Thank you to newsiesofchicago and Nicely Nicely's Little Sister for reviewing! You guys are awesome. Thank you! Alright here we go, back to 1899…

"She just fainted again, I'm not sure. She says she can read," Francesca whispered. Salvatore looked alarmed.

"She's beautiful, though, no?" Sal responded. It sounded like Francesca hit him.

"Oh… oh no… Sal, do you think she is a prostitute?" Francesca panicked. At this point, I decided to open my eyes. They both rushed to my bedside when my eyes open. Damn it, I was still in this weird subconscious coma thing. I've decided that's the only way any of this makes sense. I got hit by Mack's car, I must have been hit really hard, and now I was in a coma. Duh. Perfect sense.

How do you tell if you are dreaming… I stared at the bed trying to get some knowledge back. You would think a 17 year old prodigy that attends Yale would have some kind of knowledge to draw back on, but the only advice I could recall was from Teen Wolf- if you can't read, or if you have extra fingers you were in a dream.

Clearly the reading thing was out the door already, I had read the fake newspaper title. I glanced down swiftly at my hands and- yep. All ten fingers were present and accounted for. I sighed, defeated.

I had three options- either I was crazy, I was in a weird afterlife situation, or I had been kicked back into the past. The third one was the least morbid, so I decided to play along with this weird situation. If I was dead or crazy, it would have to end at some point. I would like go to heaven or hell or some shit, or I would wake up in a white room with a straight jacket on. But, even if I was to believe in stuff like time travel, I wasn't sure that ever ended.

I felt normal, you know? Like all solid, and I noticed things I noticed at home. How my body was sore and I felt injured, how my hair felt disgusting and knotted, and how I was naked. I was naked!

"Where are my clothes?" I yelped in Italian. Francesca rushed over to me with a pile of my stuff, while Sal averted his eyes. I ripped through the pile- it was all there. My trusty pair of running leggings were there with one frayed knot at the knee, bloodstained. My sports bra was also bloodstained, but was still the same one I was wearing. My shirt was unrecognizable- it was like shredded, and wet with blood that had not yet dried. My white Nikes and socks were no longer white, but had been tainted by my blood. Francesca approached me as one would approach a tiger.

"And this," She said, handing me all that was left of the "shattered metal". And all that was left was the home button on my iPod. The giant white circle that had play/pause/next/back. Attached to absolutely nothing, it sat in my hand, mocking me with it's horrible futuristic taunting. My palm closed around it.

"I think I got hit by a carriage. The man who I was supposed to marry was angry with me when I denied him," The lies came falling out of my mouth, I wasn't really sure where they came from. "This must have fallen off the carriage."

They nodded in sadness, but their eyes urged me on. They believed what I was saying.

"I am not a prostitute," I said, making eye contact with Francesca. "But, I am far from home. Far from Palermo. My family is dead, I have no one. I have no job, I don't know this city- it's like I'm from a, from a different-"

"Time and place," Sal completed my sentence, nodding sadly. I stared at him, alarmed. Did he know something I didn't? "I felt the same way when I moved here from Naples."

"And I, too, when I moved from Rome," Francesca added. "But very quickly, you adjust."

"Adjust or die," Sal and I whispered at the same time. We stared at each other in surprise. Did we just have a moment?

"See? You're already starting to fit in!" Francesca joked, trying to lighten the mood. "Elena, this is Salvatore."

"Piacere," Sal stated, moving towards me. He dropped pane cafone, the signature bread from Naples, into my lap. "It's not pane semolina, but it is the best I can do."

I smiled at him, a true genuine smile. To him, I was a poor immigrant girl who had gotten herself into trouble. I wasn't a time traveling freak with a psycho ex boyfriend. I was just a fellow Italian that fell into their lives.

"Thank you," I whispered, before digging into the bread. Holy mother of God, I was starving. Time traveling/murder attempts really wore a girl out.

"Sal and I talked," Francesca started. "We want to help you. We want you to heal, and we want you to be okay."

"We want you to live with us until you are better, and then we will help you find a job."

"But, you see with the baby on the way, we would invite you to stay forever, but we have another mouth to feed, you know," She looked ashamed. I swallowed the bread.

"No! No. I understand. This is okay. You need to be focused on the baby, and not a stranger. You have already been so kind to me, please don't worry-" I rushed the words out of my mouth, but then Sal held up his hand.

"Elena, we have made a plan. You can become part of this family, yes of course, but we have a plan for you, and you will have to trust us. This America, this dream, is not so golden as we saw from Italy. You have to fight to survive."

I stared at him, his dark eyes that were full of betrayal and hardened by his lessons learned. He looked like a young, haunted Al Pacino. He and Francesca were a hot couple, but that was probably weird for me to think. They were as old as my great grandparents!

"We have a neighbor family. They are from Southern Italy, Calabria," Calabria was pretty close to Sicily. I immediately wanted to meet them. "They have two boys, 18 and 20. They are nice, hard working boys who don't want to be in the mafia. This, you see, is surprising here. Every young kid wants to commit crimes and have blood on their hands to make money. But, these two boys want to work for their money.

"They work in Manhattan from Mondays to Saturdays selling newspapers, and living in a house together. Then, on Sundays, they come back to their families and go to church, and eat, and have fun. This is the plan for you."

"But, I'm not a boy," I started out. "Isn't it a bit hard for women to get these jobs, nowadays?" I asked, recalling all the horrible treatment of women I had read about in history textbooks.

"No," Francesca began. "You are not a boy, but… It doesn't mean anyone else has to know that." She grinned, a bit mischievous. Sal mimicked her expression.

"After you heal, we are going to dress you in my old clothes," Sal began. "We are going to teach you how to talk like a man, walk like a man, sell like a man- and then we disguise you. We tell our neighbor family on a Sunday that you are my distant cousin from Sicily, coming to the US to find a new life. And we say that you want to sell newspapers. Then, bada bing, you are a newsboy."

I had to hold back my laughter at his use of bada bing, which made him sound scarily like Robert De Niro. The plan was somewhat brilliant, and especially if these people were used to the times. But, the whole me living in a men's lodging house for six days at a time was a bit unnerving.

"I like the plan," I began slowly. "But I am nervous about living in a boy's house for six days at a time."

"Of course," Sal nodded his head vigorously. "But, you just have to be careful. Never let your hat come off your head, sleep far away from others if you can, and always go to the bathroom alone. You can bathe on Sundays, here."

I almost winced, but I stopped myself. Not bathing here was normal. That was a thing, so I had better catch on. I thought hard for a moment.

"Yes," I agreed. "I can do this."

Francesca and Salvatore beamed at me like happy parents. I sighed. I had apparently gone back in time, and had already found a family that I would have killed for in modern times. It was strange. But, I was going to ride it out.

Why not?