Title: Carter’s Haven
Author: Sierra
Summary: Heaven isn’t a place; it’s a state of mind.
Note: I wrote this for english class to the theme of Utopia and Dystopia. Enjoy :)

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When he comes back the house is dark and silent, the night is cold and he himself is strangely warm. He remembers the days when he lived here; when there was brightness and laughter and smiles and there were people here.

It used to be a home.

Now it’s just an empty house with secrets in its walls and ghosts of children lurking through the hallways and behind the secret bookcases. There are echoes of people; the ones that left, never to return.

This place was once called Carter’s Home for Displaced Teens.

It was a fancy way of saying ‘the rug under which we sweep the useless kids who’ve got nowhere else to be’. But back then it had been home.

They had done all they could to make the best of what they had, who they had and the one Where that they had.

In the days that are years too far back to grasp between his rigid fingers- passing too fast to grip them tight enough so that they don’t slip away –he had arrived at Carter’s believing that for the rest of his life he would be alone.

The first thing he had seen in that house had been a tree. ‘Till this day he was still unsure what kind it was, he had never seen anything like it. It grew tall and spindly, sunlight streaming in through the barred window above the rafters giving it life. He wondered how something so beautiful and strong could grow in a place filled with the orphans, the beaten and the troubled of society.

The next thing he saw was red. He then found himself staring at the ceiling rafters, lying on his back.

“Dang, I’m so sorry!” A boy with long red hair and dusted freckles apologized with wide eyes and a sheepish smile before helping him up from the hardwood he knocked him down on.

“Allen!” A little girl with hair shorter than the boy’s smacked him in the shoulder. “Nice entrance, way to impress the newbie.” She rolled her eyes.

The beginnings of friendship.

Now he wishes that he knew where they were, who they were. But Carter’s didn’t let the children exchange any more than a first name and once they had all been forced their separate ways he had begun what would be a six year quest.

He had spent his whole life wishing he could go back to this place of safety, a haven smack dab in the middle of hell.

And seeing it again made him believe that maybe, if he found them again he could.

It is when you love and are loved in return.