October 18th, 1981, later that day

Clara rushed up the stairs from school, as usual, throwing open the door to their apartment and dumping her bookbag on the hook on the wall as her mother requested rather than throwing it haphazardly onto the floor. She made her way to the parlor calling after the others about how the clothing drive that she and Hannah had worked on tirelessly since September had finally launched.

Neither answered. The parlor was empty.

"Mother? Andrew!" She called, taking the stairs two at a time up to the upper level where their bedrooms were. She ducked into her parent's room first because Andrew's door was closed, which meant he was probably sleeping, but her mother was nowhere to be found. Curious. Perhaps she'd gone shopping, or run an emergency visit to the orphanage. She went back to Andrew's room and cracked open the door.

His bed was empty.

She pushed it farther open, but the rest of the room proved the same results. Odd. Perhaps he'd gone with her?

"Andrew, are you hiding? Knock it off!" She shouted to the empty apartment.

She made her way back down to the kitchen and cut herself a piece of bread for a snack, then fetched some things from her book bag and sat down at the table to wait for her mother's return. That's when she saw the note – messy and hastily written in her mother's spidery slanting script.

Clara read aloud. "Andrew, I dearly hope you're reading this before I return. I've gone to find Mr. Lemay to let him know where you've gone and to start a search for you. If you return before I do and find the house empty, please stay here and…" Her voice trailed off and a frown formed on her face as she realized what must have happened. The door clicked open behind her.

"Clara! Oh, you're home already, goodness what time is it?" Her mother's voice sounded tired, but Clara didn't turn around as her eyes finished scanning over the lines of the letter. "I must have lost track of time, I'm sorry sweetheart. I have some bad-"

Clara whirled to face her mother and shoved the note at her. "Where's Andrew?"

"He's not here? I hoped he'd return," Mrs. Lemay sighed.

"What do you mean you don't know where he is?! Where's? Andrew?" Clara asked again.

Mrs. Lemay braced herself for the inevitable argument that was to come and took a seat at the table, motioning for Clara to do the same. She took her daughter's hands in hers. "Andrew went missing last night, while we all were sleeping. He left a note saying he was going to look for his family – that he thought he could somehow catch up with them if he hurried. I've been searching for him all day."

Clara paused and considered her mother's story. "That's… That's a good thing. Right? He misses his family so much, of course, he wants to find them." Despite her optimistic words, a distinct hesitation, a sadness that she'd been left out of this great scheme, lingered.

Mrs. Lemay chose her next words carefully. "Yes, of course, it makes sense that he wants to find his family, Clara. And we hope that he can see his family again one day. We're worried that he went alone. The city is dangerous and with the weather turning such a cold snap, it won't take long for him to get sick again. And this time your father won't be able to help him, not unless we find him first."

Clara sat back as the gravity of the situation sank in, weighing the idealism of Andrew happily making his way out West with the reality that Manhattan was a long walk away and he still hadn't totally healed. And though she wanted nothing more for him to succeed, she realized that couldn't be – at least not now.

"How can I help find him?"

"I know you want to search, but I can't have you getting lost in the city too."

"Then I'll go with you."

"What good will that do since you'd have to stay with me or your father. We won't be able to split up to cover more ground. It would be safer for you to stay at home with me, and your father will go out tonight."

"But if I'm with you, then you can watch me, and if all of us go out, then we can all cover more ground," Clara argued, "Plus, two sets of eyes will search better than one. What if he walks past you and you're just looking the opposite way? You'd miss him in the crowd."

Mrs. Lemay sighed, though she couldn't deny that it was a good idea. "We'll talk to your father about it when he gets home. We can have supper as a family and then continue back out this evening. He may say no, as it's getting dark."

"There are streetlights," Clara insisted. "And I even promise I'll hold your hand without complaining. I'm coming."

And with no further argument, it was decided. And though Clara and her parents scoured every inch of their neighborhood, their search proved fruitless and they returned home discouraged, wet, and cold. Clara refused to go to school the following day and continued searching with her mother, but the days passed with no sign of their small friend, and no trace or clue as to where he might have gone. They scoured every block in north Brooklyn where they lived over the course of the week to no avail, before crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and starting on searching through Manhattan.

The day of October 27th brought with it a blizzard that swept down the coast and buried New York in nearly a foot of heavy snow, forcing the Lemay's to adjourn their search. Andrew had disappeared. They could only hope that he had indeed made it West; by some miracle bought a train ticket and traveled safely to reunite with his family, or that some other kind soul had taken him in and sheltered him from the storm. But faced with the reality that he was a small and sickly child in a large and seemingly uncaring city, they had to accept the prospect of simply never knowing.

