Chapter 1: Dirt and Blood.

*~*Blinks view*~*

I was walking down the streets of Manhattan on my way back to the Lodging House when I first met her. I heard light crying then a bottle being slammed against something hard causing it to shatter. I looked in a few alleys until I found one where I saw someone hunched over about to slit their wrists with broken glass. I was debating whether to stop them or let them proceed to their own business when I saw them take a large cut out of their arm and decided to step in.

They must have heard me approaching because they attempted to look up, but was to weak and passed out, causing the broken bottle to crash against the ground.

"How do I get myself into these things?" I muttered to myself as I slung the nearly lifeless figure over my shoulder and walked on into the night.

~*~

Most of the boys were asleep when I walked in, but the few who were up didn't bother to question me because they were either to tired to ask or to involved in a poker game to notice me. I brought the figure upstairs, not knowing whether it was a girl or boy since the alley was dark and the figures face was beside my back and coated with dirt and grime. I placed it on the bed that Kloppman would use on rainy nights if he stayed, with his permission, and tended to the cut that they did manage to get in, than went into the bunkroom.

"Hey ya race." I said. Talking to one of the few newsboys still awake.

"Not now blink, I'se in the middle of a game." He said, taking a puff of his cigar than raising a newsboy called Spitter up 2 bits.

"Yah, Yah." I replied changing into my other set of clothes from last year, for they were to short on me, and it was a better way to keep my selling clothes clean, and then laid down. It was almost morning when a shrill cry woke a few others, and me.

"WEA' THE FUCK AM I?" a girls voice screamed.

I ran into Kloppmans room to investigate. And saw the figure now known as a girl sitting awake on the bed. I explained to her why she was there and a possible new job she could start, as a newsie.

"I was perfectly happy and healthy wea' I was." She sighed

" You were slitting your wrists." I casually replied back to the mud caked girl yelling at me.

"Well did ya' eva bother ta think' I had any reasons to try and take me own life? If you even went threw half of the stuff I went threw you would be in that alley now too."

"Whatcha doing in here blink? And who was that-" Jack started but stopped to gape at the girl in front of me.

"What is that thing?" he asked suddenly awake and alert

"It's a girl." I replied almost laughing

"She looks like doit." He laughed along with me. "That's what we should call her! Doit"

"I'm right hea' you motha fuckin' jackass." Dirt replied crossing her arms over her chest, which I now noticed, was actually very curvy. I raised an eyebrow at the gesture, but she sighed, saying

"What time you guys get up?"

"In like an hour." Jack answered, also starring at her curves.

"I'm up here." She chorused so he looked up to her dirt-smeared face. It really was too, she had strands of hair caught in the mud that was now dry and caked to her face, and every other part of her was just as grimy. I looked down to her leg that was also coated in dried blood. I froze. She only cut her arm, and I came in right after that so theirs no way it could have spread that fast. I started to move in for a closer look but she realized what I was doing, and quickly said,

"Uh, I'm gonna go take a shower, see ya in like an hour'" as she shuffled off into the bathroom