Firstly – thank you to everyone who is reading this story! I'm grateful for your readership.

Secondly – a special thank you to Austra and Paisley for so kindly giving me their thoughts. They really make writing this story that much more worthwhile!

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

Don't get me wrong – I like Carlos. I mean, when he's in a good mood (which is, luckily, most of the time) he's pretty nice, albeit a bit arrogant. I've never had a real reason not to like him. But when he asked me to help enlist a few of our compatriots for the rally, I could have strangled him for his ignorance.

Naturally, (as in, against all reason), I said yes. Of course I didn't want to be reminded of my epic failure and Carlos's subsequent rise to newsie power, but my desperate need for companionship won me out in the end. I had no one else to be my friend, and I figured Carlos would be a suitable temporary replacement for his moody sister.

But that doesn't mean I didn't put up a fight.

"Carlos, they asked you to do it."

"So? Doesn't mean you can't help."

"Sure it does."

"Jeez, Izzie, maybe this bad attitude is why Lola is avoiding you."

The sharpest jab in the most sensitive place. His reasoning was entirely faulty, but it didn't matter. He knew he had me right where he wanted me. I took a deep breath of resignation.

"But why, Carlos? You know where all those kids live; I don't have a clue. If anything I'll just get in the way."

"Nah – it'll be fine. All you have to do is follow me and I'll do the rest."

I began to see yet more clearly his resemblance to his sister.

"If I'm not going to do anything, why do I have to go?"

"Just because, Izzie. I'll pick you up around eight."

As the "chosen one," he sure was needy. Despite his casual tone and flick of his well-groomed hair, it was all becoming quite suspicious.

Despite my initial disappointment at being virtually cast aside from any responsibility for the rally, I had successfully (that's what I told myself) convinced myself that it was the perfect opportunity to wash my hands of the whole thing. I'd stay out of the spotlight and simply do my best to avoid any and all police officers, at least as long as I needed to until they would forget my humdrum face. I comforted myself with the thought that it wouldn't be long.

Besides, if I slowly eked myself out of the strike, I could be friends with Lola again. And that was what was really on my mind.

Carlos's plan really put a wrench in things.

He came and picked me up from the millinery that afternoon. We walked through the familiar afternoon glow towards the barrios where he knew a couple of his friends lived.

"How do you know there will be others here?" I said, my hands planted firmly in my dress pockets, eyes obstinately counting each step.

"Where there's one, there's usually more."

"Not necessarily – look at me. No other Cubans live around me."

"That's because you're you, Izzie."

I tore my eyes from the ground and planted my glare right on the side of Carlos's face. I was annoyed to see a knowing smirk.

A little schoolgirl passed us by, carrying an armful of anonymous books in her arms, tripping over her shoes as she went. I wondered if that's what I looked like when I was on my hat deliveries… and decided in the positive.

"How is Lola?" I asked, never taking my eyes off the schoolgirl spectacle.

He didn't say anything for a moment, so I turned and saw him bite his lip. "Oh, she's fine. Pretty busy, you know how Lola is."

He had some nerve to be blatantly lying to me, knowing I knew his sister better than anyone, but I was feeling apathetic that afternoon and let it slide. Besides, our mission would only be that much more miserable if I got on Carlos's bad side. He was a lot like Lola in that way.

"Do you think they'll help us?" I asked Carlos, who was looking up and down streets with narrowed eyes.

He didn't hear me.

"Carlos."

"Huh?" he said, still peering around the streets and not bothering to look at me. "Oh, yeah I'm sure they will. Why wouldn't they?"

There are a million reasons why they wouldn't, obtaining a police record being one of them, I thought, but didn't say anything.

We arrived. The houses stood in a semi-circle around us, the only way out of the place turning around and heading back from where we came. Children waddled around either playing invisible games with each other or nodding off to sleep against brick walls.

It was a place I had never been before, and the quaintness of it (compared with my typical Manhattan hideouts) struck me to the core. These people had come from the same place I had, likely from the same conditions, to the same city. Besides Lola and her family, I hadn't met any other Cubans in New York since I had arrived. Having so many of my countrymen and women around me seemed like an all too real coincidence.

Carlos walked up to a rough looking kid who was leaning a bit too casually against a nearby wall, his arms crossed indignantly and his eyes narrowed at the ruckus around him.

"Hey," Carlos said, seemingly forgetting I was following behind him.

"Hey," said the kid, still facing ahead.

"You know where Pancho lives?"

The kid lifted a cigarette that had been hidden beneath his crossed arms to his lips and puffed. The end of the cigarette burned a threatening yet comforting orange.

"Third house on the left."

Carlos nodded and walked towards the indicated house. I had to run to catch up with him.

