Today▓s ⌠lesson■ had been the worst yet. It was a good thing that he knew lower Manhattan so well, because he could barely see out of his swollen eyes as he made his way back to Brooklyn. All because he hadn▓t wanted to clean up the mess the older boys left in the washroom. He and Peb, the only other newsie there even close to his age, had been ordered to clean up the room. Peb had gotten started on the chore while he had merely sat on the floor leaning against the wall to take a nap. Sleep had been hard to come by in a house where the Brooklyn newsies liked to drink and play poker well into the night and he was exhausted. Cork hadn▓t taken too kindly to the fact that he wasn▓t working┘or that he smarted off┘and decided to use him as a punching bag.
He had come to Manhattan after the beating Cork had given him, hoping to renegotiate with Cap to return to his home of several years. But the young man had only allowed him to stay long enough to eat and get cleaned up. Now as he headed back to Brooklyn, he wasn▓t sure why he bothered going back. His father had been bad┘taking his belt to the poor boy▓s backside for the slightest thing, but Cork▓s beefy hands preferred the boy▓s face and torso as his targets.
His little heart had been shattered when his father had killed his mother while he watched, but when Cap took him in the thought perhaps he had found someone to love him. Today his little heart had shattered again when the man he had begun to consider a father, sent him back to Brooklyn. If he could see he would have stopped one more time at the flat where he had lived until his mother had been killed┘but he wasn▓t in the mood to see his little half-sisters. No, he would just go back to Brooklyn and forget about Manhattan. Maybe then his little ten-year-old heart wouldn▓t get shattered again.