Hey, I'm here... with the third installment of Quicksilver! Enjoy it, kiddos!
And tell me what you think about this: I have decided to write a Newsies/Cinderella crossover spoof. Would you read it?
Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies, and I know Racetrack uses the word "okay" in this chapter. I was taking direct dialouge from the movie, and even though they didn't use that word back then I put it in to keep up with movie accuracy. Also, remember: I do not type out the New York accents phoenetically. Mercury has a New York accent, even though her dialouge doesn't seem fitting of a street kid. She does; that's the point: street kids aren't dumb. They use words like "eloquent" and "atrotious", too.
Anyway, here is what you came for: Chapter three of Quicksilver
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You can't run from trouble. There ain't no place that far.
--Uncle Remus
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"Baby born with two heads!" I cried out. Twelve papers were sold on that.
"Trash fire burns down part of the city!" Well, Ellis Island was part of the city, right? And if the trash fire burned down part of Ellis Island, it burned down part of the city, however small. I sold several papes on that but as soon as the first person opened theirs I got Becca and myself to another corner and quick, before our deciet could be discovered.
Becca and I had sold all our papers, (both morning, afternoon, and evening edition) due to several made-up headlines. We bought supper from a stand and ate it on the home, Becca babbling happily through her chunk of brown bread. I nodded or mmhmm-ed every once in a while, not truly paying attention to what my dark-haired little sister was saying.We reached the Manhatten Home for Girls, and I traveled upstairs to the dormitory to read my book, Becca in tow.
I lost myself in Oliver Twist that night. Oliver, the poor boy...
Which was the last thought I remember thinking, for I was soon asleep.
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I awoke the next morning, and repeated what I did every morning: get dressed, wash up, play my violin on the rooftop, get Becca ready, braid my hair.
But the next events of that day were not so commonplace.
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"They jacked up the price! Did you hear that, Jack, ten cents a hundred!" Kid Blink declared as one of the Delancy numbskulls mimicked him from the safety of a window. "It's bad enough that we gotta eat what we don't sell," he continued. "Now they jacked up the price! Can you belive that!?"
Becca looked up at me with questioning eyes, so I picked her up and told her it would all be alright. Of course, as I pulled down my left sleeve to hide my still-healing forearm, I knew it wouldn't be.
"This'll bust me... I'm barely making a living right now!" Skittery took a drag on his cigarette. It didn't calm him.
Boots continued the conversation by plainly stating "I'll be back sleeping on the streets." The casual way he said it sent a shiver down my spine.
"It don't make any sense," our attention turned to Mush. "All the money Pulitzer's making; why would he gouge us?" His eyes showed the hurt and betrayed feelings turning around in his skull.
""Cos he's a tightwad, that's why!" Racetrack kicked something on the ground. Chimes of agreement rang throughout, until Jack took charge.
"Pipe down, it's just a gag!" He walked up the steps to the distribution grate. He said something to Weasel, Weasel said something back. Jack tuned and walked back down the steps, a look of exasperation on his face.
"Why don't you ask Mr. Pulitzer?" the man chuckled.
Spades and Ella had caught up. Of course, we weren't allowed in on the conversation. Whatever it was, it was "men only" business, and "us wimmen" shouldn't go sticking our noses into it.
"They can't do this to me Jack," Blink's mumbled words were heard.
"They can do whatever they want. It's their stinkin' paper!" Racetrack muttered.
Boots put in another two bits as Jack sat down next to him. "It ain't fair! We got no rights at all."
Racetrack rolled his eyes and dazzled us with his gambling terminology. 'C'mon, it's a rigged deck. They got all the marbles, okay?"
"Jack, we've got no choice. So let's get our lousy papers while they still got some," Mush finalized as he turned to go up the steps.
With a push to Mush's chest, Jack once again took command of the situation: "No, nobody's goin' anywhere!"
Protests rang out as Jack defended himself. "We can't let them get away with this!"
"Clear out, clear out. Give 'im some room. give 'im some room! Let him think!" Who is that?
Blink handed Jack his cigarette as Becca squirmed and asked me to let her down. After a couple drags, Race asked "Jack? You done thinkin' yet?"
"Hey! World employees only on this side of the gate!"
Loud shouts of protest (to which I contributed my "If we're selling Pulitzer's papers, we are employees!" and Becca waved her little fist).
"Well, listen, one thing for sure: if we don't sell papes, nobody sells papes. Nobody comes through those gates til they put the price back where it was!" Jack turned his attention back to us.
"What do you mean, like a strike?" Our heads turned to some strange boy, that I was later to find out was David.
"Yeah, like a strike." I snorted. Jack, you idiot.
