Newsies Middle School - High School AU

Chapter 10 - Brooklyn Bridge

The weekend was over before anyone knew it, and suddenly it was Monday. Jack took his cartoon of the week out of his sketchbook and left the rest of the sketchbook on his desk.

"Jack, you coming?" Crutchie called from downstairs.

"Yeah," Jack grabbed his backpack and went downstairs.

"Where's your sketchbook?" Crutchie asked as they headed out the door.

"I'm not bringing it today, I'm going to work on re-forming bonds with all the newsies," Jack shrugged, he had his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, that's nice," Crutchie nodded, "I wonder if you could potentially improve bonds... maybe with a certain... Davey Jacobs,"

"Look, Davey and I can't happen, we asked who his crush was, he said Jaqueline Kelton, she's a girl, therefore Davey likes girls, therefore Davey does not like me," Jack shook his head.

"Jack, Davey never specifically said he like-liked Jaqueline," Crutchie pointed out (get ready for this), "He said he liked her PERSONALITY," (Boom)

"Yeah, your point?" Jack started walking faster to rid himself of negative feelings.

"My point is you're a big, stupid, dumb-dumb," Crutchie rolled his eyes.

Throughout the school day, Jack had one-on-one Conversations with all the newsies, apologizing and catching up with them, it started feeling like Jack had never even dated Katherine. After sixth period, Jack and Davey were packing up  to head to news club when Jack decided to start a conversation, "So, it's been a while since we've been able to just chit-chat,"

"Yeah, it has, hasn't it?" Davey shrugged.

"So, what's been happening in your life?" Jack asked.

"Not much, I've been texting Katherine a lot lately, talking about... school and stuff," Davey replied.

"Oh, cool," Jack nodded, "didn't your sister just get a driver's license or something?" 

"Yeah, she takes Les and I to McDonald's sometimes," Davey suddenly tripped on the corner of a rug and fell.

"Oh my gosh, Davey, are you okay?" Jack helped Davey back up.

"Yeah, it's not a big deal," Davey nodded.

"You know what that reminded me of just now?" Jack chuckled.

"What?" Davey brushed the dust off his jeans.

"When we ran into each other on our ways down... actually, this exact hallway," Jack noticed. Recalling the memory made Davey blush, he quickly looked down to try to hide it. "Woah, Dave, are you okay? Your face just turned bright red," Jack sounded concerned.

Davey covered his face, "Yeah, I'll just... be right back," he ran to the nearest bathroom. Oh my gosh... oh shoot....  he thought as he locked himself in a stall, Jack saw that, and if he realized what was going on, Davey could lose his best friend.

Jack got to news club and immediately went over to Crutchie. "So... something strange just happened with Davey, he tripped, so I brought up when we ran into each other in the hallway last year, then his face turned red and he ran off to the bathroom," he explained the situation.

Crutchie found himself in a tough situation, he wanted so badly to scream 'He likes you, you idiot!' At Jack, but then he would be breaking a promise to Davey, and Davey wouldn't ever trust him again, and he had gotten stuck promising he wouldn't tell anyone about Jack's crush on Davey. He had everything he needed to get the two together, but he couldn't use it.

"I'm sure he just needed to get a drink of water or something," he shrugged.

"Oh, okay, I was... just worried about him, I guess," Jack nodded.