Disclaimer: This is a non-commercial work of fanfiction. Anything recognizable from Newsies belongs to Disney and not to me.


Chapter 3: Looking for a Story

Katherine Plumber let out an undignified sneeze. At this point, she didn't care if she never saw another poinsettia or peony again.

Sniffling, she tucked her pen and pad of paper under her arm, pulling a handkerchief from her purse and dabbing at her nose as the botanist at the head of the gaggle of reporters continued his droning lecture. The cloying floral scent in the air and the persistent tickling in her nose made concentrating difficult, but she did her best to attend to the man's presentation and to the questions of her counterparts, even as she fervently wished that she could be somewhere else.

Of all the functions that she was regularly assigned to cover, she hated the flower shows the most. How could one possibly be content waxing eloquent about the newest cultivar of magnolia when there were much more pressing issues that demanded attention? She had nothing against horticultural diversions, but she was young and ambitious, the possessor of a ready wit and an eager pen, and the last thing that she wanted to be doing was wheezing her way through a flower show when she could be out writing hard news.

Deciding that she'd endured this misery long enough, Katherine quietly slipped away from the group of reporters and made her way out of the exhibition hall that hosted the flower show. She had already amassed a list of notable attendees, a few quotes from the president of the Society of American Florists, and her scattered summary of the botanist's lecture, which she knew collectively would be enough for her article. It wouldn't be riveting stuff, but it would be pass muster.

Turning her footsteps towards Printing House Square, Katherine took a deep breath, grateful for the freely-circulating air outdoors. It was a lovely day; the sun was out, there was enough of a breeze to keep the heat from being unbearable, and, most importantly, there was not a single flower in sight.

"Spare some change for a boy down on his luck, miss?"

A voice broke into Katherine's thoughts, and she looked down to see a ragged-looking lad holding out a grimy cup. He couldn't have been much older than ten, and his hand was wrapped in a dirty bandage.

Katherine dug into her purse, feeling the familiar ache of compassion welling up in her chest.

"What happened to your hand?" she asked gently as she dropped a coin into the boy's cup.

The youngster jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a small figure huddled against a wall a few yards away. "Me and my brother worked in a factory until we got into an accident. His foot got crushed, and I lost a part of a finger, so now we's both out of work."

He peered into the cup, and his eyes widened. "Geez, miss!" he exclaimed. "We's gonna be able to eat for three days on this. Thank you!"

He ran off excitedly towards his brother, and Katherine continued walking slowly down the street, glancing just once over her shoulder at the pair of boys before they were lost from sight.

Now there was a story just waiting to be told, she thought soberly.

Concern for the plight of New York's working children had affected Katherine for as long as she could remember. As a young girl, she'd gazed out of the window of her home in the early morning hours, watching as a stream of boys and girls trudged past every day on their way to the factories. In the cold weather, they'd huddled together, shivering and gaunt, desperate for warmth, while Katherine, from inside, had sipped hot chocolate and waited for her private tutor to arrive for the morning's lessons. It had been a striking contrast, and she could still recall the uneasy feeling that had settled in her heart as she'd watched those children pass by on the street, not completely understanding their situation, but instinctively knowing that it was vastly different from hers. She remembered naively wishing that she could invite them all in, out of the cold, to have a cup of hot chocolate with her.

As she grew older, her awareness increased, and so did her determination to do something about the uneasy feeling that still set in whenever she saw an injured child begging on the street or heard the piping voice of a young newsboy hawking headlines late into the night long after the sun had gone down. This determination, among other things, was what had led Katherine to become a reporter.

It hadn't turned out the way she'd expected.

She liked her job at The Sun, and was grateful that the editors there had given her a chance to write at all...but the restlessness that she'd been feeling for months now was steadily growing, and it was getting harder and harder to review yet another vaudeville act or art exhibition while watching the world, with all of its weighty and perplexing problems, spin by. There had to be something more she could do - after all, if Nellie Bly could go undercover to investigate a lunatic asylum, surely Katherine Plumber could get the story on the working conditions in the garment factories, or uncover the dark secrets surrounding the young laborers who toiled in the coal mines. There were thousands of working children out there, exploited and invisible, and it sat ill with Katherine that, despite her relative position and privilege, there was little that she could do for them.

Climbing the steps to the office of The New York Sun, Katherine transversed the lobby and hurried up the stairs to her office on the third floor. It wasn't an office, actually - more like a little alcove with just enough room for her desk, a chair, and a typewriter - but she was thankful to have even this tiny space to call her own.

As usual, the floor was a hive of activity.

"How was the flower show, Kath?" Lena McClain, a copy editor for the entertainment pages, fell into step beside Katherine as she made her way across the room to her desk.

