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Jack was tired of disappointing people. She had one move, it seemed, and she was tired of making it. She finally made it to the fire escape, cursing the stupid skirt for making her trip, and the fucking tight vest from cuttin’ off her circulation. She ditched the coat, letting it fall through the wind into the mud below, and hiked up the skirt to rush up the steps.
Jack climbed the ladder and sat panting on the roof. Her penthouse. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose to keep the tears stinging her eyes at bay.
Her moment of peace was cut off by a familiar voice: “That was some speech you made.”
Jack scrambled up onto her feet. Katherine Plumber- no, Katherine Pulitzer, was standing there. Star reporter, King of New York, heiress to the mighty Joe Pulitzer herself. Jack couldn’t believe the audacity she had to show her face in here.
Audacity, she thought numbly. She had to stop hangin’ around Dave.
Jack sighed and refused to look at her. “How’d you get here?” Getting over her initial shock, she realized Katherine was holding a cylinder and papers. Her drawings.
“Well, Specs showed me-”
Jack rushed over and grabbed the cylinder, carefully rolling up the papers and stuffing them away. “What? He say you could go through my stuff?” This girl could not stop sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted. Her stupid, perfect nose.
“I saw them rolled up sticking out of there. I didn’t know what they were.” Katherine protested as Jack rushed away from her. She was silent for a minute as Jack huffed. “These drawings… These are drawings of the refuge, aren’t they? Is this really what it’s like in there? 3 children to a bed, rats everywhere,” Jack closed her eyes and tried to push away the visions of the place. She was still so angry. “and vermin…”
Jack rolled her eyes and snatched the last drawing from Katherine’s fingers. “What, a little different from where you were raised, heiress?”
Katherine sucked on her cheek as her face flushed from the insult. Good. Grovel in it, Jack thought.
“Snyder told my father that you were arrested stealing food and clothing. This is why, isn’t it? You stole to feed those children.”
Jack shook her head. How could this girl even try to pretend to understand? To pretend she cared? She would never care- especially not like Jack did.
Katherine huffed at Jack’s silence. “Wha- I don’t understand! If you are willing to go to jail for those kids, how could you turn your back on them now?!” She was right behind him now, large gestures throwing gusts of wind to Jack’s unruly hair, now missing most of the pins Joe’s barber had stuck her with.
Jack slammed down the cylinder and poked right in the reporter’s face. “Oh, I do not think you are one to talk about turnin’ on folks!”
“I never turned on you or anyone else.”
Jack laughed incredulously and stomped away. “Oh no, you didn’t, you just double-crossed us to your father- Your FATHER!”
Katherine shook her head. “My father has eyes on every corner of this city. He doesn’t need me spying for him. And I never lied.”
Jack raised her eyebrows and stared daggers into those lying hazel eyes.
“I just didn’t tell you everything.”
Jack curled her lip and tensed her fist. “Oh, if you weren’t a girl, you’d be tryin’ to talk with a fist in ya’ mouth.” Jack grabbed the railing to keep from losing her temper.
“Do I have to remind you that /you/ are a girl, Jack?” Katherine craned her neck to look at Jack in the eyes.
She tried to forget it most days. Especially when a girl pretty as Kath was up in her face.
Jack didn’t say that. She just sniffed and said, “Barely,” instead.
She did not earn a laugh from Katherine. She just kept on talking. “I told you that I worked for The Sun and I did. I told you my professional name is Plumber, and it is! You never asked my real one.” Katherine said it like it was /Jack’s/ fault.
Jack exploded off the railing and whipped around to stare at Katherine, jaw on the floor. “I wouldn’t think I had to unless I was dealin’ wit’ a backstabber!”
Katherine growled. “Oh, and if I was half as much a boy as you, you’d be looking at me through one swollen eye!”
Jack smirked. “Oh yeah? Don’t let that stop you, huh?” She grabbed Katherine’s fist and brought it to her chin. “Gimme your BEST. SHOT.”
She huffed in sync with Katherine as the tension built for a second. Then, just as Jack started to think Katherine might actually have the guts to sock her, she did something even crazier.
Katherine Pulitzer kissed Jack Kelly.
For a minute, the world turned upside down. Katherine pulled Jack’s face further and further into the kiss, and all Jack could do was close her eyes. She grabbed for a railing, for anything to convince herself she was still on Earth. She felt like she was floating.
