Title: Just Trying to Get By

Author name: bellalavanima

Summary: Katherine Sommer's life is slowly crumbling beneath her. Who knew she would find the strength and means to survive from the newsies of The World?

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author notes: Sorry I haven't updated in a million years but I've been über busy. Please keep reading and review!

She has been washing the same plate for at least five minutes now, but her mind is elsewhere. Being a newsie had been so much fun, and so much easier than she had expected! And it was only her first day. She had told her brother little of what happened and had spent much of the evening just trying to absorb everything herself. She had mentioned her meeting Mrs. Dalton and he'd seemed quite interested.

"Did it seem like she believed your story about helping the orphans?"

"Well yes, but Mrs. Beaumont seemed suspicious. And even if she did believe me how much longer can I keep it up?" she replied, much more upset now after seeing her brother's response than she had been that afternoon.

"You're going to have to keep it up. We can't have them knowing what we've been reduced to. That would get the whole story about Uncle and Stephen out in the open and we can't have that."

"No of course not. You'd lose all your good connections at the hospital."

"And you'd never be able to find a decent husband," Sean replied somberly. She looked up at him, surprised.

"A husband? Since when has that become an issue?"

"Kate, don't get so upset. You're acting as if I'm trying to ship you off tomorrow. You have to know marriage will be a consideration eventually," he smiled reassuringly at her. She didn't know how to reply so she let it go, but she couldn't get it out of her head. She wasn't ready to get married. Especially not to any of those bores they expected her to marry. She was brought of her reverie by her brother placing his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm off to work the night shift Katherine, don't wait up for me," he pecked her on the cheek and seemed to notice that something was bothering her. Wrongly guessing what it was he added "We'll get this whole thing with Mrs. Dalton figured out," before closing the door behind him.

The figure in the doorway startled Jack and he quickly pushed Davie behind the wall before hiding himself.

"I think da guy we saw in through da window just left," he said over his shoulder, watching the figure until he turned the corner.

"Well that's great Jack, but there was no need to hide. You know we're not doing anything illegal," Davie replied, massaging his shoulder where Jack had pushed him and walking toward the front door.

"Whatcha doin'? We're takin' da fire escape," Jack whispered after him as he pulled down the ladder.

"What? I thought you were kidding!"

"And risk her slammin da door in my face?"

She absentmindedly put away the remaining dishes and then took a book out onto the fire escape to try to get her mind off things. She thumbed through her tattered copy of Moliere's Collected Works, the book that her aunt had cherished so much, but couldn't focus. Instead she gazed off along the rooftops, looking out at the city that had been her home for as long as she could remember. Her place in it had changed dramatically, she thought, as she watched the neighborhood drunk stagger off to his heap of blankets next to their building. They had never been extraordinarily wealthy, but her aunt and uncle were respectable people who lived in a nice neighborhood and were just on the cusp of high society. Leaning against the hard metal railing she fondly remembered the small balcony that they'd had at the old apartment.

"She jus' had to live on da fifth floor, din't she?"

"I'm sure the stairs are a bit easier going Jack." Jack? It couldn't be, she thought to herself as she leaned over to look down the fire escape. Oh, but it was, and it looked like Davie was with him.

"Nah, I been on a lotta fire escapes and dis heah's a pretty nice one. No rusted off rungs." What on earth did they think they were doing?

"You know windows slam too Jack, you can't seriously think this girl is going to let you in."

"We'll see about dat, now wouldja quit ya talkin? We'll lose dah element of surprise." She quietly ducked back into the house and pretended to be folding some linens. She didn't want to start what she knew would be an uncomfortable conversation and at least if they took her by surprise they would have some explaining to do. It seemed like hours as she waited for them to make it up to her level. She didn't know what she'd say to them when they rapped on the window. She was intrigued by their visit and didn't want to throw them out without a word, but it went against every lesson of social propriety she had been taught to let them stay. She needn't have worried because Jack hadn't planned on giving her much choice in the matter.

"Good evenin' Ms. Sommers," Jack said as he pushed open the window. Davie sheepishly stayed on the ledge as Jack strode across the room to her. She had thought she would need to act surprised but his brash entrance had truly caught her off-guard.

"Jack, what on earth are you doing here? How do you know where I live?"

"I'm Jack now am I? Dis mornin' I wuz Mistah Kelly." He was uncomfortably close. Apparently he did not bide by the social rules of correct behavior between a lady and a gentleman. It was all she could do to get out her reply.

"You haven't answered my question." He just silently thrust her purse at her before turning to survey the apartment.

"Nice place ya got, have ya lived heah long?" He asked picking things up as he walked past them.

"Jack..," Davie interjected, still by the window.

"Not that long, only a few months," she replied, watching him curiously. What was he getting at?

"Yeah, I didn't think you was from around heah. Where'd ya live before?"

"I'm sorry Ms. Sommers, you'll have to excuse Jack, he can be a little presumptuous at times. We'll just leave you alone now," David interjected, pulling Jack toward the window again. Kate didn't want to tell them, but she was quite enjoying herself and she would have much preferred that they stay.

"Wait Davie, the goil nevah said she wanted us to leave. I'll stop pryin'. How 'bout we all just tawk?" He locked her eyes with his when asking this and all she could do was nod her acquiescence and shrug nonchalantly. Taking this as a warm invitation he immediately made himself at home, pulling a chair from the dining room table and sitting on it backwards. "Since Davie heah says I'm being too presumptious we can tawlk 'bout ourselves foist. Ya know 'bout da newsie's strike?"

"Well, I do think I remember something being written about it in a few of the papers."

