Chapter 10: Name
I had another restless night. This time I was trying to figure out who would want to attack me. I must have fallen asleep eventually, because morning came far too soon. Spin shook me awake, and then left the room. After grumpily getting ready, I went outside to welcome the new day; with a groan.
"Not a morning person?" I looked up to see Dawn waiting for me, I just grunted a reply. She smiled and walked with me to the distribution office. We each got our papers then went to sell.
"Dawn, I was thinking. I asked newsies from all over the city to look for you. Why didn't they tell me that you were in Brooklyn?" I asked hours later, when we were done selling our papers.
"They don't know me as Dawn. My mother was French, so when they asked my name the first time they met me I said 'Soleil'. It means 'Sun'. No one ever knew me as any other name."
I thought back to when I first met Dragonfly, and realized I had done the same thing. I then thought about meeting Spin, Kid Blink, Prophet, and Venus. The name "Soleil" had seemed familiar to me. However, no matter how much I tried to remember why, I couldn't figure out why, so I stopped worrying about it.
We spent the whole day together. I told Soleil what had happened my first few days of being a newsie. She told me of how she'd gone to my house to talk one dayonly to find it was empty. She also told me about an attempted rape by a very drunk pair of Delancey Brothers. They'd tripped her while walking through an alley and Morris was holding her arms down. All she had to do was knee Oscar in the stomach and he fell over, surprisingly he took Morris down with him. This got him to let go. She stood up and ran back to the lodging house.
"So how'd you meet Prophet?" Soleil asked as we walked back to the lodging house later that night.
"I'm not sure. He just found me."
"That's his way. I was surprised he came to dinner with us last night. No one's seen him in a while. I wasn't surprised he didn't eat though." She stopped and smiled at me. "I'm glad you started calling him 'Prophet'. It's great to finally have something to call him."
We talked a bit longer, sitting on the curb outside the lodging house. Finally, she said she had to be heading back to Brooklyn. We hugged goodbye, and parted ways. I was about to enter the lodge when I noticed a girl sitting on the steps crying. I went over to the person, to see if I could help at all.
"Are you ok?" I asked softly. The figure looked up, and I gasped.
