The Girl In The Tree

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Chapter One: The Girl in the Tree

At sixteen, Sienna Hollis had learned how to disappear.

Not with magic or mischief, but with silence. While the rest of Northvale Academy buzzed with laughter, gossip, and the occasional click of designer shoes in the halls, Sienna slipped away to the one place where no one ever looked.

High up in the old tree behind the science building, she found peace. From that height, she could see the wide stretch of the school grounds, the edge of Rivend Woods in the distance, and the sky curling into endless shades of blue. It was her secret place. No one cared to look up, and that suited her just fine.

Her headphones were always in. Love songs played softly, like lullabies for a girl who didn't believe in them. A book rested in her lap, pages fluttering in the breeze as she read and reread the words, trying to lose herself in stories where people were seen, heard loved.

She had no friends not because she didn't want them, but because she believed no one wanted her. She was small, quiet, and nothing like the other girls at Northvale. They called her names, laughed at her height, whispered when she passed. Some were cruel. Most just didn't notice her at all.

So Sienna had made a decision.

She would exist only in the corners. In her books. In her music. In the branches of an old tree that held her better than anyone else ever had.

But what Sienna didn't know, what she couldn't have imagined was that someone had noticed her. Someone who watched from the shadows. Someone who saw her not as small or strange...

...but as something beautiful.

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