The Story of a News Girl

Race

The morning sun was beating down bright and hot. There wasn't a cloud in the sky as the city hussle and bussled about. Carriages and wagons drove past on the cobbled streets as people walked up and down on the sidewalks. The smell of fresh cleaned clothes, baked goods, fruit, smoked meat, all kinds of perfumes, and of course, garbage filled the air as two newsies walked off to their selling spot. Well, one was walking. The other was trying to keep up.

"Race! Slow down!" Feister yelled out as she pushed past people to catch up with Race.

"It ain't my fault ya can't keep up," the blonde boy chuckled while shaking his head. Race turned around and waited for the little news girl to catch up. Wolf and Jumps had to attend to some business that involved Midtown, so he was babysitting Feister for the day. That's right, just Feister. Apparently when Mush is around the two of them are quite the handful. So they had to be separated for the day. Why Race was put in charge of babysitting Feister was probably due to the fact he was partly responsible for finding her. He wasn't complaining of course. He liked getting to spend time with the little girl. Even more so since she's a "challenge to take care of". It couldn't be that hard to watch a six year old for the day.

"Where we goin' anyways?" Feister asked as she walked up to Race. From what she could tell, they were far away from where everyone else sold. Which they haven't even done yet because for some reason Race was taking her to who knows where.

"Only the greatest, most amazin' place New Yawk holds little goil," Race replied with a smug smirk.

"An' where's that?" the young girl asked with wide eyes.

"Sheepshead."

"Where's that?"

"Just follow me an' you'se will find out," Race said as he slung an arm around the smaller girl and led her to the "greatest place in New York". Now, before you say that Race shouldn't bring a six year old to Brooklyn, Wolf never said he couldn't do that. All he said was to watch her and make sure she stays out of trouble. Besides, Race was sure that Feister would enjoy Sheepshead.

Though it was a long walk to Brooklyn, it didn't seem that way to Race. For Feister however, she kept asking if they were there yet, or how much longer it would take. And when they got to the bridge, you better believe Feister tried to back out, but Race pulled out a little trick out of his sleeve saying that she was being a scaredy cat. In a split second Feister poked Race in the chest and said how she wasn't afraid of anything before marching proudly onto the bridge. Race secretly smiled to himself and followed the little news girl.

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"So...what is this place?" Feister asked as she approached some weird looking...thing that smelled bad. Really bad.

"Feisty, welcome to the Sheepshead races!" Race exclaimed happily as he wrapped an arm around the younger girl and out stretched his other arm with a wide smile.

"What?" was all the little newsie said.

"Ya know. Sheepshead. Only the greatest horse racin' track in all of New York!" Race replied. When Feister didn't answer all he said was, "Just...stay close, sell ya papes an' then the real fun can begin."

"Ok!" Feister happily said as she ran off to the nearest corner. She took out a paper, looked at the headline with a tilted head. All Feister saw was a bunch of big and small letters in black ink that made her hands all dirty. Shrugging to herself Feister started to yell out the most outrageous headline she could think of. It took forever until the little news girl sold a pape. Granted it couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but to a six year old it was forever. It was definitely strange. Usually she could sell these like hotcakes, so what was different? Feister made up the best headline she could. Maybe she wasn't yelling it out loud enough.