A DARKER CITY

chapter twelve, my only

Athena read over the letter over and over again. A business arrangement. An engagement. If she went through with this, it could leave her life shattered. Or it could leave her a self-made millionaire. Or it could leave her a housewife to a man she didn't love.

Robert had written her, as he often did. Her heart was pounding. She was so scared. She was so hopeful. In a decisive moment, she agreed to meet with him again. He was a kind man, plain and boring, with a long-winded nature and a slight drinking problem, but he'd always been fair to her.

And now it was time to see how far fairness stretched.

"Morgan, I'm going out." She called to the empty staircase.

A voice from behind her answered. "no, it's just me for now. She's out too." ramona said.

"you about stopped my heart! What are you doing up?" she asked. Ramona normally wasn't around in the early hours of the day.

"I'm meeting with the newsies again. For the strike."

"I should have assumed."

"why, where are you going? Out with your dearest Richard?"

"as a matter of fact, I am."

Athena left shortly after that, with her hair in tight spiral curls all around her face, and a pretty silk and lace ribbon to pull the curls back, and a green dress with the waist cinched into an impossibly small hourglass.

"careful Athena, you'll puncture a rib." Ramona teased her on the way out. Athena didn't dignify it with a response.

Ramona let the strike take her heart that day, she let the crowd and the yelling and the distant sound of the world take her far away from the city. She raised her sign higher over her head. Crutchie was in a boy's home for this. The strike needed to go through.

Getting coverage in the paper was good, it was working. Ramona could see that in the crowd that had gathered to watch them. A crowd of people who were interested, if only in the commotion. Interest is what sparked change. It's what led rebellions.

Davey had his little brother, les, up on his shoulders. The younger boy was cheering loudly, holding a sign much too big for him. Davey held a sign too, one of a more suiting size. Ramona had never noticed how close the boys were. Not just davey and his brother, but all of the boys.

They all stayed close, and jokingly nudged and poked at each other. It was like they constantly had to be messing with each other. Sniper stole someone's hat, and then was chased around the fountain until it was finally returned to its rightful owner.

This is what they were fighting for. Not a pay raise, or even their jobs. It was for the simple family of them, the fact that if they were newsies this was their life, together, and those boys could be happy like that. Ramona finally understood why they were fighting so hard, and why crutchie had been taken away. These boys were really out here with their lives.

Ramona wondered what they saw looking at her. standing alone, awkwardly grouped in with them. She was dressed down in muted colors, and her hair was pulled back, but she still wasn't one of them. She wondered if there would ever be a place she belonged.

Even when she went home that night, she wasn't sure if there was a place she belonged, or if that house was just the place that she blindly returned to, like a moth to a flame. But even moths would kill themselves to get just a little closer to the light that they so craved.

She touched her fingers gently to the letter she'd propped up in her mirror's edge. Oh crutchie. She wondered how he was now. If he'd be getting her letter soon of if it would be delayed. What would he even write back? What else was there to say other than his misery. And what did she have to say, other than that every waking moment she missed him and worried for him.