I felt the fist slam into my cheek again, and I winced in pain. This was the third time this week I had been beaten up... And it was Thursday.

I looked up at my bullies ugly face, and tried to push him away, only to get a laugh from the other two girls who were standing around in their short skirts and crop tops.

I attempted to move away from the jock, but he laughed and came at my small form again. Just because I was a small guy didn't mean everyone have to come after me. Then again, I was the smallest, most scrawny boy in the entire high school.

The other boy picked me up and slammed my back into the wall, my head starting to spin. He pulled his fist back, his stupid grin full in my face.

Well this sucked.

His fingers slammed into my jaw and I heard a pop, wincing in pain. He threw me to the floor and my shoulder started hurting.

He leaned down to punch me in the stomach, but stopped when a female voice shouted at him. "Hey! What the absolute hell do you think you're doing?!"

The bully pulled back and straightened, looking at the person who had spoken, then turned and grabbed the two girls and ran.

The woman came over to me and helped me sit up. I looked up at her and tried to smile a little at the kind teacher, but my jaw ached with pain.

Her eyebrows knit together with concern. "They did a number on you today." The woman, Ms. Anna, said. The blonde teacher was tall, and dressed in a pale dress suit and black heels, her hair pulled up into a bun. Her blue eyes looked me over. She had gotten me out of stuff-- she gets me out of stuff like this all the time, sometimes having to call one of the on-campus police men if the bully wouldn't listen to her.

"It's like there's no other target in the school." She said, her voice sounding sad and worried.

I tried to lift myself off the ground, and cringed when my ankle twinged. "Did they get your ankle, Jackson?"

I nodded. "Y-yeah." I said. She cursed the boy under her breath and pulled out her phone. She hit a button and put it to her ear. "I'll be okay, Ms. Anna." I said. Though, it was a lie.

She gave me a look and became quiet. "Bennett? Yeah. Jackson can't walk." There was a muffled reply and she shut her phone. "He's coming." She said.

"Th-thank you, Ms. Anna." I said, trying to stay upright.

Ms. Anna and Mr. Bennett were the two people at the school, other than a few of the police men who liked me, who tried to keep the bullies away from me. It would've been okay if I had only been loosing lunch money or my books into the fountain, but they would beat me half to death.

"Anna?" A mans voice said and I looked up to see the burly English teacher coming towards us. He looked down at me and anger filled his eyes. "I'm going to report those bullies.." He said. The young teacher bent next to me and looked over me.

Ms. Anna looked ready to punch someone herself and she turned to Mr. Bennett. "We're taking him to the hospital, then I'm going straight to the police. This ends now." She said.

Mr. Bennett nodded and I felt my stomach twist. "Please..." I said. They looked at me. I looked at my hands, bandages on them from yesterday. "Please don't trouble yourselves." I said.

Ms. Anna grabbed me and pulled me into a hug. "Don't say that!" She said. She pulled me to arms length and looked into my eyes. "Why do you think Mr. Bennett and I help you?" She asked. I shrugged. "Because we care about you! We're worried when you get hurt!"

My chest felt warm and I tried to smile, my lip starting to bleed instead. "Thank you.." I said.

I heard footsteps, and looked up to see a few other students walking by. It was a few girls and a couple guys, all of them tall and good-looking.

The girls gave me worried looks and pointed. One of them spoke, her tone sounding sad. "Isn't that that cute little Jackson boy? Is he okay?" She asked. The group whispered to each other, stopping to look at me.

One of the boys walked over, his tall form seeming familiar, and I realized he was the quarterback. His dark brown hair was bright in the afternoon sun, his loose white shirt fluttering in a breeze.

"Is Jackson okay?" He asked, and I wondered why the group even cared about me enough to even know my name.

I looked up, meeting his blue eyes for a moment. The girls were whispering and looked sad as they watched me, looking as if they were fangirling because I was a little smaller than most guys. I wan't too short... I felt a blush rush over my cheeks and I looked down.

Mrs. Anna looked up at the boy who had walked over and she smiled. "Oh! Max!" She said. She turned back to me, her face sad. "Bullies." She said.

Max's face twisted with a look of anger for a second. He looked back to Mrs. Anna, his face calm again. "I'll find them for you." he said.

She smiled up at him. "Thank you, but I don't think you'll have to." she said.

He nodded, and I saw that his fists were clenched. He met my eyes, and an odd softness came into his gaze. "Tell me if there's anything I can do." He said.

Mrs. Anna nodded, but I noticed he had been talking to me. He walked back to his group and it looked as if he explained what had happened. The girls all looked over to me, their faces mournful. They started asking him questions, their voices mingling together. The guys looked angry, and I wondered why they were even bothering?

The group walked off, a few of them looking back with worried looks.