David immediately came down to eye level with the still sitting Jack. "Jack... I was just joking. We can't strike, we don't have a union!"
"Yeah, but... if we go on strike, then we are a union." Well, I'll go for that, I thought.
"No! We're just a bunch of angry kids with no money... maybe if we got every newsie in New York, but..." Humph. I don't like that kid...
Enlightenment dawned in Jack's eyes. "Yeah, well we organize!" Jack gave David a friendly shove in the chest as he stood up. "Crutchy, you take for collection!"
"Swell!"
"We'll get all the newsies in New York together!"
"Jack, this isn't a joke!" The new boy was trying to attempt to reason with Jack. "You saw what happened to those trolley workers." Good point.
"Well, that's another good idea. Any newsie don't join with us then we bust their heads like the trolley workers!" Most newsies cheered. As I hurrindly picked Becca up again to avoid being trampled by the overenthusiastic crowd of newsboys, I couldn't help thinking what the cops would do to us if we did resort to violence.
"Stop and think about this, Jack! You can't just rush everybody into this!" True. Very true...
Jack said some undiscernable things to David before he turned back to the masses: "Dave's right. Pulitzer and Hearst and all them other rich fellahs; I mean, they own this city. So do you really think a bunch of street rats like us can make any difference? The choice has gotta be yours!"
The next few comments I did not hear as I was in a conversation with Ella. "Think they're gonna let us help them?" she asked.
"Maybe, but only if they get it into their heads that girls aren't just there to look pretty." I cringed. I couldn't even do that... poor ugly me.
Jack's rousing speech (using David's words, of course) raised our newsies to action, filling them to the very soul with inspiration to fight for their rights. All our newsgirls were sucked into the strike, except Ella and myself. We stood on the outside edge of the crowd gathered around the statue. It's not that we didn't want to fight for our rights; it's that the boys wouldn't give us the full right to fight.
Of course, after it was decided that we needed ambassadors to be sent out to all the other buroughs, they decided that I was to be sent to Brooklyn along with Jack, David and Boots. Funny how those things work, but I left Becca in the capable hands of Ella and Spades to trudge along to the Brooklyn Bridge. I argued all along the way:
"Why did you need me, Jack? You have two other newsies and yourself. I don't think that I am going to make much of a difference."
"Mercury, you are one of the most eloquent-" here I snorted, to be reprimanded with a glare from Jack "-eloquent, responsible and driven newsies of Manhatten. Yes, we needed you here."
"What you really mean, Jack, is that I have read enough books to know a couple fancy words, if we get into a fight I can hold my own, and that I am persistent enough to annoy Conlon for you, that way if he gets angry it won't affect Manhatten's ties with Brooklyn."
"Mercury, now is really not the time for one of your conspiracy theory speeches. We need you here because of what I said."
David stared openmouthed at the two of us for a brief moment. Then he conentrated his gaze on me. "You're the crazy girl who plays her violin on the rooftop each morning." I cackled gleefully as Jack shot David a glare that almost singed my eyebrows.
"You're right there, Davey-boy! Crazy as a loon I am!" Jack shot me one of those you're-not-helping looks, before he caught sight of my partially exposed right forearm. I quickly pulled my sleeve down as he sighed and shook his head. I'm going to get what-for about this later, I thought.
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I hate Brooklyn. I'm not scared of it, I hate it. The atmosphere is thick with suspicion and loathing. It's all very opressive. So I avoid Brooklyn as much as I can, which can be very difficult, because if a message needs to be relayed or some other such leader business, I'm usually the one sent because I look young enough and Irish enough to pass through Brooklyn unnoticed.
I wasn't lucky enough to evade this mission, though.
We had reached the docks, and I found myself ducking my head down, playing with the end of my long braid while following Jack's feet and trying to blend into the scenery, which is hard enough to do when you're a regular girl on Brooklyn's docks. If you're either very pretty (not my predicament) or very ugly (which is my problem) it's even harder.
"Where ya goin', Kelly?" The comment, with a special dose of venom on "Kelly", brought my eyes up from the ground. A tall, muscular and intimidating young man was giving the leader of our little posse a very unnerving sort of look.
Slowly, Jack bypassed the boy. Following his lead, I steeled my nerves and walked the rest of the way with my head held high, doing my best not to look side to side like one of my paranoid runaway cats.
Jack led us under some criss-crossed beams and ripped nets that formed a "wall" of a sort of open-roofed clubhouse. A grey cat lay bathing behind his ears on a crate. I allowed him to sniff my hand before I petted him.
"Mercury... not the cats!" Jack hissed.
"I'm only petting it!" I hadn't known my reputation for talking to cats had reached Brooklyn. Jack rolled his eyes and searched the horizon for Spot.
