And now we finally start getting into the good stuff...

Brenna awoke to a splitting headache so strong, it made her eyes water. She groaned as she slowly sat up. "Oh, dat smarts…"

"Nice to see you're awake, Tricks," she heard Racetrack say to her.

She looked over and saw that she was in a room with a lot of other newsies. Most of them were Manhattan newsies, but a few of them, like Spot, were from other places.

"Where are we?" she asked as she rubbed her head.

"The courthouse, waitin' for our trial," Racetrack answered.

"Our trial?"

"Yep."

Brenna's eyes widened in a moment of panic. "My cap…"

"Don't worry about it. It fell off when they threw ya in here, but we didn't allow 'em to see ya. We put your cap back on for ya after they left."

Brenna looked over at Spot. "So dat means you know."

"It wasn't a surprise."

She smiled in disbelief. "How long have you known?"

"Ever since ya came to visit me to try to convince me to join da strike. You were blushin' pretty bad at da sight of so many underdressed boys. I kinda figured it out from there."

"Lovely."

"I ain't gonna tell no one. Swear. Newsies honor."

In yet another moment of panic, she said quietly, "Jack…"

"Da Cribs got him. They're holdin' him in another part of da courthouse," Racetrack told her.

Brenna sighed. "It's my fault. If I had just left like he told me to…"

"Nah, it ain't your fault, Tricks. There was just too many of 'em."

Brenna was about to say something, but before she could, a cop came and escorted them all to the courtroom.

All of them were forced to stand in front of a really old, mean-looking judge. "Any of you represented by council?" he asked. The boys looked at each other blankly. Who would ever represent a group of newsies? "No? Good, that will move things along considerably."

"Hey, Your Honor, I object!" Spot demanded.

"On what grounds?" the judge asked.

"On da grounds of Brooklyn, Your Honor."

The group of boys laughed at his comment. Their smiles quickly faded with what the judge said next. "I fine each of you five dollars, or two weeks confinement in the House of Refuge."

"Whoa, whoa, we ain't got five bucks," Racetrack said. "We don't even got five cents. Hey, Your Honor, how 'bout I roll ya for it. Double or nothin'?"

Brenna rolled her eyes. His smart little comments were not going to help their case.

"Alright. Move along, move along."

Brenna looked at the other boys with wide eyes. Where on earth were they going to get five dollars?

Their saving grace came in the form of Denton. He came into the courtroom with David and Les tagging along behind him. "Your Honor, I'll pay the fines. All of them."

They all went over to the captive boys. "Hey, you fellas alright? Where's Jack?" David asked.

"Look, we've got to meet at the restaurant," Denton said urgently. "Everybody. We have to talk."

"Pay the clerk!" the judge ordered to Denton. "Move it along!"

At that moment, Jack was led into the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind him.

"Jack!" Brenna called.

"Hey fellas!" he called back.

"Hey, Cowboy! Nice shiner!" Race laughed.

Denton went over to him. "Hey, Denton. I guess we made all da papes this time. So, how's my picture look?"

"None of the papers covered the rally," Denton answered quietly. "Not even the Sun."

Brenna was speechless. So the Trolley Strike gets on the front page of every newspaper for three weeks, but an even bigger strike doesn't make any paper on any page? That was just messed up in so many ways.

"Case of Jack Kelly," the bailiff called out. "Inciting a riot. Assault. Resisting arrest."

"Judge Monahan, I'll speak for this young man," a sickening voice said. Brenna felt rage boil up inside her at the sight of the man who had ruined all of their lives, Jack's more than anyone. If he was going to "speak" for Jack, she had a feeling this was going to go south and fast.

"You two know each other. Ain't dat nice," Jack said sarcastically.

"Just move it along, Warden Snyder," the judge said.

