Rocket To The Moon.

When I arrived at school everyone I had met the previous day was standing at the entrance together.

“Hey, look, it’s Hero” I heard Adam point out as I approached their direction.

“Hey!” Christa called to me, waving her arm. I smiled and walked up to them.

“Hi guys” I said cheerfully.

“Yay! It’s Herooooo!” Hunter jumped on the spot and appeared to be doing some kind of dance. Despite the fact that he was the same age as me - he reminded me of a little kid.

“You’re looking positively beautiful today, Madame” Sean made some kind of bowing gesture towards me, and I giggled.

“Sean, you’re such a tease” Christa smirked, and rolled her eyes.

“Am not!” Sean insisted. Christa laughed.

“How did you find your first day here then?” Adam asked me.

“It wasn’t bad at all” I replied “I definitely prefer it to my last school”

“Well of course you prefer it here! You have US!” Hunter said, throwing his arm around my shoulder. I giggled again.

“Hey! Get your hands off her!”

Before I knew what was going on I felt myself being snatched away into a different pair of warm, tender arms.

“Hi, Hero” Luke whispered into my ear, making chills run up and down my body and my heart accelerate to a million miles an hour.

“H-hi” I squeaked.

“Hey! You stole my friend!” complained Hunter, folding his arms and pouting. He resembled a little kid even more at that point (discarding the bright red hair, of course).

“No! She’s mine now!” Luke joked, picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder just as Rocket had done the night before.

"Rocket..."

I forced a laugh as Luke began to run with me slung over his shoulder, with Hunter running closely behind us trying to catch up.

“You okay up there, Hero?” Luke panted whilst running.

“Mmhm” I replied, getting slightly nervous. Luke was also very tall. Lucky for me, Hunter ran out of breath pretty quickly, and Luke lowered me gently down from his shoulder before leading back into the group.

“That was very amusing” Christa said. Then, much to our disappointment, the bell rang for lessons. My first lesson of the day was art, which I shared with Adam and Sean. We said goodbye to everyone else, and Luke hugged me goodbye, which surprised me initially, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, then we parted ways and headed to our lessons.

“The art teacher is hilarious” Sean said as we walked towards the class.

“Yeah. She’s totally blind, and doesn’t know who she’s talking to most of the time” Adam agreed.

“She still thinks that my name is Herbert Douche Krapper” Sean told Adam with a grin, and Adam laughed.

“She’s fucking lost it” he said.

“So, I take it you guys don’t actually get much art done?” I asked.

“None whatsoever” Adam agreed “It’s awesome”

Those guys were very right about our art teacher. I could tell from the moment I walked in that this was going to be a very fun lesson. Her name was Ms. Robson, and she couldn’t have been any taller than about five feet. Her hair was huge and frizzy and stuck up all over the place. Her back was hunched slightly and decorated with a very colourful shawl with a pattern that made it look like someone had just thrown up over it. And her glasses were so thick, they came about five inches away from her face, yet she still squinted when she looked around. I walked up to her.

“Hi, I’m Hero McKenzie, I’m a new student here” I said.

“Ah, welcome! Welcome!” she was overly enthusiastic “I can tell already that you will absolutely excel in this subject! I am honoured to have you in my class!”

“Umm…thanks?”

“Please, take a seat, I am about to begin the lesson”I sat myself down at the back with Sean and Adam. Ms. Robson never did manage to get the lesson started, because the class was too bust doing its own thing to pay the slightest bit of attention to her. Adam sat back and rested his feet up on the table, whilst Sean pulled out a Gameboy and started playing video games. I was in the process of drawing a pattern on my hand when they decided to start making conversation.

“So, Hero, who’s that guy you turned up to school with today? The one that drove you here?” Sean asked.

“Oh, that’s my…”

“Brother? Friend? Not this again. What am I supposed to answer to that? I can’t tell him it’s just some guy I know because then they would think I was weird for getting a lift to school with him. I knew Rocket and I weren’t friends yet, but could I pass him off as one for now?”

“That’s my friend” I answered quietly “He’s in the grade above”

“I heard he’s new here too. Did you know him before you moved or something?” Adam asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did…” I answered. I prayed that they would be done with the questions about Rocket. I really didn’t want to have to explain everything to them - my weird parents, the adoption, they would just think I was a total freak. Thankfully, the conversation veered off in a totally different direction.

“Oh, cool. Hey, have you guys heard about the beach party?” Adam asked.

“There’s a beach party every other week” Sean said, not taking his eyes of the screen of the Gameboy.

“But this is gonna be a big one. It’s actually being advertised. There’s gonna be live music and a surf contest and everything. It sounds pretty rad” Adam explained.

“Surf contest? You should enter, Adam” Sean had finally managed to pry his eyes away from the video game and look at Adam.

“Wow, you surf?” I asked, impressed.

“Yeah. I’ll think about it…” Adam muttered “But I don’t know if I’d do that well in a competition”

“Are you kidding me? You fucking own the waves, dude!”

“Whatever…I‘m just not a very competitive person though”

“Ha! Adam, you kicked Hunter in the head just so that you could win a game of Twister!” Sean laughed. A smirk spread across Adam’s face.I had never seen Adam surfing before, but even I knew he was being modest. I decided to put in my own opinion.

“I think you should enter” I said “And it doesn’t even matter if you don’t do well, you might just have a load of fun taking part”

“I’ll consider it” Adam said “And that doesn’t mean yes”

“He said yes!” Sean cheered “High five, Hero!”

I laughed and high fived Sean. Adam rolled his eyes.

“We can all come and watch you, and then join in with the beach party, and maybe stay the night at someone’s house afterwards” Sean suggested “And Hero could come along. Would you like that?” he asked me.

“Sure” I nodded “I‘d love to”

“Well the party is this Saturday. If I go along tonight I’ll still have time to enter. You really think I should do it?” Adam glanced back and forth from Sean and I nervously.

“Go for it, man!” Sean patted his back.

“Alright, I’ll do it” he said.

“Wow, this is gonna be a great weekend! First my date with Luke, then Adam’s surf contest, then a beach party. I freaking love California!”

Just like the previous day, my second day of school went by quickly. I saw Rocket a couple of times in the corridors and at lunch, but I hadn’t bothered to try and get his attention. But every time I’d seen him he had been completely on his own, often having crude things yelled at him by other students, and it almost broke my heart to see that, even though I had no idea why. It never used to bother me when I saw Rocket alone at school, so why was it bothering me so much now? The fourth or fifth time I saw him that day, I quite literally walked into him. I had been looking down at the floor whilst I was walking, trying to avoid standing in one of the numerous lumps of discarded chewing gum scattered across the ground. I had been fairly relieved to find out that it was Rocket I had walked into, and not some random stranger.

“Oops, I’m sorry, Rocket” I said.

“Watch out” he muttered, bending down to retrieve his book that had been knocked out of his hand in the collision.

“How are you finding it here?” I asked, attempting to make pleasant conversation. He straightened up, and glared at me, before shoulder barging past me and storming off. It shocked me. I couldn’t quite understand what I had said wrongly. But then again, it was Rocket, and that kind of behaviour should have been expected from him. So why did it upset me?I proceeded walking to my final lesson, paying more attention to where I was walking.