Rocket To The Moon.

The rest of my first day at school went by pretty quickly. I had at least one of my new friends in every class, so luckily I didn’t feel so lonely anymore. I was feeling pretty damn cheerful. But that all came crashing down on me when I walked past Rocket in the corridor. Seeing him made me remember the past few days, and suddenly my happiness started becoming outweighed by confusion and worry. I waved to Rocket as I passed him, but he didn’t acknowledge me.

“Who was that asshole?” Hunter asked as we walked to our final lesson of the day, History.

“Oh…he’s just…”

“Who is Rocket to me anyway? Friend? Brother? Acquaintance?”

“He’s just some guy I know” I muttered. But I knew that he was much more than just some guy I knew, but I hadn’t figured out exactly what yet.

History went by very quickly. Hunter and I were trying to make origami shapes out of textbook paper and failing miserably.

“Look! It’s the Eiffel Tower!” Hunter showed me a piece of paper that he’d randomly scrunched up, and I had laughed at that for the rest of the lesson. After school, I went to our car, expecting Rocket to be there waiting for me, but he wasn’t. I expected he’d just got caught up with something and decided to wait. Five minutes went by. Then ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.

I was starting to get a little concerned, so I went to go and look for him.

“This had better not be like the beach all over again. Why does he always have to run off like this?”

I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to look. This school was huge and I hardly knew my way around at all. I wandered aimlessly around the side of the building until I heard menacing laughter echoing from around the corner. Pure curiosity compelled me to go and check it out, and I gasped in horror at what I saw. Three extremely tall and bulky jocks had Rocket pinned to the wall by his shirt. Each one of them was taking turns in delivering punches to him.

“You’re so fucking weird” one of them laughed. Then they punched him in the chest.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to anyone? You creep!” Punch.

“And why were you on your own all day?” Punch.

“He’s a fucking loser, that’s why” Punch.

“Come on! Say something, you fucking freak!” Punch.

Blood simply poured from Rocket’s nose and his face was badly bruised. However, he just stood there silently and took the beating. Not saying anything. Not even flinching. I had to intervene.

“Leave him alone!” I shrieked, making myself visible.

The tallest one smirked “Is this your girlfriend?”

All at once, they let go of Rocket and advanced on me. They had looked a lot smaller from around the corner. I became terrified as they closed me in.

“You think you can save him?” one asked, smirking a horrible, ugly smirk.

“I just want you to leave him alone” I tried to sound confident, but my voice came out as nothing more than a dry squeak “He doesn’t deserve this”

“Listen, little girl, if I were you, I’d just get out of here right know. This is none of your business…and I wouldn’t want to have to break that pretty little face of yours”

I stepped back timidly, but I told myself I wasn’t going to give in. I opened my mouth to continue the argument, but then realised that wasn’t necessary when the guy speaking to me was yanked backwards by his shirt, then, using all his strength, Rocket punched him in the face. He staggered backwards, and his two other burly compadres were too stunned to react quick enough.

“Run!” Rocket ordered, as he grabbed me by the hand and started sprinting. The three guys caught on, and started to run after us. But Rocket was fast, and I was having trouble keeping up with him. He noticed this, stopped, and lifted me without any effort, as if I weighed as much as a feather, then he continued running. I wasn’t all that happy about him lifting me like that without asking, but under the circumstances I decided it would be pointless to complain. We dived into the car and locked the doors. Rocket started the engine and quickly floored it just in time to avoid the cascade of rocks thrown by the three idiots.

“What the fuck happened!?” I cried, still in shock.

“Those fuckers were beating up some kid, so I tried to stop it and they must have recognized me from today” he explained, and rather nonchalantly considering the situation. The blood on his face was starting to dry, but I noticed that he had a cut on his cheek that was very deep and still bleeding. It looked painful.

“Look at your face! Are you okay?” I asked.

“Never mind me. You shouldn’t have come into it” he stated.

“But they were killing you!” I exclaimed.

“I would have got out of it” he shrugged.

“You weren’t doing anything!”

