Author's Note - This chapter is a bit long, but it gives you a good idea of what the characters are like. This story is not going to be like regular alternate universe "Newsies" fanfictions... Later, you'll see why... :)
Disclaimer - I do not own "Newsies" or "Monopoly". I do own Kaitlyn, though, since that's me. XD Sarah belongs to herself, and Kristina belongs to herself. Mittens really is one of my two cats, and yes, he's whiney. :)
Chapter I - Newsies Fetish
"...That ain't good enough, Jacky-boy. You gotta show me," a brunette-haired girl quoted with the movie that was playing on the large flat plasma-screen T.V.
"You know this movie inside out, don't you, Kate?" a tall girl with short blonde-and-brown-streaked hair asked, stifling a laugh. Her pajamas consisted of a baggy baby blue t-shirt and a pair of matching pants with silvery stars printed onto the flannel.
"...Umm... I guess so," Kate responded quietly, grinning sheepishly, her blueberry eyes sparkling like the ocean. She was wore a slightly fitted babydoll shirt with a picture of an innocent-looking white anime cat printed on it. Her shorts were matching gray with a kitten printed in the lower outer corner of the bottom of the shorts. She looked over at her friends.
One girl seated on the floor on top of her sleeping bag, while the other girl was laying on the love seat. They were having a sleepover in the basement of Kate's large blue house.
Kate wasn't her real name, though. It was her nickname. Her real name was Kaitlyn, but her friends always called her 'Katie' or 'Kate', which she seemed to like.
"Oh, you! How many times have you seen 'Newsies'? Fifty? Sixty?" This time, the girl with the short licorice black hair seated upon the love seat spoke.
Looking down at her feet and blushing, she shyly replied. "...More than that..." was all her friends were able to decipher through Kate's muttering.
"And I thought I was obsessed 'Newsies'!" the blonde-and-brown-haired girl one said, nudging Kaitlyn playfully, who was sitting on the ground next to her.
The girl with the multicolored hair was Kristina, the sort-of-hyper girl of the friendship trio. Her hair reached down to her chin. She stood about five feet and seven inches tall, and had slightly fair skin.
"Oooh, oooh! David's gonna sing! Kristina, Sarah!" Kaitlyn squealed as she got into her dancing position. This was one of the few times she could be very weird and dorkish. She looked back at her two friends. "Oh! ...Um... I guess you don't have to dance with me, if you don't want to...!" her voice faded as she gave her friends a half-hearted smile and turned back to the screen.
"I'll dance with you, Kate," Kristina said as she stood up and beamed at her shy friend.
"Come on, Sarah! Dance with us! Please...?" Kristina asked, her large, chocolate eyes turning gray with disappointment as Kate paused the movie.
"Not the puppy eyes!" Sarah exclaimed, a smile forming on her pink face as she covered her eyes with her arms.
"Mrow?" asked a voice that made the three girls jump a few feet into the air.
"Whoa! Jeez! Oh, it's just Mittens! Dang! He scared me!" Sarah said, dramatically clutching her chest like she was going to have a heart attack.
"Meow," he retorted loudly in his oh-so-whiney cat voice.
Mittens was one of Kaitlyn's two cats. He was a tan and ginger colored oci cat. Very sweet, but also very, very, very annoying and whiney. Mitty, as they sometimes called him, weighed a whopping twenty-one pounds, but was also as sweet as a Hershey's chocolate bar and as soft and cuddly as a teddy bear.
"We need more popcorn, drenched in butter!" Kristina said, a crazed look in her eyes. "I feel like having more sugar too! I want to get a sugar rush!"
By now, Kristina was running around the basement room in circles like a dog trying to chase its tail.
"What do you think, Katie?" Sarah turned to Kaitlyn, giving her a funny piggy face. Katie looked down and slightly shrugged.
"Well, if you'll dance with us for 'Seize the Day', then yes," Kristina smirked.
Sarah folded her arms across her chest. "You know I'm horrible at dancing!" she whined.
There were a few moments of total silence.
"Fine," she huffed in defeat. She loved the dance to 'Seize the Day', but she (as well as everyone else) knew that dancing was not one of her talents.
"Thanks, Kristina!" Kaitlyn smiled. "I'll start the popcorn machine, first, though! I'll be back in a few minutes! Or, you can come with me, if you'd like."
"We're good," Sarah said. "I'll dig the candy out of my backpack while you make the popcorn."
"Don't forget to drench it in extra butter!" Kristina called as Kaitlyn headed up the stairs.
"All right!" Kaitlyn replied as she made her way up the stairs.
Sarah began poked around in her bag, digging out her vast candy stash.
-:-
"Ready?" Sarah asked, as she and her friends got into their dance positions. Kristina nodded, and Kate unpaused the movie. They all sang and danced happily to the song, and munched on the popcorn and the snacks Kate and Sarah had retrieved for them.