"Oh, the usual," Katherine replied with a wave of her hand. "Vapid and strongly perfumed." Arriving at her desk, she sat down and stowed her belongings away in the drawer before placing a fresh sheet of paper in her typewriter.

Lena gave her a sympathetic look. "I know it's not the big story that you've been hoping for, but you do such good work, Katherine - someone's bound to notice soon. Don't be too discouraged, all right? If you decide to up and leave, I don't know what I'd do without you."

"The feeling is certainly mutual," Katherine replied with a small smile. She and Lena were two of the few women who worked on the third floor, so they'd stuck together since day one, the veteran Lena taking Katherine under her wing and helping her adjust until Katherine had found her footing at The Sun. Even now, they maintained a close and cordial working relationship, and Lena was the only one (in or out of the office) who truly knew how dissatisfied Katherine had been as of late.

"Well, I'll leave you to your review," Lena said, giving Katherine a nod. "When you're done with your draft, just drop it off at my desk. I'll be in meetings all afternoon, but I'll look for it tonight before I leave."

"Thanks, Lena," Katherine replied.

She pulled out her notes from the flower show, ready to get to work. It was already well into the afternoon, so she would need to focus in order to complete her article in a timely manner.

Just as she had begun typing, however, an oily, self-assured voice broke into her thoughts.

"So tell me, Katherine, what's The Sun's prettiest reporter doing after work tonight?"

Trying to hide her irritation, Katherine looked up from her typewriter, schooling her features into what she hoped was a vaguely pleasant but not inviting look.

She didn't have time for this. She really just wanted to write her article.

"I'm flattered, Mr. Raber," she answered, giving the man in front of her desk a thin smile, "but I actually have plans tonight."

It was a bit of a lie - she didn't have set plans, per se - but she'd make Darcy take her out to see a show or something, anything to get away from the assistant editor at The Sun, who, despite Katherine's clear and unwavering lack of interest, had persisted in trying to get her to go out with him and refused to take no for an answer.

The man raised an eyebrow at her. "You always seem to have plans," he lamented, shaking his head. "It's really too bad." Resting his hands on her desk, he leaned towards her, adding quietly, "Perhaps if you weren't so busy, Katherine, you'd realize that you could be doing yourself - and your career - a favor if you'd just say 'yes' to my invitations every once in a while."

Katherine's hands, resting in her lap underneath her desk, clenched in anger at his insinuation, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say something scathing in reply. She knew that Clarence Raber wasn't interested in her for her lively personality, her intelligence, or even for her writerly skill (his few perfunctory comments on her articles had convinced her of that). To him, she was just a pretty face and nothing more. And she could have boxed him for thinking that, for thinking that she'd be low enough to advance her career through means other than hard work and a track record that spoke for itself.

But, sadly, decking the man would mean losing her job. And Katherine, while admittedly hot-headed at times, wasn't short-sighted enough to allow a smarmy, patronizing boor like him to derail her career.

Taking her silence for wavering indecision, Raber said, a bit smugly, "If you're interested, my offer remains."

"Thank you," Katherine said stiffly. "But I really am quite busy." She began typing again, pointedly fixing her eyes on the paper in front of her.

The assistant editor straightened up, chuckling. "I'll win you over yet, Katherine," he said, wagging a finger condescendingly at her before finally walking away.

As soon as he disappeared, Katherine sighed, stopped typing and sat back. She stared at the nearly-blank page in her typewriter, her concentration broken. It was all in a day's work, dealing with men like Raber, but it certainly wasn't the kind of work that she'd signed up for when she'd decided to become a reporter, and while she'd become proficient at dismissing unwanted advances, it didn't make dealing with them any less unpleasant.

Shaking her head, she once again put her fingers to the keys, willing herself to push aside her less-than-charitable thoughts and to write. These small annoyances - the meaningless, dull reporting assignments and the unsolicited attention - had a way of wearing on her, but she would not give up or give in. She needed to be patient. There was something more, waiting just beyond her reach. She didn't know what it was, or how she even knew that it was coming. (Perhaps it was a reporter's intuition, or something deeper than that - she couldn't tell). But as her restlessness over the past few months had grown, so too had an unwavering certainty that there was a big story coming, just waiting to be broken.

It might surprise her any day now. She just needed to keep her eyes and ears open.


A/N: As many of you Fansies know, Nellie Bly was a ground-breaking historical figure, a female reporter who worked for (guess who?) Joseph Pulitzer and The World. Katherine's character was apparently inspired by the real-life Ms. Bly, so I thought it would be interesting to write the latter into the story, since historically, if Katherine had been a real person working in the journalism world in 1899, she likely would have been familiar with Bly's work.