-Insert Disclaimer here-

Chapter 1

It was summer. 1899. Blisteringly hot.

There was literally no room to be eloquent about it all, really. It was so hot—almost painfully so.

It was July 19, the day before the strike started. I had no idea, of course, of the impending predicament we girls would soon be in, and I was standing, erect despite the heat, at my post on the roof of the lodging house, gazing out over Queens.

It should probably be mentioned, at this point, that despite our "deal" with Brooklyn—my deal—we were still quite paranoid. Cautious, if you will.

Vigilant, we liked to call it.

We always had at least two girls—one on the roof, one on the Brooklyn Bridge—the bridge newsies from any other borough had to either cross or pass to get to us. And no, as leader, I was not exempt from guard duty.

So. Anyway. I was standing, erect and attentive at my—okay, okay!—I had collapsed on the ground, and was lolling around on the roof, wishing I could just die. Just wither away and die.

It was so hot.

As a result of my blatant shirking of my responsibilities, I was scared nearly out of my skin when Panic, my best friend and right hand girl, vaulted the fire escape onto the roof and landed with a thud near my right ear.

I gasped rather magnificently and sat upright like a shot.

"Mmm," she said, placing her long-nailed hands on her curving hips and gazing down at me reproachfully, rather in the way my mother used to look at me when I'd broken something, "I see ya settin' a great example up here, Ms. Leader."

I stared up at her, and with her head blocking the sun, she looked damned formidable, with her thick curves that seemed to fit her well. She'd always been bigger than me—taller and wider, but she'd never seemed in any way overweight—her shape just seemed to fit her in the most perfect way. Her long molasses brown hair was hanging straight, nearly covering her chest. And that's certainly saying something, as the girl could give me half of one breast and still have enough to make a man gawk. Her hazel eyes looked black in the shadow she was casting, and her curving eyebrows were arched at me. Her lips, not exactly sensuously full at best, were drawn into a thin line as she looked down at me.

She sighed and sat down next to me, and we both adjusted to lean against the ledge.

"What's going on?" I asked, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

"Manhattan is coming," she said calmly, turning to look at me.

"What!" I exclaimed, scrambling to my feet to look down at her, feeling my chest clench and my stomach drop to the ground below.

Panic seemed completely unfazed. That's how she got the name, by the way: Panic. We call her that because she never does. Panic, I mean. She seems to have this innate ability to remain completely calm in any situation.

Really, sometimes I think she would have been better suited to be leader. But, well, there's the whole Brooklyn thing, and those boys like their girls short and toned, with curves under muscle. I climb things like a monkey, so I've got that going for me. But Panic, well, she's too damned…dignified to climb on things.

But I digress. Back to my nearly having two heart attacks and a massive stroke all at once.

"They're…they're coming? Here? Now?" I was pacing and rambling, I knew—not exactly acting like the composed leader I was supposed to be. But that's what I had Panic for. She was my brain when mine refused to work.

"Well, they were. But Angel and Lady was in Manhattan today, and they heard it all, so Lady flew to the bridge to find Sprint, who was guardin' the bridge, and she went to Spot."

"Sprint went to Spot?" I repeated, feeling, for some reason I couldn't put my finger on, displeased. It was, after all, what I'd told her to do in case of an emergency.

"Yeah. She just got back. She's downstairs restin'. She told him that the boys was comin', and he sent someone to head 'em off at the bridge."

"Who was coming?" I asked, for we made it our business to know all the other newsies—at least those in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the most influential boroughs—by name and face.

"Bumlets, Specs, and Skittery. The Cowboy sent 'em."

"Why? Does he know? Did Spot—" I was practically having conniptions by the time Panic cut me off.

"Sit down, Gleam." I remained where I was. She sighed and said, "Spot didn't tell nobody nothin'. The Cowboy sent 'em to talk to the leader o' Queens about—"

I cut her off. "So Jack Kelly's playing leader these days, hmm? I though Manhattan didn't have a leader—just the Cowboy as their sideshow clown to seek humorous vengeance on the Morris brothers?" I paused. "Sent them to talk about what?"

"Well, the boys is…they wanna go on strike, Gleam. 'Cause of the jack-up this mornin'."

I remembered only too well the shock and dismay we'd all felt at finding that the price of our papes had risen to a ludicrous sixty cents a hundred.

"Strike? Strike like…like the trolley strike? Strike like we're actually an organized group of people?"

"Yeah." Panic looked up at me from where she sat, and her level gaze made me so nervous I caved and sat back down next to her on the ground. "There's this new kid," she continued, once I'd settled down, "David. He's…he talks like you," she said, turning her head to smile softly at me.

"So he's been to school, has he?" I asked to no one in particular, feeling slightly put-out. I'd always been the best-spoken newsy around. Not that anybody but Queens girls knew that, but…I disliked this David already.

"I guess. Got a family and everythin'. Cutest little brother you ever seen. Les, I think his name is."

Panic loves kids. Claims she doesn't know if she wants any of her own, claims she may not like motherhood, but look at her with a kid, and you know: one day she'll be the happy, glowing mother with six or seven brats around her, all clamoring to get some of their mama's loving attention.

