Whoo, the Newsies Pape Selling Competition has started again! This was for round one. Prompt: Write about a newsie who is trapped by an incident in their lives and can't get away from it. So my newsie was Spot, and the incident was the Downfall from the Shooters.
Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies.
Word Count: 2989. So close.
There's no brown splotch on the wall.
Head hanging partially over the back of the chair, he searches the ceiling for the brown splotch that, in his sparse room, would be directly overhead from his simple wooden chair. Of course there's no brown splotch on the ceiling, he thinks, and he smirks to himself at the thought that there would dare be a brown splotch on this ceiling.
"Spo-ot," a voice sing-songs, drawing him from his musings, and, head still hanging over the chair, he lowers his eyes to find her, clad in her nightgown and robe, peering at him from her vanity mirror. She dips a finger into a little jar and dabs a bit of petroleum jelly onto her lips as if they were chapped. "What's so funny?"
He points upwards. "There's no brown splotch on your ceiling."
"I should hope not." Her perfect voice is enticing and smooth, just loud enough for him to hear it across the room, perfect like everything else here. She rubs the jelly over her hands.
He scoffs and reaches to undo his suffocating bow tie.
He knew Manhattan was on their way long before they appeared on his bridge. When word got out that they were striking, he knew Jacky would be on his way sooner rather than later, so when the scout reported Jack and Boots, along with an unfamiliar boy, were on their way, he wasn't surprised.
"They're here, Spot," his second-in-command, Ringer, called up to him, and all eyes were on him to see what he would do. He watched them carefully from his perch, and the intimidation game that ensued. It was almost funny to see their palpable nervousness. Almost, but not quite. He wanted to leap down and clap their backs like friends would do, smiling and laughing. He wanted to shake hands with the new boy-he had to be new, he was too unfamiliar and old not to be, and he didn't look like a newsie, not with his wild curls so tamed and his clothes so clean. He'd call him Curly.
"Well if it ain't Jack be nimble, Jack be quick." A smirk, then a scowl, always make sure to scowl, let them know you aren't impressed. Despite longing to fling them far, far away, he was impressed with Boot's shooters, but he didn't let on. He broke the bottle over Curly's head just to make him even more nervous, just to make him squirm. One can never be too comfortable in the King of Brooklyn's presence, and that was a lesson he liked to teach as soon as possible.
Then Curly opened his mouth and earned his actual name, and he wanted to simultaneously punch him in the jaw and clap him on the back. He could do the former. But not the latter.
She unclips her large emerald earrings. "What is so interesting up there?"
"You don't have a brown splotch," he answers simply, and he knows what she's doing without looking. There go her eyes rolling. Here come the faintest grin.
"And for that, I'm very grateful." She pauses for a moment. "What's going on with you tonight?"
"What's going on with you tonight?" he quips back, childish and not caring. "Can't a guy look for a brown splotch without an interrogation?"
Eyes roll, but linger looking up, contrasting to the way they stay closed longer when she's amused. "Don't be execrable."
"Execrable. Extremely unpleasant." He wonders if any of his boys know that word.
He wonders if any of his boys know he knows that word.
Her pursed lips in the mirror say, "Alright, enough with your tomfoolery. What is your problem?"
She verbalizes, "Spot."
The sun was already sweltering when they had crossed territory into Manhattan, and he undid the first few buttons on his shirt, exposing his chest to the summer morning air for a brief moment of relief.
For what felt like the thousandth time that morning, the thought that this was a bad idea—terrible really—flickered through his mind, and he pushed it out just as quickly as it entered. He ran a hand through his hair. This was just to see what Manhattan was capable of, and honestly, he didn't expect much. With Crutchy gone, so was their emotional backbone; they wouldn't last long.
Honestly, he hoped they didn't.
But his birdies told him that Manhattan had been impressive in the scrape, to his dismay, and no matter what he told himself, he couldn't get the gnawing feeling to go away. Jack and Race were his friends, but Brooklyn was his duty. Brooklyn was home and family, and blood ran deep.
They positioned themselves on the rooftops, and for a moment, he thought he would vomit, not from the heat. This was going to turn sour, he just knew it, knew it, knew it.
He wanted to take his boys and run. He wanted to run home and make sure the kid was safe. He wanted to run to Long Island to make sure she was safe. He would run all over the New York if it meant everyone was safe.
