Thank you, thank you, thank you to Austra and LucyConlon for their marvelous reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies or any of its characters, but I do own all others.

My father was looking at me with his iwasntbornyesterday eyes. I had only seen them once before, when I was five and had asked for money to buy (of all things I could have invented) a bobbin for my mother's sewing machine.

Never mind that I never caught on to sewing; I was pretty confident my excuse would work. My father must have known I was planning on buying copious amounts of sugar cubes because he gave me that same look, and said absolutely nothing when I returned home hiding a bag of sweetness under my dress. After eating nearly half the bag, my teeth hurt and I gave the rest to a neighboring horse. I was angry he hadn't said anything.

I knew it was only a matter of time before he started investigating into my now frequent absences, which were more often than not happening at night.

"You'll be back soon?"

"Of course, papá. I have to go to the millinery tomorrow."

"All right. Not too late, agreed?"

I felt bad, but what could I say? Perhaps that Carlos and I were going to run around Manhattan at night, planning an underground strike alongside newsies with obsidian fingers? If he believed me, he wouldn't have let me go, but if he didn't believe me… well, that could end up worse. Mental hospital worse.

Walking at night was becoming a bad habit of mine. Things happened at night that I sure didn't want to know about, and getting an upcloseandpersonal view of such things was not my idea of a good time. I turned the corner to wait for Carlos and laughed at my realization: Iwas now a part of those mysterious nighttime things. Oh, how some dirty boys and a guilty conscience can change you. (But David really wasn't that dirty, was he?)

Despite the lousy directions Jack gave me, Carlos and I managed to get to their lodging house: on-time or not, I didn't really care. We were greeted by the crooked smile of an old man whose wrinkles resembled (a bit too eerily) melting wax on a flesh-colored candle.

He pointed us in the direction of room farther back, and Carlos, true to his style, walked in like an invading army. I stayed behind for a moment, peering up the stairs, around the corners, into dark nooks and wondering if I really should have come at all. After the disaster with my dear friend Mr. Pulitzer, I was looking forward to a menial role in this tragic play of reality. I mean, they didn't need me – I had already shown how useful I was going to be. Carlos was going to be the key, and the thought hit me like calf in a bag.

"Ya goin' in?" the old man asked, his hat tipping nearly off his head. I looked at him and had to turn away – his face looked too much like the candle next to my bed.

"I'm not sure."

David must have seen me mulling around because he came over to me and my waxy friend. "We're glad you came, Izzie."

I nodded, and David squinted at me. Well, more probably my sudden silence.

"Come on, follow me."

I followed him to the indicated room. There was an oblong table, old from years not use, around which the boys sat, now including Carlos. I sat next to Davey and Jack, Carlos on my other side. There were fifteen boys staring at me, and although they did not appear threatening, their very presence unnerved me. So far, dealing with two newsies was manageable. Fifteen was not so much.

My goose bumps were rising when Jack began to speak.

"Alright boys, let's get this meetin' over with. You all know about our friend Izzie here, who paid a kindly visit to our dear Uncle Joe."

I heard low chuckles around the table. I wasn't laughing.

"Since that didn't work, we gotta expand our horizons," (here he gave a comical flourish) "as they say. We need to make this strike bigger – bigger and better than anything New York has ever seen. We've got Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Harlem on our side, but that ain't enough. We need somethin' that'll really get Pulitzer in his goat. And our pal Izzie is gonna to help us with that." He turned and smiled down at me.

My eyes were watering, my hands shaking as if I held the entire building above me, and my feet were tapping the floor like maniacs. I hadn't expected this.

"Tell 'em, Izzie," Jack unhelpfully ordered.

Carlos clapped me on the back and the inertia caused me to stand up and stumble on the way. I coughed, trying to spit the words out, but the only thing that came out was, "Ah, well, like Jack said… I uh… well we're uh here to help." Brilliant, Izzie, just brilliant.

A tall, gangly boy with ruffled brown hair spoke up from his crossed arms. "Yeah? How are ya goin' to help if ya couldn't get Pulitzer to back down?"

"Oh, well, uh… See Jack told us that Pulitzer –"

"Yeah, we all know about you Cubans and Pulitzer. How're ya gonna do it with only two of ya?"

I'm sure I looked like a right old dope then. I mean, I knew the plan was to recruit more Cubans and get the word out to the general public, but I hadn't thought about how we were going to do it.

I heard someone shift in their chair and wished myself invisible. The room was silent, and would be, I knew, until an answer was given. Like a blessed apparition, I saw Carlos stand up and address the pessimistic nay-sayer.

"We may be only two but there's a lot more of us. They're not here tonight but we're gonna to get 'em. There's Cubans all across this city just waiting to be found."

"That ain't gonna help us unless you find 'em. So, how are ya gonna find 'em?" another chimed in.

