Okay, seriously people. Review. I've had more reviews on silly stories that were complete nonsense than on this one, which I really tried on. Thanks to deanandhisimpala for reviewing!I love you! And just to let you know, I'm pretty much in love with jensen ackles too. I'm working on a killer supernatural story right now, so I'll start posting it once it's finished. So yeah, you silly people who put this on your story alert list without reviewing, naughty naughty.

Anyway, I don't own newsies. Sadly. I wish I did. Don't we all? But I do own the girl in this story and anything you don't recognize from the 1992 movie, although technically most of those characters were based off of real people, so I don't know if Disney can own real people, but if it can be done, I'm sure Disney has figured out a way. In any case, I don't own much. I'm a college kid with two jobs and yet I'm still poor.

Chapter Two

"God I dreamedthere was an angel who could hear me through the wall

As I cried out like in Latin, this is so not life at all

Help me out, out of this nightmare, then I heard her silver call

She said just give it time, kid; I come to one and all

She said give me that hand please, an itch you can't control

Let me teach you how to handle all the sadness in your soul

Oh we'll work that silver magic and we'll aim it at the wall

She said love may make you blind, kid, but I wouldn't mind at all."

-The Bitch of Living from the musical Spring Awakening

I was eighteen years old. I had been alive for less than two decades, and already I felt like a father. As if. I'd never had a real relationship with a girl, and I doubted I would in the next several years. Then again, things happened every day that surprised me.

"Hurry it up." I called over my shoulder to my little brother, who was the reason why I felt like I was a father. Little Les, the one the ladies cooed over and petted, was eleven years old and the biggest pain I'd ever encountered. When I was seven, and Les had been born, I was overjoyed. I was an introverted child, not unlike my days as a teenager before becoming involved with the newsies, and all I had for companionship was my sister Sarah, who was a year older than I was.

It didn't take me long to discover that having Les around was not a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I love the little bugger, but sometimes I wish he was older. As a baby, he cried nonstop. Since both Sarah and I were already older, everybody doted on little Les. Then, he grew and became more of a pain to my mother and pop, and he was more often than not shoved on me.

At first I thought it was unfair because Sarah was older and a girl. She should have been the one to keep an eye on Les during the day. But Sarah worked in a factory to bring in extra money for our family. Both Les and I went to school, so it only made sense to our folks that I be the one to look after Les.

"I mean it, if you don't keep up I'm going to take you back home and leave you there." I threatened again.

Les stumbled a little as his legs were far shorter than mine. "I'm coming." He mumbled.

We were on our way to the newsboys' Lodging House. I was a newsie, or I was when I wasn't attending school. I would graduate this year, and I was hoping to get a scholarship to a university. I sort of doubted that it was going to go through. Jewish boys from poor working-class immigrant families like mine don't get scholarships to universities.

Les is a newsie too, although he uses his cute-little-kid act most often to sell papes. I don't even really consider that selling. So we were both newsies, but we didn't reside in the newsboys' Lodging House. We lived at home with our pop, our mother, and Sarah. But we were on our way to the Lodging House on an urgent mission.

It was Les who came with the mission, I suppose, but it was meant for me. I'm the brains behind our little organization, the diplomatic one that everyone comes to when something hard needs to get done. Les had been at the Lodging House without me, which he wasn't supposed to do because I could get in trouble. But Jack had told him to run and get me as fast as he could, which was why we were weaving our way in between and around the other people in the Manhattan streets.

I wasn't entirely sure why my talents were needed so immediately, but I had a feeling it had something to do with the girl Racetrack and Kid Blink had found beaten nearly to death two days ago.

I didn't know much about her; nobody really did. So far, the only people to even see her were Blink, Race, and the old man who ran the Lodging House, Mr. Kloppman. Even Jack Kelly, my best pal and the unofficial leader of the Manhattan newsies, hadn't seen her. Mr. Kloppman didn't want people ogling a dying girl in a coma, and I could understand that. If I had been nearly murdered, I wouldn't want people staring at me as I waited unconsciously for death to claim me.

When we arrived at the Lodging House, however, I discovered that my assumption was incorrect. The girl wasn't dying. She was waking up. She hadn't woken up yet, I learned when Les and I were pulled into the lobby of the Lodging House by a small group of newsies. It was early afternoon, and everyone was already done selling the morning edition and the evening hadn't come out yet, but it wasn't often that they hung around the Lodging House. Usually they could be found at Tibby's, a little restaurant close by, or near Central Park.

"I thought you'd never get here, Dave." Jack said, putting an arm around my shoulder and guiding me over toward the office door. I didn't know about the other boys, but I'd never been in the office; I'd never even seen inside it.

I allowed myself to be steered over toward the door, the other boys clearing a path for us. "What's going on?" I demanded, loosening the tie around my neck. I'd come from school, and I hadn't had time to change yet. The weather outside was not pleasant for running around in vests and ties, but it wasn't my choice.