Throughout the movie, Kate quoted everything all of the characters said, as usual. They sat there, eyes transfixed on the television screen.
They had the house all to themselves, which was located in the heart of Los Angeles, California.
Kaitlyn's father and mother were attending a relatives' wedding in eastern Montana. Kate's younger eleven-year-old brother, Taylor, was staying over at his best friend's house. He and Avery were like twins. They both had a nerdy sort of passion for video games, but particularly 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and 'Mario' games. They had been the best of friends ever since they first met in the third grade. They talked alike. They dressed almost exactly alike. They even looked alike, which was a bit scary! Maybe they were long-lost twins or something...? Who knew?
By the time the movie had ended, the clock read 11:03 p.m. They turned off the T.V. and sat there a few moments.
Kristina looked around the room and raised an eyebrow, a sly grin plastered onto her face. "I challenge you two to a competition..."
"Of what?" Sarah asked suspiciously.
"...AIR HOCKEY!" Kristina yelled suddenly, racing over to the air hockey table.
"Yay! I go first!" Sarah called, running over to the table as well.
"...Um... I think I'll watch the first round," Kate said quietly. Her head was down, but she was smiling. Her friends were the coolest in the world. Probably the most hyper, too, though.
"You sure, Kate?" Kristina folded her arms and gave her shy friend a funny look.
Kaitlyn responded with a small yet distinctive nod.
-:-
"Oh yah! I totally rock!" cried Sarah, performing her famous victory dance. She spun around in a few circles while jumping and did the cabbage patch.
"Good job!" Kate said, smiling at Sarah. "You did really great!"
"Aww, thanks, Katie!"
Kristina stuck her tongue out. "I'm going to beat you next time, Sarah!" She punched her friend playfully.
Sarah snorted. "You wish!"
"...Hey...! I know...!" Kate piped up. "Would you two like to play poker...?"
"Uhh..." Both rowdy girls exchanged glances.
"...Using Monopoly money, of course...! Not real money or anything like that...!"
"Sure!"
"Okay!"
Kaitlyn made her way over to the wooden oak bookshelf. Reaching up, she pulled down two things. First, a deck of Arizona playing cards. Second was the Monopoly board game. She and her two friends sat in a circle.
"Ooh! Ooh! Can I take the money out and divide it?" asked Kristina.
"...Uh... Sure...!"
"I'll deal the cards, if that's okay," Sarah spoke slowly.
Kate nodded and began to roll her sleeves up. "Okay, remember, girls... Roll up your sleeves...!"
"Wait... Why do we do that again?" asked a confused Kristina.
"So we're sure nobody cheats. Duh, Kristina!" Sarah stated, as if it was completely obvious.
"Oooohhhh... Okay then." Kristina rolled her sleeves back as well. She looked back down to the Monopoly box and opened it. She began to split and pass out even amounts of the colorful paper money.
Sarah pushed her sleeves back as she began shuffling the deck. "Five cards?"
"Yup!"
When Sarah was finished, Kate cut the deck. Sarah started to pass out cards to each player. One each, two each, three each, four each, five each...
They each contributed ten Monopoly dollars to the pot, then looked at their cards, hiding them from each other's sight.
Kristina was up first. She looked around at her opponents. "I'll take two," she said, laying two facedown cards onto the table and placing some more fake cash into the pot.
Sarah took them and handed her two more.
"...Three, please," Kate said when it was her turn, also contributing to the money pile.
"I guess I'll have one," Sarah said, after putting a few Monopoly dollars into the pot. She switched a card with a new one from the deck.
This continued on for a while.
Finally, it was time.
"Okay," Sarah began, smiling slyly. "I have this," she said, placing her five cards onto the floor. It was a royal flush. "Let's see what you got now, girl!"
Kristina had dropped out of the game, since her hand wasn't very good this round.
"All right..." Kate laid down her cards leisurely, her poker face masquerading her expressions.
"A PAIR OF TWOS?" Kristina howled, her eyes widening with astonishment. "I can see how I was beat by a straight flush... But... A pair of twos? I had a pair of threes! Yikes! I must be the worst poker player ever!"
Kaitlyn smiled sheepishly and looked down at the floor.
"Looks like I win!" Sarah smuggled the money from the center and placed it over in her pile of Monopoly dollars. "Now... Who's ready for round two?"
-:-
For about an hour and a half, they continued to play poker. Sarah won about a third of the rounds, Katie won a little over a third of the rounds (she loved playing poker, and played it a lot with her family. With Monopoly money, of course), and Kristina won the rest. They had shuffled the deck of cards and put it and the Monopoly game back onto the fifth shelf of the bookcase.
"I'm so tired... BLECH!" Kristina yawned as she let herself fall onto the floor. She fell asleep instantly.
