The Boys Next Door

Chapter 1

The Boys Next Door

Chapter 1

"Hey Steph! Heads up!" shouted Jeremy from across the football pitch sized garden.

I looked up from my magazine just in time to see a football come soaring at me and hit me square in the face.

''Ouch!" I picked up the ball that had fallen on the floor and threw the football into the swimming pool where it made a slight splash and landed right in the middle. Score! Serves them right.

"You didn't have to do that did you now? Someone's got their knickers in a twist today," said Cole jogging up onto the patio and raising his eyebrows at me.

"You're a real asshole," I muttered at him.

"Touché. You love me really." He grinned an award winning smile.

"Believe what you want to believe Cole," I said rubbing my forehead. "That really hurt though!" I looked around for the person that kicked it, getting my evil eyes ready.

Blake sheepishly raised his hand "guilty?"

So he was my next victim....I turned my attention back to Cole.

"Awww darlin, do you want me to kiss it better for you?" Cole smirked.

"Shut up you." But even as I said this I couldn't help but smile.

This was always the way between us. He was always teasing and making fun of me, and I just put up with it, because they were the closest thing I really had to a proper family. And well, Cole was the only one who really knew the real truth.

I had known the Ryan brothers my whole life. Well, almost...since I was three anyway, and to be honest I can't remember much before that.

We moved to Vinewood in September 1997, my father, mother and I. I felt a pang of sadness as I remembered my dad. How he was then, before the accident.  Then another pang, perhaps even worse, for my mother.

The Ryan family had invited us round their house, being next door, for a housewarming barbecue. It was very sweet of them in hindsight, not many people would do that these days. That was the day I first  met them. Cole was the oldest, a couple of years older than me. Then came the twins who were my age, Jeremy and Blake, and then the youngest, Ashton who hadn't been born until a few years after we had moved.

We had became the best of friends, always playing outside on their trampoline, swimming in their pool or camping out until we got too scared of the noises in the dark so that we would run backinside eventually.

That was until the accident.

One night when I was nine, the three of us had gone to a family friends wedding and were on our way home when a truck ran a red light and - well you can imagine. Or not, as it was rather heartbreaking. My father and I survived with non life threatening injuries however my mother did not manage to make it.

After the accident, my father would come home late after work. He would be drunk and irritated. That's when the abuse started. He would blame me for my mothers' death as he shouted abuse at me and shoved me to the floor, hitting me time and time again.

After this happened, he would storm off to bed and leave me cowering behind the sofa. That's when I would run out to the bottom of my garden and sit down and cry.

One summers night, a couple of weeks after the abuse started I was out in the garden when I heard a rustling in the bush behind me. I was so scared I almost ran inside but before I could move I heard Cole's voice.

"Awwww shoot!"

Then I saw him emerge from the bush sucking his finger which was bleeding, he held it up "I got it caught on a holly bush. I didn't even realise there was one here," he explained quickly. Then he sat down next to me. "Shhh why are you crying Stephenie?" he asked me as he hugged me to him.