Alone Amongst Newsies (Completed)

A Plan Unfolds

I scurried down the dark alley looking around to make sure I wasn't being followed.

My name is Claire and I've been on the streets for about a week now. My dad died when I was only five and my mother recently passed away from an unknown sickness. I had made do for a short time, but as I ran out of funds I stopped being able to pay rent. I got sent to the refuge when I couldn't pay the rent I owed. I spent a year there, dealing with the delancey brothers and other torments. One night I was able to escape, but I was in constant fear of being sent back.

So here I am now, huddled in a corner of a dark alley, just as I had been the night before and the night before that.

I can't keep living like this. I'd go be a working girl in one of the factories but those jobs are dangerous, and sometimes a working girl with no family can just disappear. No, I wasn't going to allow myself a fate like that.
Suddenly the only possible solution came to me, I would be a news boy!

They earned enough to get by, and it was far less dangerous than being a seventeen year old girl alone in a factory. There was only one problem, to be a newsy you have to be a boy.

Catching a glimpse of myself in a nearby puddle I considered my appearance. Long brown hair with a slight wave, full lips, and long lashes. I am nowhere near large in the chest, but it was enough that it could give me away.

If I want to be a newsy I have to do something about my appearance. Settling into my corner more comfortably, a plan started to form in my mind as I drifted off to sleep.