"Wow. That was quick," Sarah commented, laughing. "I guess her sugar high wore off."
"Yah," Kate giggled. "I guess we had better get to sleep as well, though... It looks like it's about 1:37 in the morning...! We're going to be really tired tomorrow..." The clock was a fancy new black one. It was one of those clocks that had those sticks sticking up from them and would go back and forth very quickly, like the wings of a hummingbird, as it displayed the time (and personal messages that you program it to show) when it went back and forth.
Kate switched off the lights and let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the basement family game room. She and Sarah went and lay inside of their sleeping bags, Kaitlyn on the floor, and Sarah on the couch. The only thing that could be heard was the heavy summer rain pounding down on the large house and the minor snores from Kristina.
"Anyone else having trouble sleeping?" Sarah faintly asked to no one in particular, rolling onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
"I am," Kaitlyn said, hugging a pillow to her chest, heaving a sigh.
There were a few minutes of silence.
"Who's your favorite newsie, Sarah?" Kaitlyn asked, though she knew the answer. Since they couldn't sleep, she thought that maybe if they talked for a while, it might make them sleepy.
"I dunno," she sighed. "Either Jack or Spot. You?"
"Well... I like Spot... He's really cool... Mush is a really amazing dancer... Or Racetrack... He's pretty funny, like my dad. And he likes poker, too..." she said bashfully.
"You know, it woulda been pretty funny to see Spot and Race do an, ahem, trust," Sarah said, causing them both to laugh hysterically.
"Can you imagine Spot singing 'Carrying the Banner' and doing one of them?" she asked, laughing hysterically.
"Oh, you know how David was staring at Medda when he watched her perform 'Lovey-Dovey Baby'?"
"Yah?"
"Well… What if David was the one singing it?"
"Oh, lord! That'd scar me for life!" she whispered in between giggles. "Especially if he wore Medda's dress!"
"Yah... That's so funny!"
"Mm-hmm...!"
"Ahh... I think I'm ready to go to sleep now. 'Night, Katie."
"Good night, Sarah."
They at last fell into slumber and dreamt of the things they had discussed earlier.
-:-
Kaitlyn awoke at three thirty-five in the morning needing a glass of water, since her throat was dry and sore. She exited the basement family room and climbed up the flight of stairs, up into the kitchen. She yawned and stretched her arms a little as she made her way over to the cupboard. Opening it up, she grabbed a small glass.
"...Ugh..." she groggily moaned as she walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet. When her glass was just about full, she switched the faucet off. "...I'm so tired... I shouldn't have stayed up that late..." She took a few sips of her water and dumped the rest down the drain. "I'm going to go get Jack," she mumbled to herself.
She turned right and into the living room, made her way down the little corridor, and squeaked her bedroom door open. Flicking the light switch on, she rubbed her large doe-like eyes with both hands. "There you are, Jack," she said, gently picking up a small stuffed dog. It was a black and brown dog with a red bandana around its neck. Kaitlyn had bought it a little over two years ago, just because it was so adorable. And now, she was really glad she had, since it wore a scarf like Jack's from her favorite movie, "Newsies".
Looking into its chocolate brown eyes, she stood there a few minutes, just thinking.
It was the beginning of July of the year 2007, and it had been almost a year now of Newsie obsessive-ness for her. She fondly remembered how she began to adore that musical. During the middle of last August, Kaitlyn had gone to a weeklong drama camp that she and her parents had signed her up for. As it turned out, they were performing "Newsies", a musical that Kate had never heard of before. The first things of "Newsies" she discovered were the songs they would perform on the stage. The first song they heard was "Santa Fe", then "Seize the Day", then "Carrying the Banner", and she fell in love with the songs. Her mother rented the movie for her to watch, to get a better sense of what she was going to perform. And after viewing it the first time, she began worshiping it. She watched it over. And over. And over. And over. Then, she bought it from a local store, Hastings. Then she watched it over. And over. And over. And over. It drove her little brother crazy. On a regular basis, Taylor, her brother, threatened to burn the DVD. But, that's just how younger siblings are... Right...?
Turning off the bedroom light, she followed the path back to the basement. She silently descended the stairs, as not to wake her friends, and made her way over to her sleeping bag.
"Ow!" whispered Kristina's voice. "You stepped on my hand!"
"Sorry, Kristina!" Kaitlyn whispered back as her friend closed her eyes to continue sleeping. Kate took another step towards her sleeping bag.
"Ow!" she heard. "My foot!"
"Sorry," she apologized. After a moment, she froze. She didn't recognize the voice. It wasn't Kristina's, and it certainly wasn't Sarah's. It was a boy's voice. Her already pale skin turned an ethereal white. She slowly crept over to a lamp over on her father's computer desk and flicked it on. What she saw made her eyes widen and her jaw drop. "...Oh... My... Yevon..."