I own nothing of Ed, Edd n Eddy. I do own Sherry, but I guess in a way, she's already part of the story.
The sun was shining down on another beautiful day in the small suburb in the city of Peach Creek. A city that never changed no matter where you went and no matter how long you stayed away. The cul-de-sac on Rethink Ave. was still charming to anyone who had seen the other heinous communities of the world.
Sherry was a girl who had only known Rethink Ave. her whole life. She had been born in Peach Creek Hospital, and she knew that the outside world was just aching for her to find it. She was a small girl, with short reddish-brown hair and slim build. Her mother always said she was built like her dad, but her father, Kevin, was a muscular and firmly built man who had played professional football in college and nowadays was the coach for the Peach Creek Cobblers. Sherry never liked sports, she wasn't athletic in any way and really, she wasn't much for cheering either.
She sat outside of her home, the very home her father had lived in as a kid, and looked out on the street. It was circular and gave great parking space to anyone who lived in this piece of "paradise" as she called it. Her neighbors were all weird, or so she had come to believe, after meeting some of the other people that had come from around the state to watch her dad coach the Cobblers. There was Old Man Rolf who was a man shrouded in mystery of his beginnings and still produced vegetables from his farm in his own backyard. His son, Max, was also a farmer, the son of a son of a shepherd he called himself. And then there was Sarah Hill who had become a shut-in author and hippie aficionado with her long-time friend, James.
Sherry didn't understand how Sarah could enjoy a peaceful day in the neighborhood when it seemed that everyone was weird and had their own issues. Good thing she didn't have kids, those guys would be picked on everyday. There were two houses that nobody lived in. They were across the street and completely empty. She wondered where the occupants had gone or what had become of them. Her father called them both "dorks" and said that Ms. Hill's brother was the biggest dork around. Sherry wasn't akin to calling anyone dork, or other name, she preferred gentle touches to everything, probably because she inherited her intelligence from her mother, Natalie.
She looked up at the sun and sat up from the curb, pulling her shorts up after they had loosened while she sat and started walking back up to the house when she heard a noise of a car pulling up to the neighborhood. She turned around and saw an old red cadillac that had seen better days pull up to one of the empty houses and stop. She pushed her bangs from her eyes and watched candidly, there seemed to be one man get out of the car. He was short, judging by the distance, he was almost as short as she was. And he had a cane and a couple of boxes. He needed help, that was for sure.
She ran across the road over to him, garnering the eyes of Old Man Rolf who was busy plowing his field and Sarah Hill from the window of her house. Sherry walked up to the newcomer and said, "Hi."
The man turned around after setting the box down, wiping his brow with an old cloth, and said, "Oh, hi."
"Do you need some help with your boxes, sir?"
"They're not heavy, I can manage," he replied, but noticing her looking down, he spoke up, "Then again, the doc said my back is better off not getting bent up, can you help me?"
"Sure!" she replied, her eyes returning to their cheery state, she lifted up two of the boxes. They really were light, she noticed, and carried them into the house. She hadn't ever been inside the house, but now was her chance to see it. She looked around, expecting to see a trainwreck, but instead, everything was in order and had been cleaned thoroughly twice, by the way she could see.
"So, are you going to live here?" she asked the stranger. He looked at her from outside, "Didn't your parents teach you not to talk to strangers?"
Sherry looked at him with an annoyed look, "Dude, this is a new era, no stranger-danger around here."
He looked back at her, at first surprised, but smiled and wiped his sweating face again, "Well, I remember when I was your age, maybe older, they nailed that stranger-danger stuff into our minds without a second thought. Maybe it really is a new era?"
"So what's your name?"
The man sat in one of the chairs, obviously out of breath, and replied, "I'm Skip, Skip Sampson. What's yours?"
Sherry, Sherry Lynn Barr," she pretend curtsied to him and smiled. He chuckled, "Do you know a guy named Kevin Barr by any chance?"
"He's my father, Coach Barr to his Cobblers, dad to me," she replied with a proud smile. He reached over to the desk beside him and reached inside the drawer, pulling out a wrapped-chocolate bar. He looked over to her wandering eyes and said, "Here, payment for helping me move in."
She looked at him and shook her head, "No, no, it's really okay. I couldn't accept payment for helping someone in need."
He squinted his eye at her, "How old are you?" he asked in a curious way. She replied without blinking, "Nine and a half, though my school says I have the intelligence of a twenty-eight year old and the reading level of a Ph.D level college student. How old are you?"
He chuckled hard, "You sure do talk like a speedboat. I'm forty-four since your asking. My, my, you have some brains behind that hair don't you?" he then mumbled under his breath, "Who'd of thought Kevin could pop out brains."
Not catching his last sentence, she beamed at his comment and smiled, "Thank you Mr. Sampson!"
"Skip please, Mr. Sampson was my father, and my brother, for a while."
"Oh you have a brother?"
"Well," he sat back, "Actually I had three, but two of them weren't actual brothers."
"How can someone be a brother and not a brother?"
"That is a story for another day."
Sherry heard the delicate call of her mother coming from across the street and looked back at Skip, "I have to go home now. Can I visit you tomorrow, Skip?"
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
"Thanks, bye!"
Before she could leave, he stopped her and said, "Hey, what's that?"
"What?"
"Behind your ear?"
Quickly reaching behind her ear she felt around but couldn't find anything, "What's wrong? Is it a parasite?"
"No," he moved his hand behind her ear and pulled back to her face, a quarter. She saw it and looked up to him, "How did you do that?"
"That, too, is a story for another day. See ya, Sherry, watch for cars."
She walked backwards from Skip's house, the quarter in her hand, completely mezmerized by the new neighbor and wondering how he had done that, and to a lesser extent, why Old Man Rolf, who had been watching Skip on the porch, had flown back into his own house and was screaming loudly about the apocalypse.
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