Lords of Dogtown.

Authors note: I am aware that Stacey works at a Noodle place, but I didn't know first that there were any real info of where his employment were so now I'll just ask of you to either pretend that he's changed workplace or that you never knew the place's name before. As for everybody's age, I've made some adjustments so I could have a little more room for things. Nobody is still in school; everybody has graduated in one way or another. That means that this story takes place in the summer (it's always summer in CA.) when the school is closed for vacation.

Stacey and Tony are 21 years old. Blanca, Peggy and Jay are 19 and Sid, Sheryl and Kathy are 18 years old. Thanks!

Chapter One – No Keychain?

From what she'd gathered, after countless hours of weather explanations from Stacey, it seemed to be a good day for surfing. A mild breeze tickled the palm-trees and the sun streamed in through the window and on to the counter she was leaning on.

"Sheryl! It's your time to do the dishes!" She frowned and turned around towards the voice and away from the ocean view.

"You are SO lying Peralta! I did it two days in a row before yesterday!" When there were no response she grinned to herself and supplied: "Tuesday and Wednesday".

She heard Stacey emit a painful groan and smirked as she leaned in the door-jam to the kitchen. She watched him stare at the piled dishes disgustedly and she couldn't refrain from singing childishly: "Na-na-nana-na".

She got a scowl in turn and smiled amused as she turned away from Stacey tying back his long blonde hair in preparation, and began to wipe the counter in the front of the restaurant.

Sheryl Parker was eighteen years old and lived in California, the self proclaimed Dogtown to be exact. She had three hours left on her shift at 'Larry's Foodcourt' and smiled more then amused at the grumbled curses and scoffs from inside the kitchen. She'd done the dishes two days in a row earlier in the week as a favour, usually they did every other day each, so she felt no guilt in letting him do the dishes two days in a row now.

Sheryl started working not long after her sixteenth birthday, when her father's pay check hadn't been enough to pay the rent, and had started working at 'Larry's foodcourt' three months ago in preparation for the summer. Stacey had already been an employee and they became quick friends thanks to his sweet nature most twenty-one-year-old boys didn't have.

"Hello sweet thang". Sheryl raised her eyebrows at the voice and slowly looked up to find a friend of Stacey's. Tony Alva.

He was leaning against the counter opposite her on his forearms, with a leer, as he looked her up and down. Sheryl fluttered her eyelashes and stretched her lips into a sickly sweet smile, which held promises, and cocked her head to the side.

"Hello pea-brain". In record time Tony's satisfied smirk turned into a scowl and as he straightened, she leaned tiredly with her hip against the same counter.

"Now why the long face?" she cooed and dispassionately realized that this was not like her, and waved a white flag with her next question.

"You want something?" The look in his eyes showed that he'd caught the gesture but he smirked anew and leaned forward so his breath fell on her neck.

"What are you offering?" She quickly took a step back and sneered at his pleased smirk and then turned to yell into the kitchen.

"Peralta! Mr Asswipe is here to see you!" They heard scrambling dishes and a muffled laugh, but there was only genuine joy at seeing his friend when he came out. Stacey shook his head at the two who were caught up glaring at each other, Sheryl with a scowl and Tony with a smirk, and wiped his hands on his apron before slapping hands with Tony over the counter.

"I'll gladly do the dishes" Sheryl sneered with a look at Tony and hurried off to the kitchen and away from the amused Stacey.

"I should have you come by everyday if it get's me out of kitchen duty" Stacey chuckled and shook his head at Tony's scowl to the jibe.

"Don't understand how you can get along with that-" Stacey gave Tony a reprimanding glare and Tony sighed agitated. That girl had been nothing but a thorn in his side ever since Stacey had introduced her to him and the guys just outside this restaurant a coupla of weeks ago.

"Hey guys, this is Sheryl Parker. She just started working here with me". Stacey was on his break and sat in the outdoor seating together with his three friends, and smiled up as Sheryl came out with a shy grin at all the boys.

"Hi". She gave off an embarrassed laugh at being put on the spot like that, but greetings in the form of a nod by a blonde boy who sat curled up in his chair, and a smile from a tiny dark-haired boy who didn't seemed to know if he should slouch or straighten by her presence, reassured her some. A dark boy with big curly hair jumped out of his seat and walked around the table to invade her personal space with a leer.

"I'm Tony. You have to be new around Dogtown cause otherwise I'd already been on your bones". He grinned wolfishly at her stunned face and the blonde's snicker. Sheryl glanced down at the snicker to see his hands tapping an imaginary beat on his jean-clad thigh, before she looked up at the boy in front of her.

"You do belong in Dogtown". By the looks of the guys around it was a much worse insult then she meant to, but she sneered at Tony as he glared at her.

