The Queen of Brooklyn~A Spot Conlon Fanfic

Chapter Eighteen: Once and For All

Denton, Davey, Jack, Les, Spot and I work late into the night, having Denton type out the newspaper, edit it, type some more, edit some more, and so on. After about one hundred changes, it's perfect.

"This is amazing," I comment. "I think we're good."

"Yeah," Davey agrees. "But how will we print it?"

Silence. Dead silence.

Finally, Sarah says quietly, "I didn't think of that."

"Neither did I," Denton agrees.

"Or me," I add, and Les bobs his head up and down. I'm crushed. Now what are we gonna do? We ain't got a way to print the Newsies Banner, and it's not like Denton can go around just showing everyone the story on his typewriter. There's no point. We've failed, and now there's no comin' back. No winnin'. I feel like crying.

Jack's still quiet, though. His eyes are squinted at nothing in particular, like he's thinkin' about somethin' real hard. Finally, he says slowly, "I...I think I know where we can print the Newsies Banner."

"Where?" I wonder. "Denton doesn't have a printer."

Denton shakes his head sadly. "No, I do, but it's all packed up. And I don't know which box it's in." He looks at the dozens of boxes all around his empty penthouse warily. "There's just too many."

"Nah," Jack says, smiling sneakily—smirkin', almost. "We ain't gonna use Denton's. We's gonna use one nobody knows about...or remembers, anyway. You fellas know how I've been stayin' in Pulitzer's office's attic?"

Davey nods. I can tell he's tempted to scoff of make some sort of snarky comment, but he doesn't. He knows Jack's back on our side now. After all, Jack saved him, Les, and Sarah from the Delancey brothers.

"Well, guess what my bed is?" Jack wiggles his eyebrows mischievously.

"Uh..." Spot frowns. "A bed?"

"No," Jack says. "An old, abandoned printing press."

It takes us all a second to comprehend. Finally, Sarah says, "Oh my God, Jack! Oh my God! Are you saying we could..."

"Print the Newsies Banner on Pulitzer's own old press?" Jack claps his hands. "Yep."

"That's a really good idea," Davey says grudgingly. I can tell he's still a tiny bit upset with Jack for his betrayal.

"Yeah!" I add, more brightly.

There's awkward silence for a second, then Spot says, "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go print this pape!"

-A little while later-

In the basement of The World's main building, Jack, Davey, Spot, Denton, Les, Sarah and I print our Newsies Banner. The printin' press we's using is old and rusty and slow, but it works. By the time the sun rises in the morning, we've made a thousand one-sheet copies.

Jack goes out onto the streets of Manhattan and gets all the newsies together while Davey, Denton, Spot, Sarah, Les and I stack the newspapers into stacks of 20 newspapers each—since there's about fifty newsies we'll be handin' em out too each, and 20 times 50 is 1000 (thanks to Davey's math skills). 

Before we know it, the newsies of Lower Manhattan and a couple of Brooklyn newsies are filing into the tiny attic, grabbing their newspapers and heading out to give them to the public.

See, our plan isn't just to spread word of the strike. It's to get the working kids of New York to stay home for the day, to get them to join the strike, too. There's thousands of working kids all over New York. And if we got every single one of them to stay home...we'd be unstoppable, even by the great Joseph Pulitzer.

That's what we're hoping will happen: There'll be ten thousand kids in the square, and ten thousand fists in the air. We're going to beat Pulitzer, once and for all.

And this time, nothing will stop us.

"Hey, Red," Jack says as we hand out the Newsies Banner to our fellow newsies. "Do you ever wonder what it would feel like to be more than a newsie, more than just a poor kid sellin' papes?"

I look at him for a minute, then shake my head and smirk. "I don't have to wonder, Jack. I already am more than a newsie—I'm a striking newsie."