a striking pair | f.c

Chapter Nine

[ ^ Lane > (wherever the picture is XD) ] 

"Hey, Vest-onica!"

Davey froze in tracks, and after determining that he was the one Lane had called for, slowly turned around to face her. "Please don't call me that."

"Alright, alright..." Lane backed down, placing a playing card on the table in front of Race. "How's it goin', Tie-son?"

Davey stayed silent, gazing at her blankly.

"... Tie-ler?"

Race snickered as he finally took the wise option and left.

It had been two weeks since the strike ended. As far as Lane could tell, things were beginning to go back to normal, save from a few modifications to their normal everyday lives.

For one thing, they now had four new people around. Davey, Les (she'd finally been told what his name actually was), Katherine, and herself. Two, Jack had gotten a job directly under Pulitzer, the man she'd despised since the beginning.

She couldn't say she blamed him, though.

"Hey, Laney?" Race questioned.

Lane glared at him. "Call me dat again, 'n I'll burn all yer cigars ta tha ground."

"Alright, alright." He put his hands up in surrender, mimicking her, and she rolled her eyes at his antics. "Geez."

Lane sighed. "Wha was it ya wanted?"

Race grinned, as if he knew she would ask. "Nothin'. I jus wanted ta see wha yer reaction would be."

Lane rolled her eyes once more, and they lapsed into silence, only the occasional shuffling of a card interrupting the peace and quiet.

"Lane?"

"What?"

"Why ain't ya a newsie?"

Lane paused momentarily, before placing her next card down. "Well, Pulitz-ah ain't tha most generous person out dere, as Ise sure you've noticed by now. And I like it at tha factory. Keeps me hands busy."

She'd started working back at the factory a week after the newsie strike had ended, having stopped during the two she'd taken part in. She had to admit, it had been sort of nice to be back, as it gave her another distraction from the guilt of the lies she'd survived on for so long.

Another distraction from her dead father who had been left out in the streets to rot.

"Okay," Race said, and she wondered if he had sensed her sudden shift in mood. "Makes sense. Ya don't sleep on tha streets though, right?"

That was another thing. After the first time she stayed at the newsies lodging house overnight, only to have found out it cost for a bed, Finch had never made the mistake of paying for one for her again, and she made sure of it. No way she was letting someone else pay for something for her, and even more so if that person ended up sleeping on the streets because of it.

"I stay at Trek's," Lane told him. "He has a daught-ah, but she's usually away- she's been away fa a while, actually, so I'll usually spend tha night in her room."

She didn't want to tell him that more times than not, she'd sleep outside as to not be a burden to Trek, who wasn't even related to her.

Maybe she could've worked up the nerves to talk to her brothers, but she was positively sure they hated her, and she'd been going out of her way to avoid them as much as possible since that day.