"Well you'll fit right in Bitch." Her indignant gasp was merely noted as it drowned in Stacey's "Hey", the tiny dark-haired boy's soft "That was not necessary" and the blonde's distracted laugh. Sheryl stared at Tony for a second longer before offering Stacey and the dark-haired boy a tiny smile and then returned to inside the restaurant. The glittering of her eyes alerted the boys of her tears and Tony felt a clench of guilt before he was quickly distracted by the blonde's urge to go skating.

"Anyway man, me and the guys were planning to go surfing tomorrow morning, interested?" Stacey grinned enthusiastically and slapped hands with Tony again after a few minutes of noncommitical bullshitting.

"Goodbye sweetpea!" Tony yelled spitingly and smirked at the sound of a plate crashing. Stacey sighed and gave his friend a 'Thank-you-for-letting-me-handle-your-shit' look and watched Tony swagger out and then skate off along the street.

"I cannot understand how a nice guy like you can be friends with guys like him and that blonde one, Jay?" She sneered into thin air as if they stood before her and Stacey rubbed his forehead tiredly. This was not the first time she'd posed the question, and the explanation "We've been friends forever" wasn't the most descriptive answer he'd like to give.

"They haven't always been the guys they are now-" he smiled amused at her disbelieving scoff and eye roll "-you just have to spend more time with them. Hey!" He grinned widely at the idea that just struck him like an aimed paper plane.

"We're gonna go surf tomorrow, why don't you come down and hang out with us before your shift start?" Sheryl sighed loudly with a tiny whine at Stacey's genuine smile, and nodded grudgingly. Her first shift started at nine so she could handle getting up an hour earlier then usual.

"Great! So remember, down at the beach by six." Sheryl gaped incredulously.

"In the morning?!" Stacey raised his eyebrows at her outburst but she just sighed and mumbled.

"Never mind". She turned into the kitchen but swung out quickly again just as Stacey was leaning back against the counter.

"Your time to do the dishes" she smirked at Stacey's whine as he trudged into the kitchen. He heard Sheryl's muffled voice greet customers and with a long-suffering sigh he continued to scrub one of the many utensils by the sink.

Sheryl on the other hand was smiling at a very big and bulky young man in blue baggy jeans and a black t-shirt who hadn't looked at her for one second and instead glanced around the place.

"Damn that's one good crowd" the guy joked sarcastically and gave her a smirk. The crude look in his eyes was the reason why she didn't joke back.

"We're close to closing, can I get you anything?" She tapped her finger pads on the counter in front of her and shifted her feet. The guy smirked and just ordered two cokes to go and twenty seconds later he had left.

"Weirdo" she mumbled to herself quietly and shook her head before putting him out of her head.

****
"Last plate Peralta!" Sheryl came stumbling in and threw down the plates on the kitchen counter as if they were burning her, and made a triumphant jump in the air when she was free of them. He chuckled at her enthusiasm and smiled when he saw that she was waiting for him to finish cleaning.

"So where are you off to now?" He turned off the lights in the kitchen and came out to see Sheryl doing the same in the front with a soft humming under her breath.

"What are you singing?" Sheryl swung around embarrassed and waved it off nonplussed and thanked him with a smile as he reached her her jacket. It wasn't cold out by any means, but she always wore or brought a sweater or jacket with her. He'd asked her why once and after a few seconds of twitching she'd replied: "Bad circulation" with an uncomfortable laugh and scurried off.

"You done?" She nodded and watched as he dug out the keys to lock the restaurant and made a few small twirls to the sound of the keys clinking against each other and the lock turning. Stacey made a pull at the door; to make sure it was really locked, and snorted at Sheryl's gentle teasing.

"Can we go now, pwetty pwease?" He glanced at his watch and shoved his hands down his pockets and fingered his recently bought car keys. He smiled in remembrance that he'd said it just like that to Sheryl the other day an she'd laughed and given him a pitying glance: "It doesn't even have a keychain, you got robbed." He'd given her a scowl and a shove at her smirk.

"Hopefully you're fingering your car keys- you know what? I don't want to know cause I'm already getting nauseating pictures so why don't you just get into that thing and enjoy your drive." She smiled affectionally at his tiny enthusiastic grin and turned with a sailor salute.

"Don't forget, six o' clock!" He heard her grumble; regretting that she'd agreed to it in the first place and saw her wave distractly behind her. She breathed in the cool air deeply and scratched her cheek with her shoulder nonplussed as she turned between the streets. She smiled as an old couple passed her by, holding hands and with a shopping bag rolling by the old man's other hand, and turned her head to the side with narrowed eyes when she spotted someone familiar. He stood leaning against a car with five guys around him, all wearing black shirts and baggy jeans, and as the guy raised his head so it caught the light from a nearby streetlight she recognized him.