"This boy's real name is Francis Sullivan. His mother's deceased. His father's a convict in the state penitentiary," Snyder explained. Brenna saw Jack look over at David, who put his head down in disappointment. She figured he wasn't happy that Jack had lied to him about his life. "He's an escapee from the House of Refuge where his original sentence for three months was extended to six months for disruptive behavior."

"Like demanding we eat the food you steal from us," Jack said firmly.

"Followed by an additional six months for an attempted escape."

"Attempted? Last time it wasn't an attempted escape. Remember, Snyder? Remember me and Teddy Roosevelt? Remember Roosevelt and da carriage?"

"Therefore, I ask that he be returned to the House of Refuge."

"What? For my own good, right? Move along? For my own good and for what? He kicks back to you?"

"I ask that the court order his incarceration until the age of twenty-one, in the hope that we may yet guide him to a useful and productive life."

"So ordered," the judge said with a bang of his gavel.

"What?" Brenna cried out.

As Jack was taken away, he met her eyes just for a brief second. She saw so much guilt in them that it hurt her. Like he felt it was his own fault that he was getting this sentence and that he was leaving Brenna alone with the other boys.

"I'm sorry," she mouthed to him.

He shook his head slightly and she watched as he was taken to the House of Refuge right before her eyes. The group of newsies dispersed slowly all heading to Tibby's for whatever Denton wanted. Brenna stood there right outside the courtroom, shaking with anger.

"Tricks," David said coming over to her. "You, uh, you alright?"

"David," she growled. "Give me somethin' to rip."

"Wait, what?"

"It's how I deal with my anger. Now give me somethin' to rip before it is your head!"

David frantically looked around for something to give her. "Uh…" he stuttered. He whipped off the brown vest he was wearing and handed it to her. "Here."

"I'm not gonna rip your nice vest."

"Sarah can just mend it for me."

"If you insist." She grabbed the vest from him and with almost no effort, ripped it clean in two. She slammed the two pieces into his chest.

"Whoa…"

She angrily walked off, and he went to go catch up with her.

"Did you know all that stuff about him?" he asked.

Brenna sighed. "No, but I'm not surprised. Most of us newsies are runaways or people with bad histories. When we start this life, we start over. We wanna forget our past as much as possible, so sometimes we create new lives for ourselves."

"What about you?"

"David…I'm pretendin' to be a boy. Obviously, I pretty much started a new life along with everyone else."

"Why do you pretend to be a boy?"

"It's dangerous for a girl out on the streets of New York. Even more dangerous for a girl to be a newsie."

"How did you get started in all this?"

Brenna sighed again. "When I was eleven years old, we lost our money. And with it, our house. My parents were taken away from me and I was sent to a girls' workhouse to live. It was terrible there. Da working conditions were awful and da livin' conditions were even worse. I stayed there for two years before I ran away and started livin' on da streets."

"So then, how did you meet Jack?"

"It was when we were both fifteen…"

Brenna was starving. Living on the streets was bad, but she'd rather die there than go back to the workhouse. Sometimes, she had to steal to get her food and pray she didn't get caught and sent to jail. The sun was still shining high in the sky, blazing down on her, making her even weaker. As she walked along the nearly empty streets of New York, she felt like someone was following her. But when she looked behind her no one was there. Suddenly, she felt hands on her arms and she was yanked into an alleyway. She was pulled into some man's hard chest.

"Hey, there, sweet thing," he purred. His breath reeked of alcohol.

"Get off me," she demanded.

He just laughed at her and held onto her firmly. She pulled her hand up and slapped his cheek hard. He did not like that. He whacked her on the face and sent her to the ground. That was when she realized there was another man in the alley along with the first. Before she could see his face, he held her arms down with his own very strong ones. She was so weak from starvation that she had no energy to try to fight back

The first man bent down over her. She tried to get up and run, but the second man refused to release his hold on her. The first man caressed her legs and his hands started lifting higher and higher. She began screaming but the man holding her arms hit her face before holding her down again. She could feel her skirt being slowly lifted up as tears streamed down her face at what was to come.