"You don't even know where your friend lives around here?"

He didn't respond, so I kept quit and avoided pushing my luck.

Here's what I learned about Carlos that night: he couldn't persuade a fish to live in water. I went into the plan of attack thinking Carlos would magically convince everyone that had ever left Cuba for New York to join in the fight and we would be an army of thousands. Never mind that thousands of Cubans didn't live in Manhattan, he would some how find a way to get all the Cubans from the country together for a noble cause.

That wasn't the case. I learned that for as charming as Carlos was, he was severely lacking in the art of persuasion outside the romantic sphere.

The boy, previously mentioned as Pancho, opened the door after Carlos's firm knock.

"Hey, Carlos," he said, eyeing me suspiciously from behind Carlos's shoulder. "What's going on?"

"Listen, Pancho, I have a proposition for you."

The all too familiar words rung once again in my ears, while I pulled nervously on the skin between my fingers. It was happening once again, and it was strange to be on the outside looking in. From both vantage points, it was nerve-wracking.

From the first word of Carlos's speech to the very last, Pancho looked doubtful, and I could hardly blame him. Carlos's mouth took off running, leaving Pancho (and me) in the dust behind him. He started with an all too cursory explanation of the newsies, nearly left out the entire point of the strike, and emphasized too much the glory (and dangers) that awaited anyone who joined him. More than once I caught an "is he serious?" glance from Pancho and expected Carlos to slow himself down, all to no avail.

By the end of Carlos's long-winded, yet entirely uninformative speech, I felt sorry for Pancho, who appeared to be on the brink of calling his mother to help him get away from such a verbal train wreck.

"I'll have to think about it, Carlos," Pancho said, his feminine fingers tapping nervously on the door he was still holding, "I've got a lot going on right now, you know…"

Appearing not to see a glimmer of the nerves his friend was exhibiting, Carlos said, "All right, Pancho, we're counting on you. And don't forget, tell everyone you know about this – we're going to take the big man down."

Pancho half-closed the door as Carlos was talking, nodding his head and smiling uncomfortably from behind.

"All right, Izzie, that's one with us. Let's get on to the next one."

Carlos walked off, but I stayed behind, rooted to the spot where the travesty had just occurred. Had he turned around, he would have seen bewilderment frozen across my face. He didn't turnaround, however, so I followed him to the next house, keeping my thoughts to myself. After all, maybe I misread Pancho's meaning – maybe Carlos wasn't such a bad persuader after all.

The rally would be the only proof of my suspicions.

Door after door, Carlos repeated his aggressive message, effectively shutting down each and every unwilling recipient. He would urge full participation, full donation, full contribution, and the poor person standing in the door got that look of terror on their face – you know, the one where they will do anything not to get involved? That one.

Overall, most of Carlos's friends were kind and didn't outright reject his proposition, but it was plain to me that the invitation was only tentatively accepted. Even if they did show up at the rally, they were no way near as dedicated as Carlos, which wouldn't have been a problem in my mind, really, except that I knew when push came to shove and the police showed their gruesome faces, they would run to the hills faster than a white-tailed deer in pursuit.

I held my tongue during our long, demeaning tread back home. Carlos had that familiar lilt in his walk that he would get when he would charm the pretty girls in the neighborhood, and I knew he was pretty pleased with his work. I simply didn't have the heart to take that away from him, as disastrous as it would it end.

Carlos dropped me off at my apartment and went home. I saw a light underneath the door as I came to the top of the stairs and I knew my father was home and waiting for me. The hinges creaked like an old man's bones as I opened the door, hoping he was fast asleep on the sofa.

After such a luckless night, I shouldn't have expected any reprieve: not only was he not asleep on the couch, but he was sitting at the kitchen table, looking straight at me with critical eyes as I creeped through the doorway.

"Oh," I said, stopping myself mid-walk. "Buenas noches, papá. I didn't think you'd be awake." My veil of innocence was wearing transparently thin.

"Where were you, Isabel?" His eyes were angry, but his voice simply firm. I didn't know what exactly I saw in his face, but at least it wasn't barefaced rage.

"Oh, just out with Carlos," I said, resuming my walk once again and laying all my possessions on the kitchen table and gesturing towards my room. "Well, I'm quite tired so –"

He ignored me. "Carlos? What about Dolores?"

Ouch. A painful reminder.

"Ah, well, she had some things… to do for work for tomorrow?" It was upsetting to admit that I was becoming a worse liar the more I practiced.

The creases between my father's angry eyes tightened at my lie and I bit my lip. "Anyway, she was busy. So I'm going to go to bed –"

"You've been running off a lot lately, Isabel. Tell me what's going on."

Moment of truth: should I, or shouldn't I? Would it be a relief, or make my life that much harder?

