Longing Hearts

The Fight

I woke up with a start the next morning. Today is the day. I get ready in some extra clothes one of the girls gives me. It is kinda nice too have other girls around.

I leave my hair down and throw my hat on top. I follow the newsies out of the lodging house, too, to meet up with The Bronx.

Reaper, the leader of the Harlem charge, and newsboy of The Bronx, gathers the Queens kids who are going to Harlem.

Right before we leave I remember something and run over to Scratch to tell him, as he is the leader of the Manhattan attack.

"Hay Scratch," I say knowing that I am gonna have too tell him. The horrible feeling of betrayal builds up in me stopping me from telling him "good luck" I say weakly walking back too my group of newsies.

My group makes its way to Harlem. Reaper has decided to make me his right-hand man/woman. Don't ask me why but I ain't complaining. Reaper and I talk quietly about how we should take this on.

"What if we split up and take them from each side," Reaper suggests.

"No, they would be expecting us to try to trick them. What if we pull a Brooklyn's here move." I suggest

"A what??" he asks.

Right, I forgot that they were not there when Brooklyn helped us during the strike.

"During the strike, manhattan was being beaten and the Brooklyn boys came to help us, they showed up on the roof and started shooting the cribs with pebbles from their slingshots," I explain

He nods understandingly. The only problem with my plan was that Harlem and Queens'

newsies didn't use slingshots. That's a Brooklyn thing. Manhattan uses logic and thinking Queens use force. Harlem usually waits till others make them weak and then comes in with their sticks and beat them up.

"We don't have slingshots tho" Reaper says pulling me out of my thoughts.

"Really, I hadn't realized," I say sarcastically.

"Geeze, what should we do?" he says, putting his hands up in defense.

"Maybe we still should watch from the roofs but send just a few kids to spy, then we get some info on what they are doing and plan our attack from there," I suggest. Seriously, why am I not the leader of this? Oh yeah, cuz a girl can't lead.

We send out the four best spies to the roofs. We just sit in the allies to stay hidden. After waiting about an hour our spies come back and tell us the plan that Harlem has. They are gonna attack at night while we are asleep.

Something about two of our boys doesn't seem right. Then it hits me. These aren't Bronx kids, these are Harlem spies. No one notices. Oh my god, am I the only smart one here!!

"Those are not our kids" I shout out.

"You idiot, what makes you think we will listen to a girl? '' a random boy from the crowd yells.

Ok, my temper gets bad when someone says something bad about me. I storm over too the person who said it and punch him in his stupid little face. All around me the boys back up making a circle around us, some even chanting 'fight, fight, fight' I'm ok with that. I ain't below beating his ass.

Once this boy gets up he swings a punch at me. It hit me square in the nose, I was not expecting him to fight back. I feel blood dripping from my nose down my chin. I just smirk, probably looking like a psychopath. I kick and punch. He punches mostly. Soon enough I barely can tell where he is. There is so much chaos. I do however feel a lot of punches landing on my face and ribs.

I think I beat him eventually. We both are all bloody and hurt. I stand over him as he is on the ground in pain. I turn around to walk away but he trips me with his feet and I fall. He jumps up and punches me, landing one really bad one on my ribs.

There is a loud audible Crack when he hits me. There is a sharp pain in my ribs. I bite my tongue to stop from screaming out. Reaper rushes forward pulling the other kid away from me. Fear is in the air, so thick that you would need a sharp knife to cut it.

I try to stand up but the pain is unbearable. My vision is starting to go black and the sounds around me are muffled.

Soon enough the darkness consumes me, all my feelings are gone. I am gone.