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Ch. 8- NANOWRIMO scene #1

NANOWRIMO- National Novel Writing Month- where poeple write towards a goal of 30,000 words, in 30 days. I'm doing that this year, again, and I need to write background scenes... (so I guess this is just a sample..?) Please, enjoy. (Or don't and leave- without telling me it's any kind of crap)

Darkness faded. Light seeped in. A messy room was scattered with various computer parts, the curtains were open and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling dangled precariously. On the small bed lay an exhausted teen, his jeans grubby, and his wife-beater turned a brownish gray by the sunlight streaming in the window. Across the room, propped up against the wall, a robot sat with a blank stare.

The door creaked open, and a girl poked her head in through the crack. Heaving a large sigh, she walked into the room and over to the bed. As she moved, dodging the odd pieces of metal and silicon, the boy shifted, and with a incomprehensible mumble, rolled over slightly, bringing his arm over to curl around a body part, the bottom part of a leg with the foot still attached. Trying to cover a snicker, the girl reached over and tugged on the metal foot, failing to keep silent as the boy tugged back in his sleep. The abnormally loud snort jolted the boy awake and he sat up, releasing the leg. The girl was tossed backward, landing on her butt, and the snickering continued as the boy stared in confusion.

"Why are you in my room?" he asked, sleep still in his voice. He ruffled his hair, as if it would wake him up.

"Mom sent me up. She said that you need to go get some things from the grocery store so she can make dinner," The girl stood up, and the boy sighed.

"Fine. Lisa, would you mind telling her I'm on my way down?" he asked her, looking around his room for his shoes. Lisa smiled happily, nodded, and raced out of the room, her blonde hair steaming behind her in a thick ponytail. Finding his worn pair of sneakers, he grabbed them and stumbled over an arm on the way to his dresser. Pulling on the stuck end, he eventually was able to grab a pair of socks. Slipping them on, he carried his shoes down the stairs and headed for the tiny kitchenette at the edge of the apartment. He found his mother in the kitchen with a frying pan full of scrambled eggs.

An angry grumble from his stomach reminded him of his lack of dinner, and a knowing look from his mother told him it better not happen again. He nodded, and then looked to the small card table nearby, where his younger sister sat with a plate full of eggs and bacon.
Sitting down in the folding chair, he looked up at his mother as she put the eggs on a plate.

"What did you need from the store for dinner, Mom?" he asked, picking up a fork to begin eating. She looked over at his sister, then back to him, nodding toward the couch in the adjoining room. He grabbed up his plate and moved over to sit on the couch, fork in hand. She sat first, adjusting the apron she wore, and leaned forward, "You know it's Lisa's birthday today, right? Well, I want to get her a cake from the store across town, where none of her friends will have the opportunity to tell her about it."

"So," he hesitated, "You want me to go across and get her a cake?" His mom nodded, digging a hand into her pocket and puling out a small wad of cash. she counted out around twenty dollars and handed it to him.

"And Shawn," she said quietly, "Don't tell people where you're headed, okay? I want this to be a surprise for her." Shawn nodded. The two of them went back into the kitchen, Shawn stuffing the money into the left-side pocket of his jeans. Lisa looked up at them when they walked in, and at first Shawn thought she might know something was going on, but then she asked their mother for more eggs and Shawn relaxed. He sat down and began to eat, the bacon just cool enough not to burn his tongue. As he ate, it came to him that Lisa would search his room for her birthday present as soon as he was gone. Deciding to take it with him, Shawn got up and put his plate in the sink before heading upstairs. In his room, he grabbed a t-shirt, and dragged it on over the wife-beater. He snatched up his old jacket, and stuffed the wrapped gift into one of its many pockets. He shrugged it on, as he descended the stairs, his phone in his left hand.

He nodded to his mom as he opened the door, ignored by Lisa who now sat in front of the television. Then he was outside, in the balmy weather that meant it needed to rain, and surrounded by old buildings that had looked this way since the last war. He looked around, noting the old men holding glass bottles on the stoop three buildings down, checking the street for any unknown cars before he walked down to the sidewalk and turned to head to the northern side of town, the upper-class side, with the nicer stores.

It wasn't so cold that Shawn actually needed the jacket, but if he had gone outside without it, he might have gotten hurt by one of the multiple rivaling gangs in the area. Even though he wasn't a part of one, the design of the jacket noted him as one of the innocents, one of those protected by the largest gang, the Outcasts. Led by a strange woman, the gang was a force to be reckoned with. You didn't have to join to ask for protection, like Shawn's mother had years before, you just had to have been a victim of another gang's violence.

Reaching the store took Shawn a good hour, walking the whole way. Inside, he was able to find a cake with icing in Lisa's favorite colors with the words, Happy Birthday, in bright pink letters across the top. After paying, he put the cake into a cardboard box, and put that into a plastic bag. Then, he headed back home.

He was halfway home when he heard the sirens, almost a mile away when he glimpsed the smoke. At first he wasn't too concerned, but then he turned the corner around a skyscraper, heading into his neighborhood, and the firetrucks blocked the road his apartment was on. Bursting from the windows were bright flames, red and orange and yellow and hot against his face even from blocks away. The wailing sirens fell on his deaf ears, the beautiful cake in its box fell on the ground and broke open as Shawn broke into a sprint for his building.

He stopped in front of the police barrier, not even noticing the others milling about as he stared at the building in the middle of the fire. His eyes were drawn to the fifth floor, catching on the burning flower box his mother had hung there a year ago, before being drawn to the flames as they burned into his retinas. Someone grabbed his arm, dragging him back. Startled, he turned to the person, hope fluttering in his chest as he caught sight of the light hair. The woman wasn't his mother though, it was a woman who had lived next door for years. Shawn swallowed, his throat dry, before he spoke, "My mom, my sister, they were home." He knew before she spoke, the emotion in her eyes was too clear to miss. "I'm sorry, Shawn we can't find them. I don't think they made it out."

(OMG!! I copied a character from the Sacred Blacksmith, and I just realized it!! Lisa, the sister, is similar to another character that will be in the complete story, also named Lisa.) I didn't actually finish this before November 1, but oh well. Hope you enjoyed it!