Hidden ( A Newsies Fan Fiction)

Moonlight bathed the floor of the small, bare room. In the corner, a pale, thin girl was sleeping restlessly. She was about fifteen, with long, brown hair that was pulled back into  a ponytail. Suddenly, her bright green eyes flickered open. 

She looked around the empty room, recalling how it had once been a storage room. It had had to be cleared out just for her, as she was the only girl the refuge deemed "worthy of their attention", and they could hardly just shove her in with the thirty-something boys who shared the next room over.

The reason she was the only girl there was that while most girls sat at home looking pretty, or cooking dinner, or sewing, she was out on the streets, alone. She slept in alleyways, and stole food from the market place. She stayed hidden from view, most of the time. Except for that one time, the time when she had gotten caught and was brought to the refuge. 

She had been eleven, and she was resting in an alley, when, at about noon, she heard a scream. She jumped up and, without thinking, ran out into the open. There, in broad daylight, she saw a man beating a boy about her age. He screamed in pain as the man hit his leg. A horrible crunching noise was audible. She had run up behind the man, and struck him. 

"Leave him alone!" she had yelled, livid. The man had reminded her very much of her own father, who used to hit her and her mother. That was before both of her parents had died in The Fire, and she had been left alone.

"I will treat my son however I want, thank you very much," the man had glared at her. She'd kicked the man. Hard. He had stumbled backward. The girl helped the kid to his feet, and they ran. He had run with a sort of limp, as he was still very much in pain. She glanced back in time to see a police officer taking the man away.

"Are you alright?" she'd asked the boy. He nodded. "I'm Julie. Julie Spear. What's your name?"

"Peter. I don't want to be called by my last name because that's his name," he said. Julie had looked at him closely. He had had dark brown eyes and brown hair.

"I understand completely," she'd said. "My real last name isn't Spear, it was Evans. My dad was like yours so...." her voice trailed away as a police man approached them. Soon, Peter had been taken to a hospital, and Julie was taken to the refuge, where she had been ever since.

The refuge was basically a prison for orphans, runaways, and other troublemaking kids. The rooms were overcrowded and dirty, and the food was barely edible. 

Julie snapped back to the present. It was time. For so long, she had been trapped, like a bird in a cage. Now, she was finally about to go through with the escape she had been planning for years.