"You're going to break a bone if you keep climbing, Ella!" Oliver wasn't shouting out of anger or irritation, simply because if he didn't Ella wouldn't hear him from the top of the tree. Even so, she feigned deafness.
"Ella? Are you listening to me?" She continued to ignore him. He was distracting her, and she needed to focus completely on the next branch, the next handhold. What he was saying didn't matter. No matter what, she would reach the top, and she would win. She would win the battle against her parents, who had tried to stop her tree climbing obsession after last time.
Don't think about what happened last time. What matters is now, she told herself. Shaking her head to clear it, she continued to clamber up the trunk. This challenge was everything. If she got to the top of the tree and proved wrong her family, her mother, father, and brother Oliver, they wouldn't yell at her when she came home with what her mother called "birds' nest hair" and scratches on her hands. Well, they might at first. But not after she told them her achievement.
"Ella, listen to me! I know you don't want to hear this, but falling from the biggest tree in the city could kill you. And I honestly don't want to be blamed for that."
Ah, her brother's favourite strategy - trying to convince her to do it as a favour for him. Well, she wouldn't fall for it. Later on he'd just say, "I owe you because I saved your life? Don't be ridiculous, Ella," like he always did.
Unfinished!