and I were hiking that year, on this trail we found near the hilled woods near my house. We went on it all the time, since I was 13. One day, my dad insisted that we went on the trail, even though it was pouring rain.

We walked along the muddy walkway, my red rubber rain boots suctioning as I pulled tried to step through the compact, soaking wet dirt, starting to fill up in my boot.

I looked over to my mom, her mumbling complaints to herself.

Maybe it was the mud pulling down my shoe, or maybe it was that I stepped up too fast, but my red boot- now completely sunken in the mud- came off of my foot. I waved my arms for a minute, trying to regain my balance, while my dad comes to catch me.

He didn't, and so I slipped down the mud hill, trying to grasp onto something. The hill was pretty steep, lined with trees, ending with a stream. I ran down the hill, feeling pebbles rip through parts of my skin. It hurt like hell, but that wasn't even the worst part.

I finally saw a small tree to grab onto, before I reached the stream, seeing big stepping stones to painfully land on.

I grabbed onto the tree, trying to hook around it seeing that it was too big to just grab. I hooked around, and it actually worked. Sort of. It slowed down my fall, but that was all.

As my arm ripped around the trunk of the tree, I didn't feel anything at first. I just heard a cracking noise, and I though it was the tree. But then it hit me like a white hot pain as I slowly slipped into the stream, the small pebbles running from under me.

It just all of the sudden ached but then stung, so I tried to move my right arm to get a better look. I saw blood flow down the stream, and tears started rushing down my face. My dad came down to me, holding my head in his arms.

I just kept trying to move my arms, even though they refused to, my mom yelling to me.

"Olivia! It's going to be okay!" She yelled over and over again, her crying just as much as I was. I started to fade, to see black dots in my vision.

I don't remember much after that, just the surgery. I had so many broken bones in my arm and shoulder, that my arm wouldn't be able to heal correctly.

So we had to amputate it.

I didn't really feel all that bad, because I had so many pain medications. But the real pain started when I went back to school.

Nobody wanted to be friends with a one armed freak. Oh and I was right handed before, so my handwriting was really bad so I guess that sucked too.

So yeah, that's why I eat alone, sit alone, and pretty much do everything alone until I get home to my now overprotective parents.

So here I sit, eating cold, soggy bread, sitting on a tarp I layed on the dirt and grass, staring at that picture.