"Yeah," everyone around the table countered.

I shot a look at Jack, who was leaning back in his chair, arms too casually crossed and seemingly enjoying the verbal tussle. There would be no help from him (and certainly not from me).

"Look," Carlos said, with more gusto (and a fashionable New York accent) than I had known from him, "we said we're gonna help ya so we're gonna. It doesn't matter how we find 'em, because we will. We're gonna find them, and you're gonna have an army of newsies and Cubans so big it'll stretch all the way across Long Island."

That shut everyone up. I ventured a slight smile and was glad that Carlos's hot air had at long last come to some good use. I looked slyly at Jack and saw him smirk, seemingly appeased by the fight.

"Well boys," Jack said as he stood from his seat. "There's yer answer. Any objections?"

At first nervously, then certainly, heads began shaking everywhere. The sudden and frightful image of Caroline Woods's hat mannequins bouncing as in a macabre dance darted across my mind and I had to shake my head to rid myself of it.

"All right, that's cleared up. Now we gotta plan this rally."

I sank back further in my chair while the room perked up at the idea of a public demonstration. David leaned over to me and said as low as he could, "Relax, they're just testing you."

I felt my cheeks burn ashamedly and cursed that someone had noticed my flub. Since my typical retort was silenced by my fear, my only other response was to cross my arms and pout. "I'm fine." David looked at me curiously, so I repeated myself like a senile parrot. "I'm fine."

Apparently receiving my temperamental message, David smiled. "Good," he said and he leaned back in his chair.

Jack talked and I heard but didn't listen. From what I could deduce after the fact, they had appeared to have already planned the rally, which was to be at Irving Hall (at least I knew how to get there). I caught myself up at the point when Jack touted how everyone would be there, from Queens to Brooklyn to the Bronx. Carlos's tightening fist on the table in front of me made me look at him, and boy had I wished I hadn't.

At the precise moment Jack said the word "Brooklyn," Carlos's eyebrows folded against each other, creating a terrifying maze of furry bitterness. I had never seen a look like that on a face like his and I hoped no one else saw.

"This is gonna be huge. It's gonna be so huge that none of the papes will be able to ignore it."

Raucous cheers reverberated against walls as thin as my father's razor. The neurotic that I am, I stared at the doorway, waiting for the police to break in and take us all away for a good, long time. I was forced to abandon my maniacal paranoia by a hearty pat on the back, courtesy of Carlos. I glared at him, but he only smiled. For a boy who hadn't even known about this rally eight hours ago, Carlos was certainly enthusiastic.

"So," Jack said, facing Carlos. "We're countin' on ya to recruit as many Cubans as ya can get, all right? We gotta make a show of it if it's gonna work."

Carlos nodded seriously, eyes narrowed as if focused on the goal, but his twitching fingers hidden in his lap betrayed his childish enthusiasm for adventure.

And thus the meeting concluded.

I turned to Carlos, determined to weasel his hatred of Brooklyn out of him. "So Carlos," I started, as innocently as I possibly could. "What's this with Brooklyn –"

"So you're from Cuba, huh?" a short, dark haired boy asked, coming out of seemingly nowhere. A half-smoked cigar was hanging languidly from his lips and he stood so casually I would have thought he owned the place.

"Yes," I said slowly, unsure if he was friend or foe.

I had my answer soon enough. The cigar lifted gladly as he gave a crooked smile, holding out his ink-stained hand to shake mine. "The name's Racetrack. So you're really Cuban then? I always wanted to go there – I hear they got the best cigars around."

"Well, there is a reputation…"

"And I hear they got bullfights too."

"Sometimes, I guess."

"You ever been to one?"

"No."

He frowned a bit, clearly displeased with my answer. He turned to Carlos. "You ever been to one?" Racetrack asked.

"Once, when I was a kid."

And he was off.

"The names Racetrack," he repeated unnecessarily, holding out his hand to shake Carlos's. "So tell me about this bloody bullfight. Didya bet on it?"

I stood up, overloaded with boyish enthusiasm, and Racetrack immediately took my seat and pulled it closer to Carlos. You'll wish you weren't that close when he gets to his favorite part, I thought to myself, glad to be away. I can personally verify that when Carlos gets wrapped up in telling a story, his voice can effortlessly climb 10 decibels from the beginning to the end, until he is yelling in your ear and you are dumbfounded to remember at which point he got so loud.

Having been deprived of my seat, I walked around the lodging house, hoping to avoid rousing any suspicion or unwanted visitors. I tried to hide myself in unsuspecting corners, but I forgot I was the only girl in the building and therefore an easy target. The surly boy who had so rudely doubted Carlos earlier came over and stood next to me, leaning against the wall in a way that was much too consciously nonchalant for my liking.

He didn't say anything.

"What?" I said, a bit of my surliness returning.