He saw the bulls coming before Manhattan knew what was happening, and he had to clutch the roof to steel his nerves. He'd imagined it would only be the Delanceys and a few scabs, but not the bulls. To make matters worse, this wasn't just between Jack and himself, but Brooklyn and Manhattan, Brooklyn and New York. His boys liked Manhattan boys, and they had a loyalty to the other borough, unaware of his loyalty to them. They would want to help, but they would never do so without his permission.
All eyes were on him.
The roar from below was silenced. He thought about the kid back at the Lodging House, and what would happen if they didn't return. He thought about her disappointed face when word got to Long Island. He thought about all his boys waiting on him to make a decision, but waiting on him to keep them safe. He thought about Jacky and Race wanting him to help. Needing his help.
He thought about the kid, and he wanted to run.
All eyes were on him.
He took a deep breath and pulled his slingshot from his waistband.
"Have you ever…" he begins, and trails off, searching for just the right lovely words. She pulls a single pin from the suppressed mass that is her hair, and a single little section falls. In that fleeting instance, her perfect chignon is reduced to a chignon with a lock falling out. "Have you ever gotten tired of wearing your hair like that?"
Through the mirror, he watches her eyebrows raise in surprise. Surprise, or incredulity. She forms a perfectly put-together response. "I can't say that I have."
Of course she wouldn't. She wouldn't want to change her hair, because she wore it the way she wanted to. And she wouldn't want to have different clothes, because she kept ahead of New York by being Paris. She didn't wear a corset every day because she said they were too tight and, out in her big house on Long Island, no one was around to see her; she went to suffragette meetings because she needed something to occupy her time even if she could care less about the vote; and she read books in Italian simply because she knew Italian.
Of course she didn't have a brown splotch on her ceiling.
He takes a deep breath, then sits up suddenly and takes off his coat, throwing it onto the new pile on the floor with his bow tie. "Maybe—just maybe—I get tired of wearing my hair like this." He runs a hand through it for effect.
Her eyebrows stay raised. Still with only one strand of hair free, she finally spins on her stool to face him. "Are you alright?"
He wishes he has a cigarette; not because he likes of smoke them, but because he likes to flick off the ashes and now would be a moment to flick them.
He'd said all the right things, and look where it got him.
He looked out to the theater of cheering boys, and both his heart and stomach dropped to the floor. Why had he been cheering Jack on all night? If he'd just been silent, where would the night have gone? They were all so hopeful, so excited. They believed that good would come out of this. Maybe it would, but he wouldn't hold his breath.
But they were holding their breath. They were holding their breath for him. And he was tired of it.
He'd worked so hard, all his life, it seemed, to get to this point, and he was a celebrity. Standing on the stage, every newsie in New York with their eyes glued to him—he'd built himself up to this very moment, and in his mind he felt himself toppling down. He felt like pulling the bricks from beneath his feet and throwing them into the crowd; if they were going to worship the ground he walked on, they could have it. They could build themselves up if they wanted to, but he was done with it.
All eyes were on him as he looked back at Jack. He hardly knew the words, the right words, we coming out of his mouth.
"God, it's hot in here," he says, going faster than necessary with the buttons on his crisp, starched white shirt. He stands to pull it from his pants and tosses it unceremoniously onto the pile while toeing off his shoes, knowing he's scuffing the backs and that the little blond housemaid will undoubtedly have more work tomorrow.
Kicking off his pants, he throws back the covers of her bed and flops down. "What's taking you so long?"
If there's a brown splotch on the ceiling here, it's concealed by the rich canopy of her bed. He hears her first sigh and then the tinkle of hairpins as she piles them on her vanity. When the noise stops, he glances over to find her meticulously braiding her hair, winding the strands in and out, in and out, knowing that it won't stay, but doing it simply because she wants to.
"There's no brown splotch on your ceiling."
He regrets how desperate he sounds.
"C-A-T-C-H," the child in his lap spelled out slowly, and even from behind, he could see him struggling with the word.
"Alright, what does this word look like," he said, and covered the last two letters with his fingers.
"Cat!" the younger boy squeaked excitedly. He looked up with a giant grin. "Cat!"
"Yeah. So put this on the end, and you get…"
He heard the little boy sounding it out quietly, and and then: "Catch!"
"Yeah, that's good. You're doing really well, Peep." He laughed and ruffled his hair. Peep continued reading.
They'd sold the morning edition quickly, and while everyone else was either still selling or getting lunch, they'd gone back to the lodging house for an impromptu reading session. He was running out of materials to let him practice with—they'd gone through all the children's books, and everything else was above a four-year-old's level. He sighed.
