The Disgraced Newsie: Part 2( Rewritten)

Chapter 5: Spot Conlon's POV

The one time. The one time that I would ever do anything nice to Kelly and not expect anything back from him, he had to just up and disappear off the face of New York.

I wish that I could have known before I sent my boys looking for him all over New York for at least a month!

I am aware of all of the stories about me: that I wanted Kelly to be found and brought to Brooklyn, so I could beat him up, but not this time. Believe or not, I actually wanted to help the guy out.

Kelly always complained about the constant threat with the Harlem newsies and how they wanted to take over Manhattan, but so far, they never seemed to do anything about it. So when I heard the news from York that Kelly had disappeared from the Lodging House and Higgins replaced him as the leader of Manhattan, I knew that the Harlem newsies would target him and use him as a hostage to make the Manhattan newsies give up their turf to them. But I didn't think that the Manhattan newsies would care that Jack was taken by the Harlem newsies, so they would just kill him since he wouldn't be that much of a use to them. As much as Kelly was an idiot for his speech at the rally, even I didn't think that he deserved to die like that, especially to trash like the Harlem newsies.

I talked with the other leaders from the different parts of New York and all of them agreed that Kelly needed to be protected from the Harlem newsies, so we all sent some of our newsies, the ones who we could trust that wouldn't hurt Kelly in any shape or form, to look for him in our respective areas and bring him to Brooklyn. We tried to do this as quickly and quietly as possible, but news really does travel fast in New York as the Manhattan newsies started to catch on that Brooklyn was looking for Kelly, especially since Higgins sent that bird-named newsie to ask if I will send some of my boys to look for Kelly in Manhattan.

At first, I wanted to decline since I never wanted to help Manhattan with anything, but then I started to think that Kelly most likely would not run that far away from the Lodging House, so he could still be in Manhattan, so I accepted. Then, I sent some of my boys in Manhattan to look for him. After a while, there wasn't any updates about Kelly or where he could be and most of the other leaders decided to stop sending their newsies out to look for him since it stopped them from selling their papers, but I never stopped.

It wasn't until one month that I decided to slow down the searches for Kelly since it became clear that Kelly wasn't anywhere in New York. Probably one of his very few supporters told him that I was on the lookout for him and he assumed that I wanted to beat him up, so he probably just ran out of New York. It was probably for the best. At least the Harlem newsies wouldn't be able to use him as a hostage against Manhattan.

Manhattan seemed to be suffering without Kelly around. Higgins sent some of his newsies to ask for help against Harlem, but I refused to help them. They brought themselves into this mess, so they need to figure out how to get themselves out of this mess. I will never help them, especially not after what they did to Kelly. I learned from the other leaders that they refused to help the Manhattan newsies when they asked for help against Harlem, so the Manhattan newsies were truly on their own.

Although, some of the other newsies leaders and I decided to be nice to the Manhattan newsies and we agreed that we would take in some of the younger newsies after Manhattan was taken over, but after that, we weren't going to do anything else for them.

Their only fighting chance was Kelly. From what York told me, he saw Kelly, the younger kid that never stops smiling, and the crip at the train station. Manhattan might have a fighting chance if Kelly wants to help them. If not, then I would not blame him. York overheard them talking about staying at the walking mouth's place, so maybe I will personally invite him to Brooklyn myself for protection.

Yeah, I should do that tomorrow, but this will be the only time I will do something for Kelly for free. After that, he owns me.