Chapter One

I was seven years old when I first met Clara. I guess that's where my whole story begins. It's all sort of a mess, but there are two things I've realized since the beginning. The first is that I'm not always supposed to be strong. And the second is that sometimes you see people die.

My name is Rosa White, and I'm alive today because Spot Conlon isn't.

Growing up, I was neglected, to say the least. I was abused and underfed and I doubt the drunk that produced me would have ever been able to recall my name. I don't know where my father was growing up, and I guess I never really cared. My mother was enough to take care of without another alcoholic to push me around. I never had a childhood, and I never intended on having one. I experienced the same growth kids my age experience when they first fall in love the day that my mother first hit me. The first time my mother overdosed was when I matured enough to have a successful marriage and the second time was enough to have a successful divorce. "Fun" was not a word we used in our house. "Scum" and "dumbass" were, along with "tart", "hussy", and "ungrateful", words I often heard to describe me. For an entire year, my mother referred to me as Inga, the name of the only kind figure I remember knowing until I met Clara.

My mother had an upbringing I can't even dream of. Her parents were wealthy beyond belief, and raised her to be a proper young lady. She wore dresses and gloves, she went to balls and fancy parties. She was to become one of the wealthiest heirs in Connecticut. However, my mother made a mistake when she was around the age I am now. The same mistake I made. She fell in love. He was wrong for her in so many way, but young girls can never see that.

It's a classic story, one that's been told over and over again. He was dirt poor, growing up with only a mother and a little brother, whom he had to raise. In a way, my father was a lot like I would turn out, but he didn't know that yet. They fell in love and were even married, against the odds. But when my grandparents were killed in a fire and my mother inherited her fortune, she was left alone, her bank account empty and a baby growing within her. The only family she had left was a nanny she'd known since childhood.

For a while, Inga stayed with my mother. Inga helped birth me, she helped raise me, she taught my mother how to take care of a child. If my mother had taken Inga's advice and married another man who came her way, my life may have turned out differently. But Lauren White is not a woman to do things that do not follow her heart. So she decided to raise me alone, penniless and exhausted. When Inga could no longer afford to stay with my mother and I, my mother turned to the bottle for comfort. She thought she was drinking her problems away, when in fact she was simply passing them, and more, onto me.

The number of nights I spent making sure she didn't drown in her own vomit was ridiculous. The number of hours spent worrying about a woman who never realized whether or not I was home was unbelievable.

We've lived in New York, in the same apartment building I'm writing this in now, for as long as I can remember. I guess for a little bit we stayed in Connecticut when we had the money, but when my father, if I can even call him that, left, we moved to the only place we could remotely afford, a ground floor apartment in a steaming hot, crowded corner of Brooklyn. It's strange, but I can rarely remember winter in Brooklyn. It seems like it's always summer, like I'm always waiting for winter, and then the second winter arrives I can't wait for summer. Summers are what defined me, at least until I met Spot. I can thank Spot for that, above all other things. He helped me love the snow.

My mother died three months ago, but that's not what this story is about. She's only the beginning of my story, but Spot is the end. And Clara... Clara is the catalyst, she has made me who I am today, whether or not I am proud of it. Despite all that has happened in my life, between my mother and I, between Spot and I, and between Clara and I, I know that I will never regret the fact that Clara came into my life that July day.

I remember that day so clearly, I could probably paint it. And I'm hardly an artist. It was one of those days where it's too hot to go outside but too hot to stay inside, so you just sort of linger between one or the other, always waiting for a better option that never seems to arrive. I had finally decided to go outside to the docks, where I used to play and spy on some of the newsies that liked to hang out there. I was walking down the street, carrying a pair of shorts that I had stolen from the boy who lived in the apartment next to me. No one had ever told me it wasn't proper for a young lady to wear only her undergarments and a pair of boy's shorts in public, so I had never been self conscious.

The air was blowing around my curls and I was frustrated with the way everything seemed to stick to me. I was kicking the dirt around and trying to get it off of me when I heard a voice from behind me.

"Hey! Hey Red!"

It was a girl's voice with a thick accent that I quickly recognized as one from Queens. I knew she was calling me, but I hated responding to the name Red. The reason my name is Rosa is because apparently I had bright red hair the second I was born, and lots of it. My mother had been under the impression Rosa was Spanish for red. She was wrong. Turns out, it meant pink. That sort of sums up what the rest of my life would be like. My mother trying to make things right, and always failing. Never trying hard enough.

"Yeah?" I called, turning around.

She looked to be the same age as me, give or take a few months. She had hair so blond it looked white, and teeth the exact same shade. Her eyes were framed with the lightest eyelashes I've ever seen, but her pupils seemed to be drowning in a sea of blue. She was taller than me, but scrawnier. I could have taken her in a fight, if it came down to it. Growing up with a mother who fought like mine, I could have taken any girl, no matter what the age.

"You headed to the docks?" she asked, not kindly but not in a hostile way either. People were careful around each other in these parts, even seven year old girls.

"Yeah. You?" I asked, careful not to act too open.

"Yeah. Walk with me?" she asked, taking a step towards me. Officially, in Brooklyn terms, we were now considered friends.

It's funny, how easily, yet at the same time paranoid, our relationship began. It kind of set the standard for our entire friendship. One minute it'd be easy as can be, just two girls selling papers, and the next we'd be fighting over something or other.

We were inseparable, however, from that point on. We went to the docks almost every day in the summer, and I spent most of the time in the winter months at her house, because they had an actual fireplace.

Her family wasn't exactly perfect, but from my view point, it was the idea family. By that I meant that she had two parents, both who were usually sober, at least until the sunset. They were married, and the fact that they fought all the time never mattered much to me. There was food on the table, usually enough for me to eat over.

I caught on to Clara's family's secrets almost as quickly as I had caught on to my own family's. I knew what knocks meant to hide behind the couch at her house, and I knew what her mother meant when she said Clara's father had problems with "cards". He was addicted to gambling and at least once every two weeks, a new collector was coming to their house, trying to take something else away.

Regardless of their problems, Clara's family took me in to join the five kids they already had. When I came over with a black eye or new bruises, they told me to stay the night until my mother "cooled down". When I came over with bags under my eyes, Clara's mother somehow knew I had been up all night, taking care of my mother, and she instantly told me to lay down for a bit of a rest. Clara's mother was like the mother I never had, a mother I never imagined I would get.

However, because of both of our money problems, Clara and I had to get jobs by our thirteenth birthdays. Growing up going to the docks with the Newsies seemed to make things a lot easier. By the time we were thirteen, the youngest of the boys who hung around there were younger than us.

At the time, a boy they called Charcoal ruled the Brooklyn newsies. He was the tallest boy I had ever seen, with skin so dark he seemed to blend in at night. But when he smiled at you, it was as if he was so light he could float away. He was a nice kid, but he was a tough kid, and you didn't mess with Charcoal. He was only fifteen when Clara and I first went to ask him for a job, but you would have thought he was thirty years old by the way he talked down to us. However, with a bit of pleading, he let us join his ranks, making us promise not to "mess with any of his boys". We had no intention to mess with the newsies, because I knew as well as Clara that boys like newsies grow up to be men like my father.