Disclaimer: I don't own Jake or anything else from Newsies. Inspiration was found in Jake's chapter in the fic Alone, by Stretch1.
I grew up in the South. Very far south from here. The first thirteen years of my life were spent on a little cotton farm in central Georgia. I still call it home. I didn't always like the early hours and farm chores, but compared to here, that place was Heaven on Earth.
It was green (I miss the color green). Here, everything is gray. Even the snow, if you can call it that. It's better described as slush. We never got snow in Georgia, and I rather liked it that way.
New York is like a knife: cold, sharp, heavy, and hard. It doesn't suit me, not like the South did. Georgia was just the opposite: warm, light, and soft, just like the cotton we grew in the fields.
Our closest neighbors were half a mile away. We had space; we could move freely, without worries. Here, my neighbors on the street are half a foot away, and they complain if I make too much noise, or move too much and we accidentally collide. I feel trapped sometimes, in a city so crowded you can barely breathe.
It amazes me, but just thinking about the South has made my mind slip into a southern drawl. But you can't hear accents from words written on a page, of course.
I had a family down South. And friends, too. I even had a pretty girl, as young as we were at the time (it didn't seem to matter to us).
Here? Well, I've got friends. We get along just fine, but I'm not as close to any of them as they are to each other. They all grew up on the streets; I grew up on a farm. It's not the same life.
I have one thing that definitely separates me from all of them, except David and Les, of course. This may surprise you, but I've had an education. Six formal years of it, anyway. Not as much as I could've had, but more than most.
I missed school after I moved to the Lodging House. So I took to reading every single book that Mr. Kloppman owned, to fulfill my need for knowledge. It improved my vocabulary and writing skills even more. Most people always think of Specs as the big reader (it must be something to do with the glasses), but I think I've got him beat.
I enjoyed reading and writing the most at school. In fact, it's always been an ambition of mine to become some type of writer. I'm afraid to say that New York, along with my belief in the decency of all people, has crushed my hopes of achieving that particular aspiration… until now.
My dream is finally coming true. I've somehow managed to secure a job with the paper I've been selling for years, and now I'm assisting a real journalist with his stories, instead of peddling them on a corner. I'll mostly be doing proofreading and such, but you have to start somewhere. For me, it was at the very bottom: a newsboy.
If you're reading this, you're probably a newsboy yourself, and you probably got it from Mr. Kloppman. The story in it is mostly for him, curious old man that he is, but my intent for writing this story is purely for your benefit. Someone with a lot of dreams, but a lot of hard work to complete before accomplishing them.
A/N: Most of my chapters will be about this size... so this story isn't going to be very long. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's what it is. Remember: this is a brief history... I'm not one for long stories. In fact, I'm surprised I was capable of writing something other than a one shot.
And if you spot a glaring error in my accuracy of anything… sorry for that. Haha. I'm not from the South. In fact, I'm from very far North.
Answers to any questions you have will probably come in later chapters... that was Queenie's case, anyway.
I believe a thank you is in order for those of you who reviewed the first chapter... so, thank you. I appreciate the comments.