"Well if yah didn't keep up on it maybe yah din't know Davie and I was da head honchos," Jack said leaning back a little and raising his chin in pride.

"Not really, we just sort of got thrown into leadership positions," Davie intervened sheepishly as Jack continued to beam. As Jack told the story of the strike, with Davie interjecting clarifications or variations, Katherine didn't need to feign interest. There was no awkwardness in the conversation and Katherine was never reminded of the complete impropriety of the whole situation until they had exhausted every tale they could tell of the strike. The laughter brought on by a story of Spot Conlon's antics slowly died down and they all stared off into space trying to think of what to say next. It was Davie who spoke first.

"Katherine, I don't mean to be rude, but you seem so much better than all this, how did you get to become a newsie?" She had never related to anyone the whole story of what had happened to her and her brother. Usually anytime an old acquaintance or a neighbor asked her a question about her situation she would immediately begin formulating her next lie. She didn't know why exactly, but she felt no need to lie to these two and without even realizing what she was doing she began telling her story.

"My father died when my mother was pregnant with me and in her grief and already weak state it was all she could do to have me before she died. After her death we all went to live with my mother's sister, my Aunt Charlotte. She was really the woman I considered a mother, and I always loved her dearly. Her and my Uncle Charles had never been able to have children so they were quite overjoyed to have us. She especially loved having a little girl that she could raise just as she wished. She tried to teach me as little of the home arts as she could so that she could foster the same passion for knowledge in me that she had. Although I loved it at the time in retrospect I feel she unknowingly did me a great disservice. My Uncle Charles and her were both great intellectuals and had a very equal relationship. Growing up in a home like that I was so spoiled. I was raised to believe that I was an equal of men and not just there to keep house and have children for them. Now when I even think of marriage I just…" she stopped herself. "Oh god, I completely went off on a tangent. That didn't at all answer your question, you wanted to know how I became a newsie and…"

"No, that did a good deal to answer my question." Replied Davie reassuringly, but she wondered if he was just trying to spare her embarassment.

"Well I'll tell you how I got to become a newsie anyways, and I promise it'll take me less time than that horrible tirade on women's rights and intellectualism," she laughed. "Anyways, to make a long story short my aunt died of pneumonia when I was sixteen. My uncle couldn't imagine the idea of living a life without her and soon relapsed into a most horrible kind of depression. He did nothing but sit by her bedside for a week after she died. He didn't even come to the funeral." Here Katherine stopped for a moment, remembering.

"Katherine, I'm sorry, if you don't want to tell us…" Davie began, but she couldn't stop now that she had started.

"Eventually he became so ill that there was nothing we could do but send him to an institution upstate. Sean felt that it would be better just to tell everyone that he had gone to live in their country house to get away from city life. If that had been the case the money might have held out. Perhaps he might have even been able to make a bit more if he had been in his right mind, but there were just so many bills from the hospital. We might have held out a bit longer, Sean does make a small salary at the hospital, if it hadn't been for Conrad. Conrad's my eldest brother, he's two years older than Sean, and after our Aunt died and our Uncle became completely incapable he took that as a good opportunity to get out of the stiff upperclass life he felt he had been forced to live. So he went up to Saratoga and began gambling and drinking and soon spent all the money he had. He then came back to take more from our Uncle's bank account without our knowing it and soon we found that almost the whole account had been emptied. Sean and I each have a little money in a bank account so we use that to pay the rent here but it's diminishing far too rapidly. We just hope Conrad doesn't come back soon demanding more money because we really don't have any to give him. Oh, I promised that I'd make this story short didn't I? I'm sorry I've been talking so long it's just that I've never told anyone this story and now that I started…"

"It's fine," Jack replied "How long did we tawlk to you 'bout our strike?" She smiled softly. "Now I wanna heah all 'bout your ent'ring into da newsie profession."

"Well when we realized the money was almost gone Sean said he would quit medical school to get a full time job, but I was adamant about him not quitting so I declared that I would get a job. I started out thinking I'd be a nanny. Not that I particularly love kids, but I at least know how the upper class works and since I'd been raised in that environment I'd be able to raise kids too, right? Oh no, very, very wrong. I didn't know the first thing about how to deal with children, so finally I sat them each down with a book and told them that after they finished the book they'd be allowed to play. Then I picked up a book so I wouldn't be bored as they read. I believe that's where I went wrong. You see I got so involved with my book that I didn't notice when they left the room until an hour later when a policeman brought them home from central park. They fired me before I could even apologize."

"But wait a minute, weren't you trying to keep what had happened to you quiet? If you were working for a family from your social circle wouldn't they recognize you and wonder what had happened? Davie questioned after they all stopped laughing.

"Well I found a job with an extraordinarily wealthy family that lived very far uptown, and while our social circle thought themselves high class they never mingled with people that high up. I went through a couple other jobs for wealthy families until I realized that I really wasn't cut out for that sort of work. On my way home from trying to buy something for dinner a few days ago I saw two newsies counting their money together. It made me laugh to see that they had more in their possession than I did. So I figured why not give it a try?"

After a few more minutes of idle conversation Katherine glanced at the clock and was reminded that her brother would be home in an hour and a half. She felt the need to hurry away her Jack and Davie before Sean returned and banned her from ever selling newspapers again.

"Night Kat'rin, maybe we'll be selling tuggedah tomorra, huh?" Jack asked as he climbed back out the window.

"We'll see about that, I'm still not so sure about only getting ten percent. And you do know you can use the door, right?"

"I prefer da winda," Jack replied and Davie merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Good night Katherine," he added before disappearing behind Jack. Just after they disappeared from sight Katherine heard another, somewhat less friendly, voice behind her.

"Hello Katherine."