The Disgraced Newsie( Rewritten)

Chapter 1: Jack Kelly's POV

Ever since the strike ended, life at the Lodging House has been a constant living hell. I know what you are probably thinking. Since the newsies won the strike, things would be better for everyone. Well, it's not for me.

Hi! The name is Jack Kelly. You know, the famous "strike leader" and everything like that. And that is what everyone know me as, but if you are a newsie, then you would probably know me as the "traitor", the "sell-out", the "liar", and the "disgrace".

Most of the time, I would stay up here in my penthouse because none of the boys would ever come up here anymore, but I would sell papers whenever it felt necessary for me to do it. But the issue is that whenever I decided to come downstairs, the boys would send me glares, but I would just ignore it, skip breakfast, sell as many papers as I could, then stay upstairs in my penthouse for the rest of the day.

Did I mention that I skip breakfast? Well, that is because the boys would throw food at me, call me as many names as they can come up with, then threaten to beat me up until I leave. There were a couple of times where they would and I would end up unconscious.

And I know what you are saying right now. Why don't I just leave? Go to Santa Fe like I always wanted? Well, because 1. Running away to Santa Fe has stopped being a dream of mine. 2. Despite of how the boys treat me nowadays, I still care about all of them and I would never just want to abandon them like that. And 3. Where would I possibly run off to? Every single newsie in New York hates me, expect for Davey, but I think that he secretly hates me, but he never said that out loud. I guess I could have stayed with Katherine or Ms. Medda, but Katherine and I broke up with each other and we are still friends or something like that, but I don't think she would want to put up with a traitor in her apartment. And I think Ms. Medda is still upset with me for what happened at the rally and probably doesn't want anything to do with me right now.

At least I can find some comfort in my art book, which was the only thing that I have from my mother before she passed away. It helped me a lot over the past couple of months to just escape from it all and draw in this book.

I still wish that at least one of the boys realize that I never meant to betray them like that at the rally and that all I wanted to do was to protect them from the Refuge, but I know that day will never come. So for now, I'll just keep drawing in my art book and dream of a better tomorrow, but who am I kidding? Even I know that it is just another painting in my head.