Return to New York

"Extra Extra!"

I re-entered the Newsie lodging house with Blink at my side just before the sun set behind the buildings. To the others, it had appeared that I had followed all the rules that I had put into place myself.
I walked into the gathering area, most of the older boys were there, munching on a loaf of bread together.

"Where'd yous two run off to?" Jack asked in between bites of his pitiful dinner.
"Blink had to go talk to Queens, just so happened that I wanted to get out of the house for a while." I answered simply call with a shrug of my shoulders. I sat down on the couch in between Jack and the armrest. He passed me a piece of bread and I bit down on the crispy end. Stale, as to be expected. Crutchie would often get thrown out pastries and baked goods from the bakery in town. He had a thing for the daughter of the baker that worked there.

"What have you guys been talking about?" I questioned the group, consisting of mush, Jack, skittery, and now Blink and I.
"Not a whole lot. Just paper sales." Mush shrugged while taking a bite of the bread. "We've all got a little extra in our pockets than used to. I guess that's what's good about this situation." He said with a twang of pain in his voice as he looked down in his lap.

"Say, you gonna finally pull your weight around here?" Jack teased me. "Wanna come sell wit me tomorrow?"
A break would be nice. I didn't know if I sell but spending time with Jack would be extremely nice.
"I'd love to."

•••

The next morning I woke up in my own bed and my own room. The familiar smell of musty wood and smog engulfed my senses as I sat up and looked at the sun coming in through the stained windows. I smiled slightly to myself, the feeling of homesickness wearing off with every new day I woke up.

I got out of bed and put my feet on the cold wooden floorboards and headed towards my dresser. I pulled out a pair of brown trousers, an oversized blue button up and simple brown suspenders. I adjusted my hair to how I like it, inside of my newsboy cap.

I walked back over to the door and opened it in the doorway. I looked back at my bed and sighed. Racetrack would never be waiting for me in my room, eager to hear about why I ran off in the night this time. My human diary was gone, the one person I felt totally comfortable with confiding everything about myself to. I remembered the first time he had given me a boy lecture was when we were super little. I asked him if he liked me because we hung out all the time. We had no concept of stuff like that, so he just said "yes I like you. But not in the I want to kiss you way but in the way I want to shove you in the mud then help you clean it off your face way."

I smiled thinking about the good memories I had with Race. But that's all they were ever going to be now was memories, locked inside of my brain. Some of them I couldn't even share with the other newsies. They simply wouldn't understand.

Pushing back the ball I felt growing in my throat, I carried on down the stairs. Everybody was already out selling for the day. I knew Jack would be around somewhere by the boxing ring, you seem to get a lot of drunk peoples attention there, no matter the time of day. I made my way swiftly. I could hear the screaming of men and in no time, it was right in front of me. I tried my best to pick out the familiar voice of Jack Kelly, and finally I did. He was standing on a light post, waving the papers around.
"Extra extra!! Murderous Spree targets the Bronx!! Read all about it here!!"

The song rang in my ears. What a terrible human being this was to do this to everybody. There's were all people of commonality to me. We all shared the struggle of being kids begging for money and table scraps. I understand going for people that won't be missed, but when it gets reported in the papers for months now, surely they would quit, right?

"Aye Jack hand me a pape." I instructed my brother. He jumped down from his perch and did so.
"Terrible, ain't it?" He sighed. "Why would somebody do this to us, huh? I just don't get it."
"Me either Jack. Me either."

I scanned through the paper and engulfed myself in the description on the front page, the image depicted was police tape that read "do not cross" and a jumble of uniformed officers within that tape line. 

The murderer targeting the low men on the totem pole strikes again, taking two more orphans from the bronx area. It has been just over a year since the that the newsies of this city  organized to get the major newspaper companies to lower their prices back down after the sudden spike in price for those newsies to purchase papers right from the circulation gates. Now they are being targeted for what has now been dubbed a serial murder case. The newsboy killer has struck again in the outskirts of the Bronx. Two boys found dead along the shoreline of a harbor where early morning sailors discovered the tragedy. We were able to talk to the newsies borough these boys came from, the victims were Georgie, age 12 and  "Skipper" age 15. Neither of the boys had any living or known family members from the New York area. 

My heart fell heavy with an ache that was starting to become familiar to me. I handed the paper back to Jack and I could tell that he could see the hurt in my eyes. 
"Hey it's alright. I am sure the police will catch them." He said as he ruffled my hat on my head. I pulled away from him and sighed once again. "Why is this happening to us? What did we do to this person?" I questioned, my voice and posture defeated. I could feel Jacks hand on the back of my neck and he gave a slight squeeze. "I don't know," Jack replied to my question with a pain in his voice. "I am sure the cops'll figure it out." he put simply. 

I felt so defeated. I sat down on a bench and watched two sweaty men punch each other for entertainment. Thoughts swirled around in my head. Why did it make the most sense for this person to target people who had no money, nothing to give him in return, and had no meaning to society. Thinking of it this way made me feel pitiful but it was true. It did not make any sense. I watched as the sun sank closer and closer to the buildings that lined the New York skyline.