A/N: A little piece about what happened to David. I was thinking the other day about how his dad told him that he was only a newsie for a little while - you know, until he could go back to school? I was thinking about what would happen then. And here it is.
The Golden Days
He's not one of them anymore.
It isn't that he doesn't want to be, or that it's his imagination, though he wishes it was. He just isn't one of them anymore.
It started when his mother got worried about the hours he was keeping. Late nights spent out and about, or even just at the lodging house, had her worried that he was turning into some kind of renegade, a street urchin. It wasn't that she didn't like the newsies - she told him that, and he knew it was true. She'd had most of them over to dinner at least once, treated them like her own children when she ran into them in the street, and always bought a paper when she could afford one, whether she cared about the headline or not. But she was a very careful mother, and it worried her that her Davey was out at all hours.
So he'd gone to the boys, explained it to them, how his mother was being paranoid. And they'd grinned, laughed, given him a hard time about it, and let it go, and after that, he had a careful curfew. He loved his ma - didn't want to worry her. And that was all right.
But then it had happened.
He'd always known that eventually he'd be faced with it, but it came sooner than he'd thought it would, and caught him unprepared like a blow to the bread basket.
His father got him to go back to school. No more selling papes for him.
David liked school. It had always been something he liked. But Jack, Racetrack, Blink, and the rest didn't go to school. Most hadn't since they were little kids, probably as little as Les, or younger. And once he was going to school, and keeping such careful hours, he barely saw the guys anymore. The bottom line was - he wasn't a newsie anymore. That was alright at first: they came by for dinner, they ran into him "around town", a couple of them changed their selling spots to be able to say hi to "The Walking Mouth" after school. But time wore on, and so did he. Old friends were eventually reduced to acquaintances, people he said hello to if he passed them in the street, and gradually, that was all it was.
It wasn't a jarring thing, not something you woke up one day and just knew. It came gradually, a slow realization that things were different now then they had been. Not a jaw-dropping revelation: it was just that, after a while, he barely saw them anymore.
For a while once he'd realized that he made a point of going down to the lodging house on weekends, or whenever he had a spare moment really. But either it was to late or it would never have done any good. They welcomed him, asked him how he'd been, but it was awkward, stilted. Things weren't as they'd been. They couldn't discuss the day's headline, or what had happened at the selling office the other day. He just wasn't a newsie anymore.
Even though, on the surface, there was no difference in him - after all, he'd been a newsie - there was an inner circle, a bond of trust that boys shared when they were all fighting to make a living, to sell a pape. David wasn't one of those boys anymore.
Jack still came by for dinner, but he was the only one after a while. And he certainly didn't practically live at the place like he used to, not even for Sarah.
David went to a university eventually - he and his pop together managed to scrape enough money, and he got a good scholarship. When he came back on his first break, he went down to see the newsies.
They grinned, he was welcomed by those that were left. A couple had gotten "legit" jobs, gone out into the "real world" and found a place that was willing to keep them. A couple had just become bums. But the younger ones, Boots and the like, were still around, and still remembered Davey, "The Walking Mouth." They teased him about being "educated" and asked him what it was like. He told them, and they joked around, laughing and smiling. But after a while, there was nothing to keep him there, nothing to talk about, no one to talk to, no one to see. He was forced to admit what he'd lost was not something that could be regained.
Every once in a while, he still thinks about those days, the days when he was hawking the headline and living off of it. They're the Golden Days, the Glory Days, even though he's living better now. He's got a job, a good one, and a nice little place to live, and the quality of his life's better. But it doesn't matter: those will always be the halcyon days, the good times, no matter what happens. If he turns out to be a millionaire, a president, or even a newspaper editor as he once told "the boys" he would be, there won't be a time to match that time. Ever.
A/N: Kinda depressing? (shrug) What can I say? Well, it's my first Newsies piece anyway. I was thinking about putting up a couple other one shots here, not all about David, and not all written about this time, just some other one shots about some other newsies. Tell me what you think: about this piece, and about that idea.