He'd thought about putting Peep in school when fall rolled around, but like a mother, he was worried. Peep was small, even for his age, and didn't talk to anyone else, not even the younger boys. The last thing he wanted to do was send him to school to be picked on and never want to return, especially since he was so smart. But he couldn't keep up playing the role of protector, teacher, brother, and friend. Sooner or later he was going to have to make a decision.
Like I could send him to school when his only name is Peep, he thinks, letting the guilt that they'd never given him an actual name wash over him.
Not for the first time, he thought back to when he'd been nine, and had accidentally slipped into the attention of the previous leader, Ghost. And all because of those stupid shooters. That was it, that was when everything had gone bad. If he'd known that such an impression would have gotten him here, he never would have taken that shot. In fact, he would have thrown his prize slingshot over the Brooklyn bridge, or flung it onto a train headed for who knew where.
He'd just wanted to impress the bigger boys that day, not be selected as the heir. Then had come a brief period when he thought he wanted to be leader, and it had been fun at first. Sort of. He liked to tell himself it had been.
He leaned over to rest his head on top of Peep's floppy yellow hair.
Perhaps he could be like Peep. Perhaps he could just dump himself on someone's doorstep and begin again, in a far off place where he wasn't Spot Conlon, King of Brooklyn, the so-called alcoholic womanizer who killed everyone with his cane and slingshot.
"Spot? Hey!" His reverie was broken by a tiny fist thumping his leg. "What's this word, Spot!"
He couldn't help but smile at the ferocity. "Come on, let's sound it out."
He wonders what other girls are like sometimes, especially when they're wearing revealing clothing and falling all over him, vying for their chance at an evening with Spot Conlon. He doesn't know when and where those rumors started, but he didn't correct them when they did, and now he's stuck being the prime target of hussies. Though he wonders what those girls are like, he's never interested enough to act on it. That, and even though they've never defined what they are, it would make this feel wrong.
Letting her robe fall to the floor, she pulls back the covers and settles down beside him in a much calmer manner than he had entered the bed. She's got that smile now, that little shadow of one where her lips are pulled back just slightly; he's noticed that she wears it often when they're together, and he likes that it's his. "Spot?" she says earnestly, but with too teasing a glint in her eye.
He arches his eyebrows in response. "Do you want me to cut your hair?"
He can only sit there for a while before he can speak. "The only way I would trust you with scissors near my head was if they were made from rubber."
She laughs, and leans in to kiss him.
If there was one thing he admired about Jack, it was his ability to dream.
It was supposed to be poker night in Manhattan, but really it had turned into drinking night; which, in a way, was much more fun. When Kid Blink got drunk, he forgot he only had one eye, and when Boots got drunk, he forgot he was scared of Spot. Jack was animated when he got drunk. And no one ever really knew if Race was drunk because alcohol and sugar had the same effect on him.
Everyone wondered how Spot never got drunk, but they never figured out he didn't drink.
"I'll tell ya, in Santa Fe, you can see for miles. No one ever sneaks up on you in Santa Fe...but you can't sneak up on anyone else either, so I don't know." For whatever reason, Jack had been stuck on sneaking up on people and Santa Fe. He didn't know where the former came from, but the latter was usual. Sometimes it bothered him, but tonight he admired it.
He liked the way Jack had something to hope for and that he planned on getting out. Jack had a goal, and he wasn't drudging around like the rest of the people in the city. Maybe Jack would do it, and maybe he wouldn't, but the idea was nice.
Every now and again, he imagined packing all of his and Peep's belongings into the one little suitcase and getting on a train for somewhere. The city would fade away, and they would do whatever they wanted. He would be a...something not Spot Conlon.
He wanted a Santa Fe.
Noting how her breathing has been steady for a while now, he runs his hand over her hair to flatten it down and then buries his face into it, completely awake despite the early hour.
They hadn't drawn the curtains, and the light of the night sky trickles into her room, just enough so that it spills over her sleeping form. Their bare skin is highlighted by the white; he lets his fingers rove over hers, delighting in its softness, and he presses his lips to her shoulder.
She's beautiful, he thinks, not for the first time, and he wishes he had said and could say it. He wishes she just knew these things. He wishes so many things that sometimes he's afraid all of his wishes are going build up so much that one day he'll just rip at the seams and they'll go exploding everywhere.
Right now, more than anything, he wishes she was awake so that he could kiss her lips and say all the things that he's been storing up. He wants to feel her smile when he pulls her close and buries his face in her neck.
Instead, he kisses her cheek and settles down next to her, and he imagines the day that he'll do all of those things. Instead of retreating to his side of the bed like he's supposed to, he keeps his hold on her and closes his eyes.
Baby steps.