• Bella Bolten was a high school beauty queen. Prom queen, Miss New York City, and Sweet Summers Pageant Princess, it was true she had many people who looked up to her. But the events of the night before had left her lying in her bed, in a sleepless trance as she contemplated her situation.

    Bella was back in the school courtyard on her way to her car yesterday, when Danny ran up, a considerable stack of papers in his hand and gasping and coughing harshly.

    After catching his breath and gathering up several fallen papers he had accidently dropped, he gave her the stack and she read the title:

    "Sweet Summers Development Plan"

    Bella glanced up at Danny's worried expression and brought her eyes back down to the packet in her hand. Letting it fall open to the first page, she saw where it was planned to be built.

    The sentence on the top read:

    "To be built on the empty lot 160562."

    Bella's eyes began to sting. Her vision blurred. And a tear smeared the word "empty". She threw the papers on the concrete sidewalk and Danny gave her a gentle hug.

    She ran.

    And ran and ran, until her feet burned with blister and her stomach muscled caused her to keel over, but still she ran. She ran until she reached the lot described in the book.

    The lot was exactly as she remembered, far from empty. She stood on the edge of the grassy lot and the wind blew blissfully through her hair as she stared out at the beautiful land.

    Roses, as far as the eye could see, grew on the shallowly-hilled land. Her roses. And no matter what those half-wit developers thought they were going to make out of thata beautiful peice of land, they were wrong. And she was going to prove that exact thing to them.

    TO BE CONTINUED IN DECEMBER........