Disgusted with myself, I faked a smile, walked over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Papá, I promise, nothing is going on. I'm just making some new friends is all."

The angry creases didn't let up until he spent nearly five minutes staring at my face. I had convinced myself I would be sent away to a jail across the country where the inmates ate their toenails and little girls were locked up with murderers, but when I saw those wrinkles relax, I knew I was home free.

"All right, if that's all then I guess there's nothing to say. I'm glad you're making new friends, Isabel. Sometimes I worry about you."

"About me?"

"Por supuesto. It's good to have other friends, you know. I'd begun to think that you and Lola were having troubles. I wouldn't want you to be alone," he said, standing up from his chair, looking down at me.

I had to fake another smile, this one much harder than the last. "Sure. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, papá."

I kissed him on the cheek and felt the bristles of his moustache scrape against my two-faced mug before he went into his bedroom.

That was a close one.

The next evening Carlos and I went to Tibby's to discuss our success (ha!) with the newsies. Once again, all eyes turned to face us as we opened the building door. This time, I tried to blend in behind Carlos as we went to sit next to Jack at his top-dog table, accompanied by his most trusted advisors (David being the most trusted, of course.) The rest of the motley crew leaned all around to get a good hear.

"So what happened?" he asked after we had slid in next to him.

I tried to keep my face as placid as possible, and snuck a look at Carlos. He had that ridiculous smirk on his face, the same one he always had every time he proved (or thought he did) he was right to Lola. She hated that smirk. I hated that smirk.

"I think you're gonna be really happy with the turnout," Carlos said, leaning back into the booth, arms crossed in satisfaction. "There's a whole neighborhood ready and waiting to join us."

I coughed up the water I was drinking, spraying David across from me. I wiped my mouth, hoping no one had seen. Luckily, most ignored the spasm, but David looked at me curiously, offering a napkin. I gave him an "I'm fine" quick smile and wiped my face.

"Good," Jack said. "We're gonna need 'em. This rally's gotta be the best the world has ever seen, and we need those Cubans to really show Pulitzer what we've got."

A chorus of "yeah" and "let's get 'em!" ran rampant around the restaurant. I peered around for any perturbed and disturbed customers and sighed as I found none.

"So, Jack," someone called out invisibly. "What do we gotta do?"

Jack addressed a few last minute details of the next day's rally to the crowd around him and the meeting ended. They all seemed so happy, so wholeheartedly eager about their venture that I couldn't help but feel guilty. Guilty because Carlos had unknowingly mislead them, guilty because he would end up disappointing them, and guilty because I didn't do more to help.

I immediately made up my mind to find excuses why it wasn't my fault.

David pulled on the wet napkin I had been destroying and interrupted my desperate reverie. Carlos had stood up from the booth and was talking excitedly to a boy next to him and paid no attention to our conversation.

"Is what he said true?" David asked in a hushed voice.

My eyes must have narrowed and my mouth dropped.

"I'm just asking because it sounds too good to be true. It was hard enough for us to get other newsies to join."

Guilt and surprise tend to bring out the worst in me (unfortunately, not the first time it had happened) so I shot back. "Well, if he says it's true then it's true. Carlos isn't a liar."

Davey raised his eyebrows. "I didn't mean to –" he started to say, but I interrupted him, not wanting to continue the conversation.

"So are all the New York boroughs really going to be at the rally tomorrow?"

He sighed almost imperceptibly, as if he knew my diversion tactics. "Yeah, it's true. And The Sun will be there, too. We have a friend who writes for them that I think you should meet; his name is Bryan Denton. He was a war correspondent in Cuba during the war. You'll like him."

I scoffed because I was still in a put-off mood. I was surprised when David laughed. "Trust me, Izzie, you'll like him. Maybe he's been to where you're from."

The bitterness rose up in me again inexplicably, as David had only been kind to me and had tolerated my cruel remarks. Did that stop me? Absolutely not.

"What makes you so confident this rally is going to work?"

Davey looked at me and half-smiled. "Because we're right. Justice always wins in the end."

The eagerness in his smile won me over, if only for a moment. I looked up at noticed that everyone except Jack, David, Carlos and I had left.

"Where did everybody go?" I said.

Carlos walked over. "Well, Izzie, I suppose I should get you home."

I stood up and Carlos started talking with David. I saw Jack standing by the door and walked over to him.

"Well, good night."

"Good work, Cuba," he said to me, not a trace of a smile on his face.

"What work? Carlos did all the talking," I said, shrugging.

The cowboy smirk came out of hiding. Jack slung his arm around my shoulder and said, "Just take the compliment, alright? I don't give 'em out for free."

I smiled, shook my head and pushed his arm off me.