"So I told you about that broad Race and Blink found a couple days ago, right?" Jack asked. I inwardly cringed. I hated the way Jack could talk about women (calling them broads and other names) and still woo them. He'd had more girlfriends in the past couple years than I'd had in my entire life, including my sister Sarah. Instead of calling him out on what I viewed as his inappropriate name-calling, I nodded. "Well we all thought she was going to die. I mean, none of us have seen her except Blink and Race, but they said she was real beat up. They didn't think she was going to make it though."

It took all of my will-power not to yell at him to spit his message out. "Yes, you told me. Now what about this girl is so important?"

Jack clutched my shoulders. "She's waking up. At least, we think she is. Kloppman says she's been tossing and turning, and she's been moaning and stuff."

"Good for her." I was glad she wasn't dying, but I didn't see how my presence was necessary in this situation. "Did you bring me here to tell me that?"

Jack gave me a knowing look, and I instantly felt abashed. I don't know what had come over me. I used to be this quiet Jewish kid who followed all the rules. Since meeting the newsboys a couple summers back, I've turned into this disrespectful bum who has started talking like the motherless wretches I hang out with.

"We brought you here because when she wakes up, somebody's got to talk to her." Jack explained. "And since all of us can be a little intimidating, we thought you would be the best choice."

I decided to overlook the veiled insult there. Jack had insinuated that I wasn't as tough or strong or scary as the other guys, but I chose to take it as a compliment that I was more eloquent than all the other boys put together. That's what an education does for you, my friend.

I still didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do, however. Talk to her? About what? "So you want me to talk to her when she wakes up?" About the weather?

Jack nodded. "Find out her name, where she comes from, and if she has any family that we should get in contact with. And find out what happened to her. She must've done something to really piss someone off, I'm telling you."

Mr. Kloppman was nearby, and he nodded at me as if he approved of this whole arrangement. Since I'd become dubbed the "Walking Mouth" a couple years back, people had taken it very seriously. He beckoned to me, and I followed him. We slipped inside the office and the elderly gentleman closed the door quickly before too many prying eyes could peek into the dim interior.

I turned to survey the office. It was very small, barely containing the cot and the two chairs that were set up there. The lights were very dim, as well. Even though electricity was common throughout New York, there were no electrical lights in the office. It was lit only by a solitary lantern that emitted a flickering orange glow.

The girl was lying on the cot with her arms resting by her side as if she was already dead, but I could see the visible rise and fall of her chest. She was lying underneath a thin blanket, but I could see that Mr. Kloppman had changed her into an old shirt belonging to a newsie who had either lost it or left it behind while living at the Lodging House. From what I had heard from Kid Blink, her gown had been in veritable tatters. I wondered if the caretaker had thrown it away.

Her right leg, scandalously bare, was elevated on a pillow and uncovered by the thin blanket. Mr. Kloppman, who I had heard had a medical history, had placed two boards on either side of the broken leg and used ropes to hold it in place so the bone would mend the correct way. I noticed two more makeshift splints on two of the fingers on her right hand. She was missing a finger on her left hand, where the elderly man had made a tourniquet, but it was dotted with bright red blood.

A large gash in her cheek had been sewn up with a simple needle and thread. It looked messy and would definitely leave a scar, but it appeared to be holding her face together. The skin on her face was a mottled purple. Her nose had been broken, though Mr. Kloppman had set it as carefully as he could, and her bottom lip had been split open. I also noticed a bald patch in her masses of dirty blonde hair.

I muttered to myself in Hebrew, something I had done often as a child but had done less and less as I grew older. There just weren't any English words to describe the horror I felt at what had happened to this girl. She was missing part of her ear, for God's sake! I asked myself over and over again, as I took a seat on one of the hard-backed wooden chairs in the room, what kind of sadist could do something like that to an innocent little girl?

Well, I couldn't assume for sure that she was innocent. Like Jack said, she must have done something to really anger someone, but no matter what she had done, it couldn't have deserved a fate like this. And she was little, too. Not necessarily young; I would have put her anywhere between sixteen and nineteen. She was just small of stature. I could have fit my forefinger and thumb around her wrist easily if I tried.

The way Jack had made it sound like such an emergency, I thought that the girl was waking up right that moment. As it was, I had to wait there for two hours before she so much as stirred.

When she did though, it was obvious she was coming to. Her blonde eyelashes fluttered and she struggled to open her swollen eyelids. Beneath them, her eyes were black as night. She frowned at the pain, and a single tear welled in the corner of one eye, but that was it. I thought she was being very brave considering the extent of her terrible injuries.

She looked at me, at Mr. Kloppman, and then back to me. Those eyes were haunting, though I wasn't sure just why. I saw her look down at her hand, the one with the two broken fingers; then she looked at the other, the one with the finger missing. She lifted it ever so slightly to get a better look, and I could see from the calm look on her face that she was entirely in shock. I couldn't imagine waking up to see I was missing a very useful digit.

