The Next Edition

Les

"She says we can start anytime from tomorrow and onwards," said David, who now came back into the room. "If dad gets laid off."

David's amount of naivety was sort of foolish. This was another thing Les neglected to say out loud.

"So what do you say we start tomorrow?" David suggested. Right off the bat assuming that they were gonna need to become newsies was apparently a thing he had to do now.

"Sounds great."

"At noon?"

"I'm gonna hang out with Sally at noon."

"We can't show up too late," David's eyes fixed on a spot, his mind considering his options. "Would you mind skipping your play-date?"

Les made a sound of "I-don't-want-that-at-all", and cringed at Davey's use of the word "play-date".

"Why can't we just get there late?" he asked.

"Because we'll want to make a good impression."

"Don't you know those guys from your school?" Les tilted his head.

"Yes, but I haven't talked to them before," David shook his head.

"Why can't I go on my own later then?"

"Because you don't know how that job works."

Les rolled his eyes dramatically. Why must his brother be a rule-follower, with no exceptions whatsoever?

"Fine. I'll skip hanging out with Sally," Les surrendered, but not happily so.

"Good," Davey said, and Les would very much have liked to slap him.

"So... Do we need to sign up or somethin', or so we just show up and tell them that we're gonna sell papers now?" he said instead of opting for the more violent choice.

"I'm not sure. I'll look it up," David spun around in the chair and started typing and reading things again. Les fell back onto the couch.

So this would be interesting. Walking around the streets after school and selling papers to unsuspecting victims. His mother and father had been such victims a few times when Les was with them. Once or twice, they had bought a paper from the persuasive boys. Les could remember a few of them. His memory was quite good.

There had been one boy with very red hair, whose accent was so thick, and whose grammar was so bad that Les had trouble understanding him.

Once they'd bought a paper from a boy who looked like he was trouble looking them in the eye. His eyes never quite found the exact right spot.

They'd also bought a newspaper from a girl who was almost as short as Les. She'd been really loud.

One of the more remarkable moments involved the redhead and a blonde boy with a cigar in his mouth. They were chuckling on the other side of the street while a boy with only one vest button sold the Jacobses a paper.

The only time they'd actually walked up to a newsie to buy a paper because they really wanted to was when an older boy had shouted out a sublime headline. Les' mother had not been able to find it anywhere in the newspaper.

Recalling these memories, Les became quite excited to start selling these stories. If he was going to get to know the girl and the boys he'd encountered in the city, it couldn't be anything but fun. They sure seemed like they were having a blast on the dirty streets. They were also older than most people Les had the ability of meeting on a daily basis. Fifth graders weren't much fun for the most part. Terribly immature. Les couldn't call himself 100% mature, but he'd like to think that he was more on a teenager's level than a ten-year-old's.