Back in the lodging house, the boys were waking up…….
Racetrack got up to realize that the bunk above him was empty, as he had since Boidy left, Jack had left before anyone else. Race hoped he was making enough extra money to make his new routine worth the boys' questions.
A cheerful mood was in the air as the boys headed off to greet the world, literally.
Unfortunately for the rest of the lodging house, Race was a morning person. To him, there was no better way to start the day than annoying the heck out of all of his friends. This included lame jokes, pranks that rarely went off as planned and witty comments that no one else understood
One of these days, someone was gonna murder Race. And no one would miss him until lunch.
When at last the sleepy newsies had made their way over to the world building, Jack was already selling his second stack of papes. The sun was shining, but it wasn't too hot. The Delancey brothers were even sick that day. But Jack was not in a good mood
Normally, even after a long night of thinking and remembering, Jack could manage to smile and crack a joke for his boys. He would get them all to dance in the streets, or even make a bet with Race just to see them laugh
But not today. Today Jack couldn't even pretend. The dreams and thoughts that kept him from sleeping had invaded his waking mind. All of Jack's insecurities, fears, pain from being abandoned came out during the night.
But this was morning. He had made extra money, Race was at his side desperately trying to get him to grin, and the Delancey brothers were to sick to pick on his younger boys. Everything should have been fine, shouldn't it?
The fact remained that it wasn't.
Jack headed to the Jacob's house when he was done selling. He knew that they would let him sit on their roof, or fire escape, and just think.
Sarah watched Jack through her bedroom window. He had been sitting on the fire escape for hours, and the sun was going down. She sighed and went outside to try and get him to talk.
She sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, I know that you don't want to talk to me. but you have to talk to someone. If you can't talk to me, talk to Dave, or Race, or Blink or Mush or even Skittery. You can't keep this bottled up for so long. you're gonna explode"
Jack sat still for almost ten minutes. Sarah stood up to go inside, when he put a hand on her arm and she sat back down.
"Sarah…." Jack was chewing on his lip and his words came out uncertainly, "Have you ever been abandoned?"