Somewhere // Spot Conlon

Chapter 23

No one's POV

Spot slams his fist down on the table while the other tries to hold back his sobs and cries. He quickly reads the note again.

Sean,

If you want to see your girl again safe and untouched, come to the Bronx. No one else. Just you.

His key that he gave Allyson is connected to it. He knows he has to do it and who will be waiting there for him. His father.

Spot was eight when he ran away. His father came home drunk again and ready to beat on Spot. But his father was so tipsy, he could barely stand. This was Spot's chance. Spot had locked his siblings in a closet, a thing he quickly learned to do every night. He had the perfect plan in case a time like this ever came. And it worked. His plan had to work. But he knew now he couldn't stay. He gather all the money he had saved and put it in his pockets.

It wasn't very much at all, but it would help him. He shoved his slingshot from when he was little in Ireland and a picture of his mother in his back pocket. He took the key he had in his pocket and unlocked the closet that held his siblings. He quickly left the small dirty crowded apartment building. He finally got outside and he realized that he still had the key.

He was feeling proud of himself, what short eight year old boy wouldn't? But from that day on his father was out for him.

Spot pulls his pimp cane through his belt loops and puts his slingshot in his back pocket. He looks like a man on a mission as he starts his way to the Bronx without a word to his boys. He's still going to live up to his word, to protect Allyson no matter what.

In the Bronx, in an old abandoned sewing factory that got closed down years ago, Allyson sits holding her head in her hands as she softly cries. She's only felt this hopeless one other time. The journey to America. Six long weeks on a steam ship, overcrowded, and with not much food. Then, on top of that her family was still trying to get over the death of her father.

She spends countless hours thinking about all of them. Charles, Evan, Bennett, Dior, Eva, Fletcher, Kid Blink, her mother and father. But she thinks about Spot the most. Did he know where to find her? Was he coming? Would he bring the Brooklyn Newsies with him? Did he even care?

She doesn't think he does. But she remembers all those days in the sun with him. When they met, their night walking around Brooklyn, his letters to her, when he kissed her, the dinner with her family, the strike. They all seem like a distant memory.

She snaps her head up and yelling from Aidan echoes through the building. The one word that snaps, Sean.

Spot stands facing his father. He hates they have almost the same features. Aidan looked that exact same as Spot does now when he was fifteen.

"Where's Allyson?" Spot demands.

Aidan ignores him," You'll find out when you come with us."

"No."

"Sean, you are my son, but you're not eighteen. I still own you," Aidan grabs his son by the wrist and starts dragging him towards the basement.

Spot throws a right hook at his father's chin. As soon as he does, his two younger brothers Kieran and Reagan grabs both of his arms arm. Now, it's Aidan beating on Spot again, like he always did. The two younger boys throw Spot down the steps after Aidan has given him a black eye, a busted lip, and a dozen bruises.

Spot lands right in front of Allyson. She rushes over to him and puts his head on her lap as he lays their, almost lifeless.