Will and His Dog and the Horrid Girl Next Door

Will and His Dog and the Horrid Girl Next Door

Copyright 2020 Paul Cook

Cover image by Paul Cook

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Will and His Dog and the Horrid Girl Next Door

A new family had recently moved in next door to the house that Will shared with his mum, his dad and his dog, Clive. The new family didn't have any pets that Will could see but he wondered if maybe they kept a goldfish or a hamster inside the house.

The mum and dad who had moved in next door were older than Will's parents but they had all quickly become friends. Often on Friday evenings after work, Will's dad and the dad next door, who Will had been told to call Mr Thompson, enjoyed drinking a couple of bottles of beer together at the bottom of the drive.

Will's mum and Mrs Thompson had also become friends and sometimes they went shopping together on Saturday mornings. They often came home without having bought anything and Will could never understand why they went in the first place if all they were going to do was traipse in and out of shops for no reason.

The Thompson's seemed like nice enough people but, unfortunately, they had a daughter and Will did not like her at all. Her name was Alex, which Will thought was a name for a boy but, according to his mum, it was short for Alexandra. She was eighteen years old, ten years older than Will, and had just finished school for the summer holidays. Alex was apparently going off to study something that Will had never heard of at a university in a city he had never been to.

Will had liked Alex at first but she had done several things that had really annoyed him. Whenever Will waved at Alex or tried to speak to her, she always ignored him which he thought was extremely rude. Alex owned a white mini and had nearly driven over Clive as she was reversing off her driveway. Will shouted at Clive to warn him but all Alex did was rev her engine loudly and blow the horn before driving off at a speed which he thought was too fast.

The final straw for Will had been when Alex had refused to throw Clive's ball back over the fence to him after it had bounced off the wall of his house and into the Thompson's garden. Will had been very cross and marched down his drive, up the Thomson's drive, around their house and into Alex's back garden. She was sat on the grass with two of her friends. One of the friends saw Will walking across the lawn and said to Alex, "who is this?"

Alex replied, "it's just the annoying boy from next door."

Will asked, very politely, "please can I have my dog's ball back?"

Alex laughed and said, "no you cannot because if I give it back to you, that ball will soon be back over here again. So, I've hidden your stupid ball - now get out of our garden."

Will was so very cross, his face started to burn and he could feel tears welling up in his eyes. He knew that he was going to start to cry with anger. Will didn't want to cry in front of Alex and her friends because he knew that they would just laugh at him and so he turned around and strode out of the Thompson's garden and back to his house.

When he returned to his house, Will told his mum all that had happened in the Thompson's garden and how Alex had been mean to him. Will's mum was very cross and wanted to go around there and get the ball back herself but she decided to wait until she saw Alex's mum so that she could have a chat with her about it all.

Later that night, at about ten o'clock, it was still just about light outside. Will should have been asleep as he had gone to bed at eight o'clock. He usually went to bed at seven o'clock on school nights but was allowed to stay up later in the holidays and on weekends. Like all children, Will found it hard to sleep when it was hot and still light outside. He was still very cross about his ball and decided that he was going to get the ball back from Alex somehow. He supposed that Alex had forgotten all about the ball because it wasn't as important to her as it was to him.