I was stunned when he merely said, "How'd ya get here?"

I looked around me, wondering if he was playing some kind of joke on the foreign kid. "I walked?"

"No, I mean how'd ya get to New York?"

Ah, so it was curiosity. "Oh… well, I took a boat with my father from Cuba and we took trains to get up here to New York."

"And yer ma?"

I bit my lip and looked down, hoping it was a better answer than saying anything. He didn't press.

"Ya like New York?"

"Sure, it's nice… I guess."

Feeling obligated to reciprocate his unexpected sociality, I asked, "Were you born here?"

"Nope. Born over in Illinois, near Chicago."

I nodded in that stupidly obliging way. I knew the general vicinity of Illinois in the grand scheme of things, but beat me if I knew where Chicago was. I hadn't taken the time yet (in three years!) to properly study American geography.

"What's your name?" I asked, feeling more social.

"Skittery."

"I'm Izzie."

He nodded, a feeble smile curling his lips.

Carlos had managed to slink away from the cigar boy and came over to me and my pink-shirted companion.

"Hey Izzie, ready to go?"

"Yeah. It was nice meeting you, Skittery. I guess we'll see you at the rally."

Skittery nodded to me, Carlos nodded to him, and I nodded at no one in particular. We went to leave, but Jack ambled over and stopped us.

"Hey," he said, glancing at me then focusing on Carlos. "Make sure you get as many as ya can, alright? We want this to work."

"Don't worry, we'll get them." There was a glint in Carlos's eye as he spoke, and I knew he was feeling like the belle of the ball.

Jack smiled, spit in his hand and offered it to Carlos. I nearly choked, but Carlos clearly knew what he was doing because he spit in his own and returned the gesture. Jack and David nodded us a goodbye as we left the Lodging House.

Carlos and I didn't talk until we nearly reached my apartment – he was the type of person who didn't talk when there was nothing to say and I was the type of person who didn't talk when she didn't know what to say.

We were a corner away from my house when I finally mustered myself up to ask.

"So, Carlos, what's this about Brooklyn?"

He looked straight ahead and his gait slowed, but only for a moment.

"It's nothing."

"That's a lie."

He turned and where I would have glared, he simply looked curious. "What does it matter?"

"I was just wondering," I said, raising my hands up in meek defense. "Besides, if they're going to be at the rally I think I have a right to know what the inevitable fight will be about."

He scrunched his eyebrows at me. I could tell he was trying to decide if it was worth telling or not, but I knew he'd tell me. I had the secret weapon of being friends with Lola, who couldn't keep a secret from me for all the frilly dresses in the world.

"Really, Izzie, it's nothing," he said, resuming his walk. "Just a little run-in with a Brooklyn newsie."

I scoffed. "You're going to have to explain yourself a bit better than that."

He sighed, his hands melting slowly down into his pockets. "All right, all right, I'll tell you. You've gotten nosier over the years, Izzie, you know that?" I winked and shrugged – he should have known better.

"A while back I decided to try my hand at being a newsie." (Now that was something new to my ears.) "It didn't seem too hard and I figured it would give me some money to bring home at night. Well, the first day I bought my papes and wandered around town trying to sell them. I didn't get too far when I ran into one of my friends. He said he had to go to Brooklyn to get something and asked if I'd go with him. So I went – I had nothing better to do and thought I'd try to sell the rest of the papes while I was at it. One of Spot Conlon's goons caught me at it and roughed me up a little. That's all."

"Spot Conlon?"

Carlos stopped walking, laughed and immediately quit when he saw I was serious. "You don't know Spot Conlon?"

"Not a bit."

He was searching for the lie in my face, but he knew he wouldn't get any. He'd known me long enough to know that lying was not a talent of mine.

"Good." And that was that.

We started walking again, coming up on my building. I thought for a minute and turned to him. "Carlos, is that why Lola hates the newsies? Because one of them beat you up?"

At first he appeared offended – surely he wasn't expecting such a callous response to such a sensitive tale. After a moment he shrugged. "Maybe. Who knows why she does anything. That girl is crazy."

I nodded, but started at an obvious thought. "Wait, but why didn't Jack and the others recognize you tonight? They must have seen you selling around Manhattan."

"Ah, I only sold for a day and gave it up. They'd have no reason to recognize me."

I decided that enough was enough and shut my mouth for the rest of the walk. Carlos had been particularly obliging and I didn't want to wear it out before we even began this striking business.

Carlos didn't speak either (except a quick 'goodnight'), and I couldn't blame him. I would like to think that he was planning his brilliant Cuban-recruiting strategies, but who knows. Maybe he was thinking about all the girls he would attract with his newfound fame. Boys, I tell you – sometimes I think I will never understand them.

All I thought about, as I threw myself face down on my bed and buried a groan in my pillow, was how to get out of this strike unscathed.