With the finger-less hand, she touched her face. She felt her swollen cheek, the stitches along the length of her face, her broken nose. I saw her hand slide up into her soft hair and stop when it crossed the bald patch. She calmly returned her hand to her side and turned her attention to me once more.

"Hello, sir." She greeted me in a polite voice that seemed too deep for such a small person. "I was wondering if you could tell me what has happened to me. I seem to have been in an accident of some sort."

I was struck immediately by her diction. She talked like no one I had ever come into contact with before. This girl had never lived on the streets; when Racetrack and Kid Blink had guessed that she was from a wealthy family, they must have been correct. This was an upper Manhattan girl if I had ever met one.

I cleared my throat uncertainly. "Uh, I don't quite know what happened to you, Miss. I was hoping you could enlighten me."

She sighed in disappointment. "I'm afraid not." She grimaced. "I'm in a terrible amount of pain."

"I would expect so." I agreed. "A couple friends of mine found you two nights ago, nearly dead. Mr. Kloppman here has been nursing you back to health. And doing a good job of it, too, if I may say so. We all thought you were going to die."

The girl turned her gaze to the elderly man, and she tried to smile. It looked like it hurt, because she stopped quickly. "Thank you very much, sir." He nodded to her, and she turned back to me. "I wish one of us knew what had

happened to me." Her next words surprised me very much, and almost made me reassess my initial opinion of her. "Because I'd like to get my hands on them and kill them." She said it with such conviction that I really believed she was capable of it. Then she sighed and tried to blow a loose piece of her blonde hair out of her face. I reached up and moved it for her, which was perhaps a bit forward on my part, but I didn't want to cause her any more discomfort than was necessary.

She smiled shortly at me. "Thank you." She said. "So, do you know where I came from? Or who I am?"

Her questions took me by surprise. I could understand not remembering her brutal attack, as she appeared to have a great deal of head trauma, but full-blown amnesia was something entirely different.

"Y-you don't know who you are?" I repeated. She nodded, although it looked painful because of the intense bruising on her neck. "What about your name?"

She shrugged the best she could. "Beats me." She tried to peer down past her waist. "What happened to me down there? Did those bastards rape me?"

I was completely taken aback, not only by her choice of language, but by how she said it. She spoke with conviction, and she knew what she was talking about. Even if she had the voice and mannerisms of a wealthy person, this girl had at least spent time on the streets. Maybe not living there, but she had associated with people and in places that would probably make my toenails curl. And, if she had been hanging around in unsavory places, she might actually have done something to make someone want to kill her.

Our problem was that she didn't remember. Nor did she have a name.

She looked down at her missing finger again, and I could see her brain working behind those black eyes. The shock was wearing off, and I'm sure her pain was intensifying as well.

"W-what happened to my hand?" She asked me. Her voice, which had been strong and confident and polite earlier, was now shaky and terrified and pained.

I took a deep breath. "Miss, I don't know exactly who did this to you or why, but we're going to try and help you find out who tried to kill you."

She began to cry. Even though I have a sister who, as a result of dating Jack Kelly, is very emotional, I don't really handle girly emotions too well. Sarah sometimes says I don't like when she acts like a girl because I act enough like a girl for the both of us. I find that highly offensive, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't like when girls cry in front of me.

I patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, trying to avoid her injuries. I didn't know what else to say or do.

Mr. Kloppman stepped forward, his first real motion since the girl had regained consciousness. "Mr. Jacobs, I think it would be a good idea to let the young lady get some rest now. It's been a tough afternoon."

I was all too ready to agree. "I'll come talk to you again soon. Try to get some rest." I told her, giving her the most reassuring smile I could manage. I nodded toward her respectfully, then hurried out of the tiny office.

The boys waiting in the lobby seemed to have almost given up hope that I was ever going to emerge. My sudden appearance in their midst caused a babble to break out immediately. Jack, Mush, Blink, Race, Crutchy and the others there surrounded me.

"What happened?" "Did she wake up?" "What's her name?" "What happened to her?"

"Woah, woah. One at a time." I held up my hands to stop them. "She woke up, and she's coherent. I think she's from an upscale, wealthy family. Or, at least I did at first. She hasn't got a clue what happened to her, or even where

she came from." I took a deep breath, knowing that this wasn't at all what my friends were expecting. "She doesn't even remember her own name."

Okay, so there you have chapterdos. Or deux, considering I just came from an 8 am French class. I took over four years of Spanish, and now I'm taking French. WEIRDED OUT.Not really. I'm just rambling now. Putting off mymaths project (who assigns a math project, really?) and my history paper. Bleh. Looking forward to dance today. We're doingFosse, who is pretty much my favorite choreographer who ever lived. He revolutionized the dance world. Too bad he's dead now. Anyway, if you're ever in the need for a good dance, watch RichMan's Frug from the play Sweet Charity. Yummy. It's amazing. We're doingHey Big Spender in my class though,which is okay because I love that song too. Wow, I really am rambling now... Sorry. Just review please. Expect the next chapter on March 25. But if I have no reviews, I'm withholding it for another week even though it's already written. xoxo