“Drop it!” he warned. I did as I was told.

“Okay, fine. But I’m going to sort you out once we get home. Clean up your face, disinfect it” I said. He remained silent and kept his eyes on the road. I slumped back in my seat.

“So much for my day going well…”

When we got home, all four of our parents were out. I assumed Mom and Madison would have gone down to the beach, and Dad and Trevor would have gone to the bar. I lead Rocket through into the kitchen and got the first aid kit out of the drawer. Surprisingly, he sat down on a chair and waited for me. I was expecting him to refuse help. I sat down in front of him and proceeded to clear the blood from his face.

“Why are you always getting yourself into shit like this?” I asked. There had been several previous occasions when Rocket had interfered with something he shouldn’t have interfered with and gotten himself badly hurt or in a lot of trouble, but it hadn’t happened in quite a long time. As a response to my question, he simply shrugged.

“I mean…it’s as if you go looking for trouble” I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t tell the parents” he said quietly.

“What if they ask about the cuts on your face?”

“I’ll tell them I was playing football or something” he replied. I sighed and shook my head. Once the blood was cleared up, his face started to look a bit better. Less lacerated. But the deep cuts were still there. Looking closely at his face like this, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful he actually was.

“I’m putting disinfectant on your cuts now, so it’s probably gonna sting” I warned, before applying the disinfectant to some cloth and dabbing it on his face. At first, he didn’t react, but after a while he closed his eyes, which probably meant that it was hurting him, he just didn’t want to let me know that. I tried to finish up as quickly as possible.

“There” I said once I’d properly disinfected his cuts. I expected him to just walk off upstairs and act as if nothing had happened like always, however what happened next shocked and stunned me.

“Thanks” he muttered, before getting up and leaving me sat there with an open mouth.

“Thanks…?”

-1 Year Previously-

I was home alone when Rocket appeared on the doorstep drenched in blood. His left trouser leg from the knee downwards was completely red. I gasped.

“What the hell happened to you?!”

“Nothing” he answered, and limped past me into the house.

“Into the kitchen. Now!” I ordered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m going to get that sorted out, that’s why!” I indicated to his leg.

“No you’re not” he stated casually, starting to walk (limp) up the stairs.

“But look at how much blood you’ve lost!” I was starting to sound distressed “You need an ambulance!”

“No ambulance” he frowned.

“If you don’t let me take a look, I’m calling an ambulance” I warned. He let out a defeated groan and followed me into the kitchen. After he had taken a seat on one of the barstools, I carefully rolled up his trouser leg. What I saw made me gasp again, and almost made me want to cry. The cut under his knee was so deep, that if it weren’t for the insane amount of blood, you might have been able to see the bone. And it was so long, it stretched almost from one side of his leg to the other. His blood was gushing in torrents down his leg and it was starting to make me feel woozy.

“What the fuck did you do!?” I managed to choke out, after getting over the initial shock of the severity of his injury.

“Nothing” he replied again.

With shaking hands, I took the wadding from the first aid kit and pressed it against his wound to stem the blood flow. He had been injured badly, and looking at it, it must have been extremely painful. But Rocket, in typical Rocket style, wasn’t showing any signs of being in pain whatsoever.

“Doesn’t that hurt like hell?” I asked shakily. He shrugged.“You need a doctor!” I said, starting to feel slightly sick.

“I’m fine” he insisted.

“Okay…if you insist. Let me just bandage this up for you” I said, and he sighed impatiently. I was sincerely worried about how much blood he had lost, and was very tempted to call a doctor or some kind of outside help because I was sure he needed it, but I held back for the simple a stupid reason that Rocket had told me not to. I remembered exactly what I had been told in first aid class at school and correctly bandaged his wound.

“You finished?” he asked with slight irritation in his voice. I nodded silently and he got up and shuffled out of the room without another word, avoiding putting any pressure on his damaged leg. I wondered if he was grateful for me helping him out, but then dismissed that though. It was ludicrous. Rocket wasn’t the type of person to be grateful for stuff at all.

-End Flashback-