The weirdo from earlier in the day, and what do you know; he was drinking from one of the cokes he bought. She shook her head and continued down the street, distractedly hearing loud chuckles from the little crowd, by two blocks to the left and then one to the right.

Sheryl and her father Ben lived in a two stories house, second floor merely a big bedroom with a tiny balcony, and a narrow hallway leading to a small bathroom. Ben still slept in the old master bedroom he'd shared with Sheryl's mom Kim, before she left, which were located wall to wall with the kitchen and behind their living room on the first floor. Kim left Sheryl and Ben when Sheryl was eight and had never looked back. Ever since then Ben had begun to get gruffer and gruffer by each passing year and had taken comfort in his corona bottles, making Sheryl take care of the house and dinners.

She looked up to see that the entire lower floor was lit and that the car was in the driveway, her father had to be home. She stepped up on the cement blocks that formed a stair to her front door and slowly walked in, as quietly as possible in case her father was slumbering on the sofa.

"That you Sheryl?" She took a deep breath and yelled back as she took off her sweater and proceeded to the kitchen.

"Yeah it's me dad. You want dinner?" She smiled hesitantly at her father who were seated at their tiny kitchen table with his face freshly shaven, shirt sleeves rolled up and his tie loosened around his collar.

"Hi Sherry-bun-" Sheryl raised her eyebrows way up at that nickname, he hadn't called her that for over a year "-I'm not very hungry but fix yourself something and I'll sit with you". It was a great change from his usual persona, and even though his gruff voice had remained she could feel that things were about to change. Ben Parker was not a tiny man; in fact, he was a very large man. Very short light brown hair stood up straight on his head, from running his hand through it, and his dark blue eyes looked at his daughter as she started together some soup and a grilled sandwich. He sighed and ran his fingers through his short hair yet again nervously. He hadn't done right by his little girl since Kim left him; 'left them' he amended in his head, as Sheryl turned around to smile slightly at him. She was a woman now, he felt proud of her, in the same time as he wanted to order her to go back to a years younger so he could be there to see the change happen.

Two days ago he'd stumbled into the house after a ten hour shift at a gas station up in the valley, and had opened the fridge to see a bottle of corona next to a small box of leftover Lasagne with the small note "Your favourite" pasted on.

He'd went up to check on her, realizing with a startle that if she weren't at home he'd have no idea of where she could be. She had been sleeping, outstretched over the entire bed still in her clothes, on top of the covers and clearly exhausted. He had lowered the window as quietly as possible and so that there only was a tiny glitch open and took the moment to look around her room. There were some paintings on the walls, or stood leaning against them by the floor, she had mosaic mirrors and drawn thread between some nails so she could hang up her earrings and placed scarves over her lamps to change the light. He had glanced out and smiled at how she'd decorated the tiny balcony with carpets and pillows. Lastly he had grabbed a blanket to lay over her and brushed away a few stray hairs from her face. That had been the moment he realized that it was time for him to get things together, who knew how long it would be before she would tell him that she was moving out to live her own life.

"Daddy?" Ben woke from his reverie with a shake of his head and turned his head to the left to see his daughter looking at him inquisitively with a piece of grilled sandwich in her hand.

"Hm? Yeah." She smiled and nodded to the newspapers in front of him where he'd spent most of his evening circulating potential job ads. He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under the weight, but didn't bat an eye as he watched her sip on her soup.

"I was circling job ads. I can't continue working at the gas station, in this rate I'll be eighty in a month". Sheryl nodded understandingly and smiled encouraging.

"So what ya' got?" She raised her foot to the seat pad on her chair and leaned her chin on her upturned knee, tearing a piece from her sandwich and took a bite. He told her he had an interview tomorrow morning at ten and then three more in the same area, touching his tie irritably for being too constricting even though it hung all the way down to his chest.

"You know-" she glanced at his tie "-you don't have to wear that tie, or any tie. Just wear something comfortable and just something you'll probably wear everyday to that job." Sheryl blushed a bit at her all knowing tone and tried to play it off casually.

"At least, that's what I did." She smiled and continued to eat with her eyes stuck on her soup. Ben nodded and smiled at her.

"It's a good idea, thanks Sherry-bun." His voice was gruff as usual but he saw a small smile curl her lips as she stood and deposited her dishes in the sink. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned with a sigh.

"I'm going to bed, early morning tomorrow, but what about us eating dinner together tomorrow? Early celebration for you finding a new job" Sheryl smiled happily and hopefully, so Ben nodded in agreement.

"Night Daddy." She placed her hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek as she passed on her way out the kitchen.

"G'night sweetheart." He watched her pad up the stairs to her room before he turned back to look through his newspapers until he heard her turn into her room and went to bed himself.