Even after the blizzard subsided, Clara didn't have the heart to return to school and her parents didn't have the heart to force her to return right away either so they agreed to let her stay home the rest of the week. Sitting alone in the house that was too big and too quiet honestly wasn't much better, but at least she could hide her tired eyes behind the privacy of her bedroom door. She busied herself with cleaning to distract herself from the loneliness, and when she'd scrubbed every surface in their apartment, she turned her attention to emptying her mother's cabbage patch of fabric scraps by sewing new outfits for her doll Molly and practicing her embroidery.

As she stitched, she wondered if Hannah ever finished their clothing drive without her. They planned to collect the donations and take them to the orphanage today – on Friday – but she had no way of knowing what was going on at the school nor did she really want to go find out. They started this donation drive from Andrew's inspiration, to help other poor kids who didn't have a nickel to their name with the onset of the cold weather. And now? Andrew… He'd be disappointed, but he wasn't here anymore and…

She pushed the thought out of her head and stabbed her needle through a particularly tough seam, only to succeed in pricking her finger on the other side of the fabric. She grimaced and inspected her hand for blood, but she'd seemingly spared her finger from that unfortunate fate, and she continued stitching.

Some sound broke the deafening silence – conversation drifting through the vent in her floor. It didn't sound like her father. Maybe one of her mother's friends had come for a visit. She continued stitching. Footsteps made their way up the stairs.

"Clara! Come here!" Hannah's high-pitched voice pierced through the quiet just outside Clara's door. She sighed and set down her work to open the door for her friend before taking her seat back on her bed picking up the project again. Hannah came in and sat next to her. "This isn't 'coming here' you know."

Clara continued stitching. "I'm sorry I missed the drive, Hannah, but I don't feel like talking right now," she muttered.

"I'm not going to make you do any talking. I want you to come downstairs."

"Downstairs to the parlor? Or Downstairs downstairs?" Clara continued stitching. She scowled at a knot in her thread.

"I have a feeling you don't want to do either."

"Correct as always."

"Too bad." Hannah put her hand over the cloth, prompting a protest from Clara, but at least it forced the younger girl to look at her. "I've got something to show you."

Clara groaned but put her stitching down nonetheless and followed Hannah downstairs downstairs, pulling on her coat and shoes as they made their way to the front door of the apartment building. Hannah pulled it open and gestured for Clara to go on ahead of her. The younger girl stopped short on the front stoop, gasping in the cold almost-November air. Most of their class, kids from all grades, stood on the street, knee-deep in the snow. Each pulled a sled piled high with boxes and bags of donations marked for the clothing drive. John and Millie called her name and waved at their friend. Clara clapped a hand to her mouth.

"Hannah!"

The older girl emerged from the building and shut the door behind her, and now looked down on the assembly with crossed arms and a smug smile. "Aren't you glad I got you to come down?"

"You did this? You all did?"

"It was your idea and your work!" Millie argued. "We just brought some spare things from home, and we wanted to show you what we did."

"Together," John added with a satisfied smile. "Though bringing the things here was Hannah's idea, as you live along the way to the orphanage. We were on our way to drop it all off, and she told us to stop by first."

"The charity ladies your mom works with heard the story about Andrew," Hannah said, and put a comforting hand on Clara's shoulder. "We're sorry to hear about him, and we knew you'd be upset, so when you didn't show up to school, we decided that we wouldn't let you miss out on seeing the fruits of your labor. Come on, it's cold, and the sooner we get to the orphanage, the sooner we can unpack the things and have cocoa."

Clara finally pulled her hands away from her face to reveal a wide smile and watery eyes. She squeezed Hannah's hand and pulled her friend down the front stairs to join their friends as they led the way to the orphanage.

"Thank you, Hannah."

"Any time."

"We have so much work to do."

"Do we? Unloading the clothes shouldn't take too long with all the help and-"

"No, I don't mean the clothing drive. This is just the beginning." She gave Hannah a grin, the kind of look she had whenever she was scheming up a new plan. "It's only just the beginning."

A/N: Hello there! A brief explanation: You may have noticed my use of dates at the beginning of each chapter and whenever I need to show the passage of time. I've set this up because, starting here, I'm going to be following the stories of both Clara and Crutchie in tandem through a series of time skips that cover the important parts of the next years between "now" in the story in 1891 and 1899 when the strike occurs. The next chapter will back up just a bit to cover Crutchie's first day of selling, and then we'll pick up from where we left off with Clara. For reference, they're 8 and 9 years old now, so by following the dates, you'll be able to tell how old they are at each stage of the story. If you've read my other story YDC, each chapter will read similarly to the one-shots and short stories in that work until we get to the strike, and then the pacing will even out to your more typical multi-chapter fic pacing style.

I hope that makes sense, and I hope you're enjoying the story so far! Thank you for reading! :)