EcoEd+Writing+Relay+Chapter+1

Sara was playing under the tree with her best friend Diana. It was a warm summer day. The air smelled clean and fresh. The two girls were waiting for their friends to come join them so they could play hide-and-seek around the neighborhood. Diana, who was eleven, tried to climb up the large tree. There weren’t very many trees in their neighborhood, and none of them were as easy to climb as this one. It was on Sara’s family’s property. “Oh, look! The boys are coming!” Diana called from her perch. “Oh goody, we can play a game then.” Sara was watching some ants crawling near the tree. They were going into a small hole near the base of the tree. Timmy and Norbert were walking down the road from their houses. As soon as they arrived, the two boys tried to see how high they could climb. “Oh, yeah, I’m higher than you!” Norbert bragged. “Not so fast,” Timmy said, grinning. “Now I’m higher than you are!” “Please come down,” Sara said. She did not like heights and was scared that the boys were going to hurt themselves. Diana tried to climb even higher than Timmy and Norbert. She succeeded, mainly because she was in a different part of the tree that was stronger for longer. Sara was getting a little impatient. “Come on, guys, let’s play hide-and-seek!” At last, the other three got down from the tree and started playing hide-and-seek. Diana was the counter first. She faced the large, strong tree while the others hid. The four children loved the tree and hoped that it would live forever.

Diana was reading the newspaper the next day. One article was titled: **New Mall for Forest Town**. Diana read it. It said that a new mall was going to be built in their town and that it would bring jobs to the area. There would be a lot of fun stores in the mall, including a movie theater. Diana looked at the map with the article. The mall would be about a half a mile from her house! Diana was so excited. She told her friends about the new mall. “Oh,” Timmy said. “I also heard that they were going to widen the road.” “How are they going to do that?” Sara asked. The children looked around them. The tree on Sara’s family’s property was very close to the road. “They can’t chop down our tree, can they?” Sara whispered. “That’s usually what happens,” Norbert said. “At my old house, they had to widen the road and they cut down lots of trees and put pavement over people’s lawns.” “They can’t do that, can they?” Sara was almost sobbing. “I don’t know. I guess the town can decide what it wants to do with the land in the town.” “But my family owns the tree, right?” “I think that there’s some law about the town owning the land near the road. I don’t remember, though.” Norbert shrugged.