All right, this is my first story posted, and the first fanfiction I've written in over a year. Reviews would rock quite hardcore! I don't exactly know where I'm going to go with this, so don't be disappointed if there's no plot. I write better that way!
I was sixteen years old in 1905. Teddy Roosevelt was president then, and New York City was buzzing with life. I lived in with my family in Manhattan. When I say family, I don't mean my kin. I lived with my best friends in an old building full of bunk beds.
My name is Lester Jacobs, and was a newsie.
My father had died a few years before I'd left home. Nothing was really the same after that. My mother had lost the light in her eyes; my sister was a married woman and was gone from our lives; my family had saved enough money to put my brother through New York University to be a journalist. There was nothing left for me in that apartment, so I up and left in the summer of 1902.
For awhile after I had been staying in the Newsboys Lodging House in Manhattan, I felt guilty for leaving my mother alone. Selfish, even. I did love her, but the last exciting thing that had happened to me was three years before I ran. There was always something missing from my life after the strike in 1899. I was positive that that something was excitement.
I peddled about fifty papers a day. At thirteen, I still looked to be about eleven, and that worked to my advantage. I had money in my pockets and food in my stomach. There was no reason for me to miss my mother. I knew a hundred kids and had many friends. Life was pretty good. I was dirty and probably smelled awful, but that didn't matter much to anybody who I cared about. I had forty brothers who I could trust and count on. Nothing gets better than that.
Looking back, I realize that I probably had some abandonment issues. My father had died when I was only eleven. My sister became Sarah Kelly and lived hundreds of miles away. As for my brother? I saw him only at Christmastime.
I cared about David more than I can say. He was my best friend, and I wanted to be just like him. When he left, I thought nothing of it, because I would always see him. As each month passed, the gap between visits grew wider. He was just too busy to be my brother anymore.
At fourteen, life was just the same. As the older newsies left, younger boys with hopeful eyes moved in. I felt joy, rejection, pain, love, sadness. I was still content with the life I had chosen.
Only once—when I was fifteen—did I walk past my old apartment building. I had not seen my mother since she kissed me goodnight two years before. I was confident that I would never see her again, and that disappointed me. I knew it was worth our suffering, though. I had created a life for myself that I'll never regret.
Thus begins 1905. January started out cold, with horrible selling weather. I was selling 30 a day, at best. My best friend Johnny Slye was well-respected among the Manhattan newsies. You might even say he was the leader. Whatever Johnny did, he always got my opinion, whether he wanted it or not.
In 1905, I was sixteen. I was a newsie.