Maybe It's Worth A Shot

Morning Muses

"Jack...Jack," a soft voices interrupts Jack Kelly's wonderful dreams about this wonderful desert place out west. Sunrises painted soft hues of pink, purple, orange, yellow, and the deepest shades of indigo swing vividly through his mind. Somewhere, off in the distance, someone is calling his name. Perhaps that's the voice of his future wife or perhaps his mother from long ago. Wait, that wasn't possible. His mother had been gone since he was two. How could she be in this dream? The voice becomes more urgent, making Jack's dream a little bit more fitful,

"JACK!!!" Jack sits up straight and immediately regrets it as the cool morning air nips at his bare shoulders which had previously been covered by a blanket. His eyes are wide and he anticipates the worst. Someone had broken into the warehouse, one of the boys had become deathly sick overnight...Jack's mind races with terrible situations and things that could have gone wrong. 

It was only Jack's friend Crutchie Morris, sitting on the rooftop across from him with a mischievous little grin on his face.

Well that certainly wasn't his mother...or his future wife.

"Huh?" is the only response Jack can muster. The sun is barely grazing the horizon, turning the sky the faintest shade of pink and yellow over the tall buildings. Why does Crutchie have to be such a morning person?

"Mornin' Jack! Didn't want to be late!" Crutchie exclaims in response. Jack groans and puts his head in his hands,

"Ain't awake yet, Crutchie." Crutchie lets out a contented sigh.

"I've always loved mornings. They're so peaceful. The city's calm and for once everything is okay in this crazy world," he muses as he looks around with sheer joy at the skyscrapers surrounding them. Jack groans and flops back down on his pillow, pulling the covers over his head. Every single one of the other boys always complain whenever Jack or Crutchie go down to the interior of the abandoned warehouse to wake them up every morning without fail. Crutchie is the only teenager Jack knows who loves to be up in the mornings. He's always up before Jack is, shaking him awake before the bells at the nearby church chime.

"Lemme go back to sleep. Five more minutes. I'm not ready to risk my sanity yet," Jack mutters from under the covers. Crutchie, being the sometimes anti-sympathetic person that he can be, yanks the covers off of Jack's body. Jack mutters something that would have any of the other boys scurrying away. Not that they had any fear when it come to annoying or angering Jack but they never really want to risk it. Crutchie is an exception. He smacks Jack with his pillow,

"Watch the language, Cowboy. You already paint colorful things, you don't need to be sayin em too." Jack cracks an eye open and glares at Crutchie.

"I ain't colorful," he grumbles before yanking the covers over his head and burrowing his face into his pillow. His words slurring together making his Manhattan accent even more prominent than usual. This alone would make any girl from off the street swoon just at the sound of it.  Crutchie lets out a long sigh.

"I never swear, Jack...ever," Crutchie replies as he starts to get his bearings around for the morning.

"Bell hasn't rung yet so I am NOT getting out from under these covers until it does and at least let the boys sleep in until then. They need all the sleep they can get," Jack's muffled voice says through the covers. 

"I'll do that," Crutchie replies and then lets out a contented sigh as he watches the sun come up. Jack starts to drift off back to sleep underneath the covers when he hears the sounds of a scuffle. The voice of a boy that Jack doesn't recognize based on what he hears breaks through Jack's sleep,

"Please leave me alone! I'm new to this part of town and I'm not really interested in any gang business."

Not again. Does everyone think that being the leader of the Newsies gang means that he doesn't need sleep?  Jack groans as he hears the reply of one of the Delancys. Probably Morris just based on the sinister tone. He carefully peeks his head out from under the covers. His voice breaks the peace of the early morning,