I knew if I didn't break in I would receive a full physical description of this Les, plus any little personality quirks Panic had discovered him in the maybe fifteen minutes she'd been near him the day before.

"So this David, he's smart? And he's basically the brain behind the Cowboy's big mouth?"

"Seems like it. He's real smart, Gleam. Said all this great stuff about how we gotta stand up for our rights—'course, Jack said it all, but I was on a bench watchin', and anyone close enough could see that it was this David talkin'."

"So then what?" I asked, still reeling with disbelief that Jack was trying to get all the newsies of New York City organized.

"So then Jack started sendin' people all over the city—the Battery, Harlem, Midtown…Queens—and then he wanted someone to go to Brooklyn, but then the little black boy—Boots—he said that…that Spot Conlon made them all a 'little nervous.' And then Jack said that Spot didn't make him nervous, so he and Boots would go, and that David would go too."

"Oh, Spot'll love a guy who can't keep his mouth shut." I rolled my eyes and leaned my head back against the ledge, looking up into the dazzling sun, trying to figure out what I was going to do about all this.

"But then David said he'd only go if…" Panic paused and looked at me, her eyes wide with disbelief, as though she still couldn't believe what happened next. "If Jack went to Pulitzer."

My head flew down and I swung my neck to gape at her. "To Pulitzer? Jack Kelly walked into The World building and demanded that Pulitzer lower the prices?"

"Yeah. He took Les with him. But…they got thrown out."

I laughed, but Panic shot me a stern glare and I quickly composed myself. "So then what happened?"

"Well, far as I can tell from what I saw, David talked to some reporter who was hangin' 'round. The guy seemed real interested in the strike."

"Someone actually thinks we could be a story?" I asked, before backtracking and adding, "I mean, that the boys could be a story? Because…because we can't get involved."

"Why not, Gleam?" Panic asked, standing and pulling me up with her, surprising me.

"Why not?" I repeated dumbly. "Why not!" I stared at her, shocked that she would even consider it. "Why can't we get involved! Because it will completely and totally ruin everything we've worked for for the last thirty-some years, that's why!"

"Gleam," Panic said, losing her composure just slightly, something I noticed with a small bit of satisfaction, "Sprint got to Spot before Bumlets, Specs and Skittery had even crossed the bridge. He sent a runner to tell 'em to turn around, that they couldn't go to Queens—that only he could go to Queens. Sprint said they seemed real relieved. Said they told the runner that they were just tryin' ta figure out how they could turn 'round and go home without it lookin' like they was scared."

I breathed out heavily, running a hand through my hair. All the sudden, the heat I'd forgotten in my shock came back full force. My hair was too long, too heavy. I scooped it up in my hands and secured it, with an elastic from the papers that morning, in a high, messy bun. I sighed as, immediately, the shorter pieces that framed my face fell down into it.

"Well, that's one crisis averted," I said, forcing a smile in Panic's direction. "What do we do now?" I continued.

"What do you mean? You don't wanna get involved, right? We don't gotta do nothin' now."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were pissed that I wasn't going to get into all this."

She scoffed at me, looking indignant. "Well, I kinda am! We gotta do somethin', Gleam! We can't jus' sit back and let the boys do everythin'! We—"

"What the hell do you want from me, Panic?" I yelled at her, fuming, "Do you want me to go to Jack and Spot, and Young from Harlem, and Stinger from The Bronx, and tell them that we're all girls and that we want to help! Do you think they'll even be able to remember that there's a strike going on if we do that? They'll be here so fast our heads will spin—and then where will we be? Where're we gonna go? We have forty girls to protect here, Panic!

"I want to help as much as you do, but we can't! We just…" I lost a little steam at that point, and sat down heavily on the edge of the roof. Panic, looking once again like a mom, sat down beside me. "We just can't."

She threw an arm about my shoulders and pulled me close for just a moment before releasing me. "We can't sit here and do nothin'. Jack, David, and Boots is in Brooklyn right now. If we can't make ourselves known, then you gotta at least make sure Brooklyn helps."

"Why wouldn't they?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"Because," Panic said patiently, fully aware that I was just being stubborn, "He's gonna wanna make sure they's serious."

I broke in, wanting, for some odd reason, to defend Spot. "But he'll be right! Spot knows that inspiring words are one thing, but…if Manhattan really wants to do this, they can't do it halfway. They have to be serious—and they've got to back their shit up with more than good hooks and pretty fighting words."

But if he waits too long, this thing is gonna blow up and 'Hattan will be in big trouble, Gleam."

I groaned and stood, walking toward the small door that led back into the lodging house. Panic followed me in and kept a few paces behind me as I walked through the main bunkroom, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.

Only when I was down the front steps did she ask, standing at the top, leaning on the door frame, "Where're you going?"

"Shut up!" I called over my shoulder, earning a hearty glare from a middle-aged woman with a small boy, "It's not like you don't already know!"

Seething, knowing I'd been bested by Panic's logic, I trekked begrudgingly to Brooklyn.

(end. )

Notes: Reviews please! The review from the prologue were great—thanks to all—and yes, I did check to see that rubber bands were invented and in newspaper use by 1899. Invented 1845. 

Panic! lyric: "…back your shit up with more than good hooks…" –London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines.

Hope you enjoyed!

L'n'MP,

Glimm