"Okay. Let's take you to the hospital." Mr. Bennett said.

I looked up at him, my face hurting. "Can... Can I just go home?" I asked.

Mrs. Anna looked worried. "No. Jackson, you're too hurt. What if your ankle doesn't heal right? Or your jaw?" She said.

Mr. Bennett reached down and picked my 5' 7" tall body up easily. "C'mon." He said.

"Take him to the office and we'll call from there." Mrs. Anna said.

I hated being weak like this. Not even being able to protect myself so I wouldn't get myself hurt everyday.

The two teachers set me down in the office a few minutes later and they asked the receptionist to call someone to help me.

The kind young woman with the phone sighed with sadness when she saw me. "I hate bullies." She said, and hit a few keys on the phone.

Mrs. Anna sat in the chair next to me and held and ice pack to my face. "I can-" I began, but she cut me off with a stern look.

"Oh, oh. This is no good at all." A voice said and I looked up to see the nurse in her white uniform. She came over to me and looked down at me. I felt like I wanted to shrink into my chair for a few seconds. "I use so much first aid on you!" She said, her southern accent coming out.

"Paula..." Mrs. Anna said.

The nurse looked down at the smaller woman, an eyebrow lifting. "At least I take care of the boy, woman! I never said I wasn't okay with him using all of my bandaids!" She bent down in front of me, the bigger black woman pulling out a bandaid from her little box and sticking it onto my nose to cover a little cut on the bridge.

"Jackson. Next time those bullies get you, I'm going after them. They're touching my baby boy!" She said and I looked down, my face hot with embarrassment.

Mr. Bennett was talking to the receptionist as she passed the words onto someone on the phone. It must've been the police by the stern look the young woman had.

We all looked up as the office doors opened and a few people in paramedic uniforms walked in. The three people looked around before finding me. They walked over and Paula moved.

"This is Jackson?" A man asked, moving in front of me.

I looked up at him and the other two, all of them much taller than me. "So you can't put weight on your ankle?" One of them, a woman, asked.

I nodded. The last one, a young man, came up to me and gently pulled the ice pack that Ms. Anna held to my face to look at my jaw. He frowned. "These bullies... Just how long have they been beating you up?" He asked.

There was silence as all of them looked at me. I shifted, and the man held my chin with a rough hand as he looked at my bruised face.

"Uhm..." I said, feeling uncomfortable. "Since I joined... At the beginning of the semester."

The paramedic's widened. "Months? And no one did anything? Not your parents?"

I looked at the ground, the man taking the ice pack and holding it to my cheek. Ms. Anna spoke next. "Jackson's parents are overseas for business. He lives in the house by himself." She said.

"Oh." The female paramedic said. The three looked at each other, and I instantly knew that there would be questions, and I would have to give them the phone number of my parents, and then my mother would call and ask why I hadn't told her about all the other times I had been bullied.

She's my mother, and of course, I told her about it when it first started, but after a few weeks of it, and her saying that she would come home with my father, I told them it had stopped. They were important ambassadors for a big company, and them coming back from their trip could set the company back in a big way or cost them their jobs. I knew how much it all meant to them, too. 

I could feel everyone's stares and I tried to sink down into my seat. "We'll take you to the hospital just to make sure you're okay." The older paramedic said.

I looked up at the teachers and office people, not wanting to leave. "I'm... I'm okay!" I said quietly. I didn't like the hospital because... 

The young man in front of me sighed. "Yeah right, kid." He said. My face reddened and I looked down. He straightened and lifted me from my chair. "C'mon." He said.

I gripped his shirt tightly when my head spun quickly. I looked back at Ms. Anna and Mr. Bennett, my face a little scared as I was carried out if the office. Ms. Anna smiled at me, her eyebrows scrunched together.

The back of the ambulance was open, and the man lifted me in easily. "Don't make me lay down.." I said to him, and he chuckled.

"You'll probably be asking to sleep in a few minutes judging by the way you got hit. Concusions in cars are not fun." He set me on the stretcher strapped to the floor and I gripped the sheets, feeling like we were already moving.

"He looks green." The woman said as the older man closed the back and started up the car.

My head started spinning and I held onto the rails on the stretcher and tried to stay upright. The woman put a hand on my shoulder, hitting a bruise. I flinched and she moved her hand. "Lay down, kid." She said, and I obliged.

I felt a cold ice pack on my jaw, and I closed my eyes for a second, my head hurting. I gripped the sheets, until my fingers turned white and all the strength left my body. It had never been life this. My head... pounding...

"Poor thing..." The woman said, and I tried to open my eyes a little, only to be met by the blur my vision allowed.

"Yeah." The man said, pulling out another ice pack. "Hey, did they hit your head on something?" The man asked, his voice a little worried. His fingers felt the back of my head and the bump that must've been forming there.