Suddenly, the man got knocked down before he could do anything further to her. She looked up and saw a young boy around her age beating the first man senseless. When he finished with him, he moved over to the second. He released Brenna's arms and slammed her into the wall. She saw her vision go fuzzy as pain shot through her head.

When Jack had defeated both of the creeps, he went over to the young girl. She was so pretty, but deathly thin. It made him sick to think about how those two psychos had almost destroyed this poor little innocent girl's virtue.

He took her face in his hands and gently shook her a little. Her eyes fluttered open for just a second before closing again. After careful inspection, he was thankful to see that there was no blood where her head had collided with the wall.

Jack slipped one arm under her legs and the other around her waist and carried her back to the Lodging House where he could take care of her.

She was so thin from the lack of food that carrying her was way easier than it should've been.

When he got to the Lodging House, he saw that Racetrack was sitting on the porch smoking a cigar.

"Race!" he called.

"Whoa, what happened, Cowboy?" Racetrack asked as he quickly stood up.

"She's hurt. Distract Kloppman so I can take her upstairs."

Racetrack went inside the Lodging House and got the old man to go check on something at the back door. While he was gone, Jack carefully made his way up the stairs.

As soon as the other boys laid eyes on him, they all ran over to him to inspect the girl he was carrying.

"Shh!" Jack shushed, not wanting to wake her. He set her down on the bunk below him after he got an 'okay' from the bed's owner. He pulled the sheet over her small body and left her to rest. "Okay, guys!" he whispered, shoving the boys away. "Leave her be."

Brenna didn't wake up until late that night. She moaned and put her hand to her aching head. Her eyes refused to open at first, begging her to go back to sleep.

At the sound of the girl's moans, all of the boys went over to her. As he thought back on it, Jack realized that it had not been a smart idea for him to bring the poor girl back to a place where a bunch of boys lived after she had just been assaulted.

Sure enough, when Brenna finally opened her eyes, she gasped at the sight of more than twenty boys staring at her. She quickly sat up, wondering just what had happened after she had been knocked out, and assumed the worst.

Jack fought his way through the crowd of boys to the side of the bed. "Hey, hey, it's okay," he said softly, taking her small hand in his. "No one here is going to hurt ya. I promise."

Brenna looked up at the boys again and saw they were all looking at her with concerned faces. Perhaps this boy was right. He introduced all of them, and she knew she would never remember all of those names for a long time. The boy himself was called Jack Kelly, or Cowboy.

"You're okay," Jack said to her gently, noticing she still had a rather terrified look on her face. "They didn't hurt ya. I didn't let 'em." Her eyes softened just a little bit at his gentle words. "What's your name?"

"…Brenna," she said quietly. "Brenna Jennings."

"It's nice to meet ya, Brenna."

For the first time in a long time, the girl smiled.

After much time talking it over, the boys decided to let Brenna be a newsie with them. However, they knew they needed to keep this whole adventure a secret from Kloppman as they were afraid of how he'd react if he knew Jack had brought a girl to live with them. They knew that she would have to be disguised as a boy so she could at least get past Kloppman, plus Jack felt that being a girl newsie wouldn't end up working out well for anyone. Besides, those creeps were still out there, and it would not be good if they recognized her. Jack gave her an old cap to hide all of her hair in.

"Race, go get the roll of bandages, will ya?" Jack asked. Racetrack obediently went to the washroom where they kept a very small first aid kit and grabbed the bandages. With her clothes still on, Jack began rolling the bandages over top of her chest. Luckily, Brenna didn't have much chest to hide in the first place. But Jack was tying the bandages pretty tight. "Ow, I can barely breathe!" she exclaimed when he was finished.

"What do ya think, fellas?" Jack said as he took a step back to admire his work. "Think she can pass off as one of us?"

Small mutters of agreement circled the room. It was official. Brenna Jennings was a newsie.