Back to 1899

by mre2000

A girl goes to see Newsies on Broadway for the first time on a snowy winter day and ends up changing to front row seats. At the stage door she is offered a backstage tour, where she and the Newsies go back in time to the Newsboy Strike of 1899.

Chapter 1

For months I had been waiting for this moment. The moment where my dad and I walked right up to the Nederlander Theater. There had been a huge snowstorm, almost three feet, so it looked like most people hadn't been able to make it. I had seen pictures of the line for the show, and it seemed that normally there were more than two other people in line. When I got into the theater not even a quarter of the seats were filled! My dad and I were supposed to be sitting in the back of the balcony, the only tickets we were even close to affording. We walked up stairs to the woman looking at tickets for the balcony.

"Where is the Left Mezzanine?" my father asked when he showed her the tickets.

"Well, these tickets are for up there" she said, pointing to the corner, but since most of the audience didn't show up we can put you in the house. Just ask the man downstairs."

We walked down the stairs to the back of the house and asked the man about the seat change.

"Right down there to the front row in the very center." He said and I practically did a backflip. And I would have if I could.

Also, I knew that at the end of Seize the Day the cast threw newspapers at the front few rows, and I really wanted to catch one, though I wasn't sure if they went into the audience or the orchestra pit. The only drawback was that the boy who sat next to me in math class had sat in the front of the house with his elementary school and said that he could feel the Newsies' spit. Actually I wasn't sure that that was a drawback.