I tried to open my eyes again, and saw the two's faces. "Y-yeah..." I said.

"I think he might have a concussion." The man said. The woman uttered something under her breath and smiled down at me a second later.

"Hey Jackson." She said, and I looked at her her, a twisted feeling in my gut. "I need you to do something for us." She said, looking at the man.

I nodded a little, my jaw hurting. "Yeah?" I asked.

"Stay awake, okay?" She asked, and I frowned, feeling drowsy.

"Okay." I said anyway. The woman looked into the front where the older man was driving.

"How much longer?" She asked, and he glanced back at her in the rearview mirror.

"Five minutes." He said, looking down at me.

The younger man held his fingers to my neck to check my pulse, and for some reason, I found it funny. I small laugh escaped my lips, and he frowned. He drew away and nodded when the woman gave him a questioning look.

"His pulse is fine." He said.

She looked out the front again. "We're here. I called ahead, so someone will be able to fix his ankle and look at his jaw." she said.

I laughed again, my hands trying to lift to the ice pack on my face. I tried to pull it away, the cold hurting my skin. "Hurts..." I said, feeling myself going delirious.

This was just wonderful. I was in so much pain from my jaw, head and my ankle that everything was funny.

The ambulance stopped, and the woman pushed the doors open. The man lifted me off the stretcher and carried me to a glass door that my eyes wouldn't focus on for se odd reason.

"We got a room for him?" The man carrying me asked. There was taking and and quick speech, and I was passed into someone else's arms.

I was carried somewhere, I didn't know where, but I didn't care. A door was pushed open and I was pulled back into the present, all of the pain back, and all of my delirious state gone.

Someone laid me down in a bed, and my light hair was brushed to the side so someone could clean the little bit of blood that had run down into my forehead when the jock from earlier had slammed me into the wall.

"Prop him up." A voice said, and my small body was lifted into a sitting position. I saw the face of a middle aged man in a white coat, a blue smock under it.

He smiled at me, his teeth clean. "Hey, Jackson." The man said, glancing down at a clipboard in is hands. "So you got beaten up pretty bad, huh?" He said.

His voice was kind, and I found myself remembering my dad. I nodded, raising a hand to my head. "Y-yeah...?" I said. My hand was gently pulled away from my face.

"But once we look at you good, and clean you up a bit, looks like we'll be able to get you out of here." The doctor said.

I smiled and looked at my hands, watching them shake a little. "It was more than one fight..." I said. I looked up at him. "My head hurts?" I said.

He look at me with concern. "Yes. It looks like you have a concussion. That's why your vision may be acting up, and your mind will start processing things differently." He said.

I nodded, as if I understood. "Can I sleep now?" I asked.

He looked at me with concern, but my eyes had already slipped shut and I had passed out.

***

I woke up in the hospital bed, a little needle in my arm. I sat up quickly, and my head started to spin violently.

I put a hand to it, feeling my familiar short hair. I felt small band-aids on my cheeks where small cuts had accumulated over the past few months. I still couldn't believe it had been months already that I'd been bullied.

I looked around, seeing it was light outside. I saw a tree, so I thought I wasn't too far off the ground. There was a nock on my door and I looked up to see the doctor.

"Hello Jackson." He said with a cheerful voice. "Sorry you had it rough yesterday. But there are a few people here to see you before we let in visitors." He moved aside, and I saw two men in police uniforms.

My stomach felt cold and I pulled the sheets on the bed higher up around my legs.

"Would it make you feel more comfortable to have one of the people here to see you in here when we ask you a few questions?" One of the cops said.

I looked past them out the door. "I... I have visitors?" I asked.

The doctor nodded. "Quite a few."

The policemen looked a little impatient. "It's only a few questions." the older of the two said.

"Go ahead." the doctor said, and I looked up at the two men.

They sighed and one pulled out a notepad. "So how long have you been getting beaten up?" He asked.

"Four m-months." I said, my hands gripping the sheets.

The man nodded. "Who attacked you?" He asked.

I looked at the sheets clutched in my hands. "There were a few... A few main ones.." I said. I started saying all the names and the officer had to flip a page on his notebook.

"And did you do anything to provoke them?" The other one asked.

I looked at him blankly a for a moment. "No." I said. "T-to the best of my knowledge n-no." I said.

"So you're saying that they beat you up for the sport of it?" One asked.

I looked at the ground, feeling small. "Y... yeah. I guess cause I was easy to beat up..." I said. The policemen left a moment later without another word.

"Well, your visitors now?" the doctor asked and I looked out the door as he left. The. A few people came in. Actually, quite a few. I saw Ms. Anna, Mr. Bennett, the principal and... I saw the whole group of boys and girls from yesterday, the tall boy, the quarterback at the front of them, a smile on his face.