I don't own anything except…except…Teach! Teach is mine! Yay! I own somebody! *does a little happy dance which earns very strange looks from the parental units* er…yah. So don't sue me.
My entire morning was taken up with worrying about what Weasel was going to do to me when I couldn't pay back his loan on yesterday's papers. I figured I'd have to get one of the other boys to buy mine for me. That is, assuming I had enough money. Well, Jack owed me two bits, didn't he? If he had it, that would get me 50 papers.
Well, I thought it would get me 50 papers. When I got to the Distribution Center, though, I found all the guys sitting on the steps, engaged in a heated discussion on a topic I couldn't manage to make out.
Flips pulled me aside and explained. The World's price had been raised- 60 cents a hundred. 60 cents? How the hell was I going to manage that? But what choice did we have? Jack, though, apparently thought we had several. And he picked one, and wouldn't back off.
Which is why I'm walking back to the Lodging House, alone, at ten o'clock at night. Jack decided that we should stand up to Pulitzer. How? We should go on strike. Refuse to sell until they lowered the price- or until we starved, that is. And not just us, either. All of New York, if the other boys did as well as I did.
I went to Midtown to spread the news of the strike and ask them to join us. I love Midtown; I stayed there for about a year before I came to Jack's band. Their leader, Teacher, is one of my best friends- and probably the strangest newsie alive. He is short and wiry, with a long pigtail and a staunch British accent. He almost never laughs, but is always smiling, and watches out for his boys like he was their father. I don't think he's ever lost his temper and somehow doubt that he knows how to fight. And he plays a damn good game of poker. Not quite as good as mine, though.
Which is half the reason I'm in such a good mood.