My attentions were drawn away from the purring cat as a sarcastic voice announced the presence of the exact person we came to see.
"Well if it ain't Jack be nimble, Jack be quick."
"I see you've moved up in the world, Spot. Got a river view and everything," Jack replied as he spit into his right hand and offered it to Spot for the common and oh-so-disgustingly-manly spit-shake.
"Heya, Boots; how's it rollin'?" Spot said, turning to Boots and myself.
Boots leaped over some sort of bench and offered Spot two stones. "Got a couple of real good shooters here."
"Yeah," Spot said, examining them both before choosing one to load his slingshot with. "So, Jacky-boy, I been hearin' things from little birds. Things from Harlem, Queens, all over. They been chirpin' in my ear. Jacky boy's newsies is playin' like they're goin on strike." Shatter! went a glass beer bottle as the smooth, round stone hit it. I dodged the liquid as it rained down, but my sleeve was lightly spattered by the putrid stuff anyway. Walking around the bench, I joined my comrades. Conlon had noticed me, and I noticed the silent snicker in his eyes.
"Brought a girl to Brooklyn, Jacky-boy? Thought you knew better then that."
"Yeah, well--"
"You have atrocious grammar," I interuppted.
The blue-eyed boy turned to me, bemused. "Do I?"
"Yeah. You do."
"My apologies, miss," he said as he swept his hat off and mockingly bowed so low I had to step back so he wouldn't hit me.
"That was really unnecessary," I commented as he came back up. "Back to the topic at hand-"
"We're not playing; we are going on strike." I know they say better late than never, but good grief, man! David was such an idiot. But we were back on topic.
Only I caught the amusment in Spot's eyes as he turned his attention to David once more. "Oh Yeah? Yeah? What is this Jacky-boy, some kind of walkin' mouth?" he asked with bemused sneer that I have only ever seen him use.
"Yeah it's a mouth, but a mouth with a brain and if you got half of one you'll listen to what he's gotta say."
Spot said nothing and sat down on a crate, giving David an even, chilly stare. We all waited for him to start.
"Well, we started this strike, but we can't do it alone. So we've been talking to newsies all around the city--"
"Yeah. So they told me," the Brooklyn leader interuppted. "But what did they tell you?"
David was ready this time. "That they're waiting for Spot Conlon to join the strike; that you're the key. That Spot Conlon is the greatest and most respected newsie in all of New York, and probably everywhere else." He looked at us for approval, and Boots nodded his agreement. "And if Spot Conlon joins the strike, then they'll join, and we'll be unstoppable. So you gotta join... I mean, well, you gotta!"
Spot smirked as he stood up and pulled his cane out of his belt loop. "You're right Jack, brains. But I got brains too, and more than just half of one. How do I know you punks won't run the first time some goon comes at you with a club; how do I know you got what it takes to win?"
"How do we know you have what it takes to win?" Spot looked at me, suprised and angry. Jack glared at me, and I knew I would be lucky to come out of the inevitable screaming match we were to have later alive. "You're not going to join to help your newsies. That's doing them a disservice. Are you gonna be the one to shell out money to them when they can't make ends meet? David made this point a moment ago, but I think I'll say it again because it seems the bumblebee inside your skull where your brain is supposed to be was buzzing around so much you didn't hear him: if you join, the other buroughs will. No one will stop us, because they won't be able to. You already know Pulitzer and Hearst are a couple of skinflints. They'll be losing money in increasing increments each day, no matter how many scabs are out there selling for them.That is, if people do buy the World or the Journal; once we get the public on our side, they may be writing more angry letters to those two tightwads than we do. If everyone sticks together, we can do it. And 'everyone' includes Brooklyn." Our eyes had been locked in a fiery glare that the both of us were too ornery to break since I started speaking. My impromptu speech had been accompanied by the wild gesticulations that accompanied next to all of my words, and as soon as my hands rested at my sides, Conlon tucked the knob of his cane under my chin and lifted my head. I jerked my head to the left, but my chin was caught in a firm grip that I could not escape.
The idiot chuckled. I glared daggers at him. He chuckled louder. So I glared poisened daggers. That didn't work either. "Didn't know he knew I like blue eyes," he murmered. I don't think anyone but me heard it, but maybe they weren't supposed to. "It's going to take more than a pair of eyes like hers to convince me you fellows have the guts, Jacky-boy," he said, turning to Jack but not taking his hand from my chin. His grip had loosened enough that I could jerk my head away and take a few steps back, giving him a venom gaze all they way. "You gotta show me." He turned. Jack laid his hand on my shoulder --well, more like gripped it-- and pulled me away from the scene.
I don't think I was ever happier to get away from Brooklyn.
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