Stop Looking at your Shoes and Start looking at the World Around You

Chapter 1: Woken up, for the first time.

Carver has always been one of my best friends, and let's face it- one guy hanging out with two girls all of the time, that would have been just weird. He may not have been the most supportive person in the world, but he added balance to my life. Of all of us, I didn't peg a tragedy like this to befall Carver of all people. But in the garden of life, it has to rain for the flowers to bloom.

It was Thursday night when it happened, around two in the morning. Or so I'm told, he says that when you wake up to the fire alarm buzzing in your head and smoke bellowing from the foot of your bedroom door, looking at your alarm clock is never your initial concern. None of use knows exactly how it happened, we'll leave that for the insurance people to figure out. But apparently it started in the kitchen, near the base of the stairs and began to work its way up. He bolted up from his bed and reached for the doorknob. Probably not the smartest move in the world, but again, in moments like these, one's chief concern is not recalling the 1950's safety awareness films we were forced to sit through in class. He burned his hand, naturally. Holding his beating red palm, he frantically looked around for another escape. And in his first, and only, moment of clairvoyance that night, he remembered that his parents had installed a hidden rope ladder in his window sill for just such an occasion. He bounded for his window, which was already open (it was a hot night, probably what saved him from suffocating in the smoke too), he felt around for the release handles and sent the rope ladder unraveling to the safety of his front yard. He reached a leg up… but then he hesitated.

We've always known that Carver had trouble getting his priorities straight, it was just one of his personality quirks that made him an individual. But his next move went far and beyond stupid. At this moment you should realize that I wasn't there that night. I'm telling you this based on second hand information from various sources. Carver himself revealed everything I've told you thus far personally. But I couldn't get him to go beyond the releasing of the rope ladder. This was something that he is still ashamed of. I had to get this bit of information from his sister.

His family was standing together on the sidewalk in from of their house. Carver's father had called 911 already and help was on the way. His family was an emotional wreck. Not because their home was going up in smoke. But because their son; their brother, wasn't accounted for. His mother was sobbing uncontrollably. Her husband embraced her tightly. He was sure that without physical restraint, nothing would stop her form running into the flames themselves to save her first born son. They could see Carver's window from there, they saw that his window was wide open and that the rope ladder was ascended. This shallow evidence consoled his heart into believing that Carver had already escaped… but where was he? What seems like a lifetime had past in just a few seconds, Finally Carver's mother couldn't control herself anymore. Ripping herself from her beloved's arms, she bolted for the house screaming "I can't take it anymore!"

Before she got halfway across the yard, slowed down by her husband's struggle to restrain her, Penny, holding Todd in her arms, pointed at Carver's bedroom window and yelled "Look!"

Everyone looked towards the window to a sight which rained pure joy into their hearts. That is, until they saw the full picture. Carver was indeed backing out of his window and climbing down the rope ladder. But his pace as admittedly slow. Penny told me that she thought that the smoke had made him woozy. But no, he was slowed in his ascent because he had his arms full. He actually stalled his escape from a burning building to save his precious collection of shoes. He leaped the last two feet of the ladder and ran over to his waiting family. Approaching them, panting heavily with shoes in arm, he looked at them with a sense of accomplishment on his face.

"Is everyone alright?" he asked, "I knew I couldn't carry all of them so I had to choose which ones to save. Do you think the rest of them will be alright?"

No one could say anything. His own mother couldn't even bring herself to look at him. Penny placed Todd on the ground and marched over to her very stupid brother. Carver just looked at her dumb-founded. All he could say was "What?" before Penny gave him a very un-loving, full-force, open handed slap across this face. It was so hard that her long, feminine finger nails actually raked across his cheek. Not drawing blood, but still leaving a row of red steaks on that side of his face.

Penny couldn't hold herself back, a mixture of anger and sobbing flooded her voice. "I hate you! I hate you! Do you have any idea what you've just done to us? Do you even care? No, you're too busy thinking about your sick obsession with shoes to even care about your own safety! It's time you stopped looking at your shoes Carver, and started looking at the world around you!"

Carver was in total shock. Never in his short life had anyone spoken such harsh words to him, let alone a member of his own family. A crowd was starting to gather and the sounds of the sirens were quickly drawing near. But they might as well have been a million miles away because the world stood still in Carver's mind. All that remained in focus was the faces of his family as he scanned across them, looking hopelessly for some sign of approval, for someone to take his side. He found nothing of the sort. The only true comfort he heard was his mother's voice saying "Penny, please stop. I can't handle anymore tonight."

He was finally jarred back into reality (perhaps awakening to reality for the first time) by a fire fighter's thick gloved hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright kid? Do you need medical assistance?"

Shaking back to his senses, Carver could only mutter a response. "No, no, I-I- I'm alright." The Fire Fighter gave him a hardy pat on the shoulder and moved on to join his comrades in fighting the blaze. Carver looked up to see his mother kneel down towards him. The threshold between him and his family was far less than in his mind's eye. She embraced him, held him tight, determined never to let go. Carver hadn't realized until that point that he had long since dropped his precious shoes onto the grass. His mother spoke to him through an array of tears telling him that she loved him, and that everything was going to work out. Carver couldn't hear her. Beyond the embrace he could only stare at his burnt hand and feel the sting on his face. "Yeah, … I- I'm alright."

And thus concludes the first chapter. I'll be honest with you people . I'm not much of a writer. It's not that I have trouble getting my thoughts out on paper, it's just that I rarely see these kinds of things through to the end. And with all honesty I can tell you that I haven't the foggiest clue where I'm going to go with this one. After reading a good number of Weekender fan fictions on this site, I've felt that Carver was a character that was never really explored. And for understandable reasons, Carver is a difficult character to write for, his cartoonishly self-centered nature meant that he would not open up under normal circumstances. And for that same reason, I've chosen to write this story from the narrative perspective of Tino, switching to Carver's state of mind only when it was convenient for dramatic writing. When I sat down to write this, I didn't want to write another Tino/Lor, Tino/Tish, or Lor/Thompson love story, this site's already got enough of those. I felt obligated to take the path less traveled. Well, I hope you enjoyed it, this is actually my first shot at a story that dealt with such human characters. I don't know how often I'll add to this story, or even if I'll finish it. Maybe a few plot ideas from the readers will get the gears turning.