Author's Note: This is a bit new for me. It's going to be a shorter fic and one that contains characters not normally spotlighted in Newsies Fanfiction, as well as a random original OC. I hope you guys enjoy it, because I really felt the need to reach out and try for something new. So please… Read and Review.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters played in Newsies. Disney owns them and won't let me own them, sadly. I do, however, own anyone else that appears in this fic, so help me God.

Prejudice

Prejudice: the word seemed so foreign, but the concept of it? That hit more close to home. The old man at the bookstore next to Smiley's explained it to me. I didn't have a chance to tell him I understood his explanation of the word though. Some customers had come in, people with intent to buy. Then I was all but forgotten.

I wish the thugs on the street would forget me that easily. It's unfair; this life, this place called New York. I don't even remember the country I was born in, but that doesn't stop them from calling me a dirty Pole, a damn Jew. All I remember are these filthy streets of New York. I wasn't even old enough to hear stories about Poland. I was too young, always too young; even when my parents were murdered.

That was two years ago. I'm nine now, an illiterate orphan with nothing but the clothes on my back and the bread in my pocket. The only time I'd ever even held money was the day after my parents died. I looked so pathetic at seven with my dirt-stained body and teary, dull brown eyes. I was staring off down the street near the community graveyard: the only place they'd give us poor to rest in peace. No marble stones for my parents, nothing but a wooden stick protruding from the ground with their names scratched out messily upon it.

They let me sleep in the small rotting building they called a church that night, only to kick me out at daybreak. So I stood latently on the sidewalk for hours, just down the street from where my parents lay underneath the ground. I remember the priest apologizing for not giving them a traditional funeral, and I blinked at him, not knowing what traditional would mean in the sense of a funeral. I willed myself not to cry as I stood there, staring blankly at my surroundings.

This old woman paused before me, her kind grey eyes taking me in with pursed, crumbled lips. She approached slowly, hobbling along without the help of a cane. I noticed her hands shaking as she reached into her worn, thread-bare purse. A small change purse appeared in her hand, just as ragged. I realized then that it was not just her hands that were trembling, but her whole body. She unclasped the top with difficulty and I found myself lifting onto my tiptoes to see what it contained.

A solitary penny lay inside the silken folds of the container, the copper shining in the sunlight. I didn't say a word, sinking back onto the heels of my worn black shoes, the leather of them nearly disintegrated. She took the penny between her thumb and forefinger, reaching for my arm with a quivering hand. She grasped my wrist so lightly that the wrinkled fingers were just barely able to grasp at my frail arm. Lifting it, she pressed the penny into my palm, the cold of the copper feeling weighty in it as my fingers curled around it. Her gripped released my wrist, my arm falling back to my side.

All this time I stared at her, wordlessly. Did I look that pitiful, standing there on that street some years ago? Her eyes looked into mine, hers as light as mine were dark. The edges of her lips quivered, a smile appearing slowly across her aged face.

"Take care of yourself lad," she spoke in a wavering tone, much like that of a broken instrument. Her body turned and I simply watched as she limped away.

I knew I shouldn't have taken the penny, but my body hadn't been functioning right that day. I had stood there until dark, simply gazing at the heavy piece of copper resting in the palm of my hand.

I lived on the bread that penny bought me for a week. I slept in one alley or the next; my only blanket a few pages of the local newspaper. I never slept for long, in fear of getting caught and thrown in the Refuge. My parents had told me stories of the place, like other parents tell their children about monsters that will eat you if you don't eat every morsel of dinner. I believed them in all their seriousness, watching myself after dark on the nights I was alone.

I didn't have any siblings. I have no idea what I would've done with someone younger than me and no family nearby to help. I really was alone, no support and no hope to help me in these streets.

When the bread ran out, I picked through garbage cans behind restaurants late at night, half tired and uncaring of how rotten the food smelled. One night I was caught. Instead of throwing me to the bulls, they made me wash dishes from open to close the next day. There was another boy there, who observed me carefully. He was older than me by a few years and he had dark skin with darker hair.

The boy was quiet the whole time I was there, either cleaning the dishes in a sink next to me or watching me. Even with his eyes on me, I didn't feel a bit nervous. He didn't speak to me until I was about to leave. He had disappeared for a good few minutes, coming back to tell me I could work here for food.

I nodded at him, giving him my silent consent to tell the cook I'd be back daily. "What's your name kid?" the boy asked, taking in my dirty clothes and my distraught look.

"Michel," I said in a low voice, looking at my feet.

"They call me Boots," the black boy spoke, sticking his hand out towards me. I was too shy to ask why and my hand rose slowly to meet his. A firm grip and shake and I found myself grinning at the boy, whose smile was so wide the red of his gums shone out at me.

"I'll see you tomorrow," his voice was kind, his smile fading into one of pity, as if waiting for me to ask for a place to stay.

But I had pride, even at seven years old, and I told him I'd see him the next day. I've lived on the streets for two years now and not once have I asked for shelter.