The girls pulled apart after what felt like an eternity. Jack was still reeling. From the looks of it, Katherine was too. The shock and fear in her eyes confirmed Jack’s deepest fears.
After another eternity of silence, Katherine spoke quietly. “Jack, my father was wrong. And you didn’t give in for the money- I know that. You’re the strongest person in New York City. So why did you cave?”
Jack took a long drink of a gaze at Katherine. Her strawberry curls, the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her nose. She wished she had a pencil. She finally tore her eyes away from Katherine and exhaled sharply. “I spoke the truth, Kath. You win a fight when you got the other fella down eatin’ pavement. All right? You heard your father, no matter how many days we strike he ain’t never givin’ up. I don’t… I don’t know what else we can do.”
“Ah, but I do.”
Jack could just hear that cheeky grin. “Oh, come on.”
Katherine raised an eyebrow. “Really, Jack? Really? Only you can have a good idea?” Jack tried to protest, but Katherine cut her off. “Or is it because I’m a girl?”
Jack spluttered. “Wha- I’m a girl!”
Katherine smirked and replied, “Barely.”
Low, Kath, low. They stared at each other again, and Jack half thought they were going to kiss a second time. But as usual, Katherine only kept talking. “Jack, being boss doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Just the brains to recognize the right one when you hear it.” Katherine waved a small piece of paper in the air, waiting for Jack’s response.
Jack shook her head. “I’m listenin’!”
Katherine cocked her head with a smile. “Oh, good for you.” They were so close. Jack couldn’t take it. She was about to reach for Kath when she walked away again, talking a million miles a minute. Good grief. “The strike was your idea, the rally was Davey’s, and now my plan will take us to the finish line.” Katherine unfurled the paper in Jack’s face. “Deal with it.”
God, Jack could not get enough of her. She took the paper. “’The Children’s Crusade.’”
Katherine looked out to the stars. “For the sake of all the kids in every sweatshop, factory, and slaughterhouse in New York, I beg you, join us.”
Jack blinked. “This…” she was in disbelief.
Katherine grinned again and rushed towards her. “With those words, the strike stopped being just about the newsies. You challenged our whole generation to stand up and demand a place at the table.”
Jack was speechless. “Children’s Crusade…” she whispered.
“Think, Jack, if we publish this, my words… with one of your drawings,” she was on a roll now, “and if every worker under 21 read it and stayed home from work, or better yet, they came to Newsie Square. A general citywide strike!” Katherine laughed almost maniacally. “Even my father couldn’t ignore that!”
Jack’s mind short-circuited for a minute as she stared at Kath’s smile. Then she shook her head, remembering Pulitzer’s promise to shut down the presses. “We got one small problem. We got no way to print it.”
Katherine pursed her lips, frustrated. “Oh come on, there has to be one printing press he doesn’t control.”
There was a pause. Suddenly, an idea formed in Jack’s head. Not a good sign.
She started laughing. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?”
Jack shook her head, still laughing. “I know where there’s a printing press no one would ever think we’d use.”
Katherine jumped up and down. “Well then why are we still standing here?!” in excitement, she started climbing, and suddenly Jack could feel her one and only chance slipping away, she was letting her go, if she got down that ladder it would be over for her, for them, and-
Jack rushed over. “Hey! Hey, wait! Stop!” Katherine looked up expectantly with those damned hazel eyes, and Jack faltered. “What is this about… for you. And-and I ain’t talkin’ about the Children’s Crusade.” She motioned between the two of them. “What’s this about? What, am I… Am I kiddin’ myself or is there somethin’…”
Katherine let out a small laugh and took Jack’s hand. “Of course there is.”
Jack pulled out of Kath’s grasp like a skittish dog. “Well don’t just say it like it happens every day!”
“Jack, I didn’t-”
“No, no! I’m not an idiot!” Jack ran her fingers through her hair, pacing around the roof. “Look, I know girls like you don’t have anythin’ to do with… with gals like me. And I don’t want you promisin’ nothin’ you’re just gonna regret later.”
Jack finally faced Katherine. She was blinking back tears, like she was scared she’d messed something up. Jack squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her arm to fight back the emotion. “Standin’ here… tonight, lookin’ at you, I…” she took a shaky breath. Jack had never voiced it out loud. This feeling, this /wrongness/ she’d carried with her all her life. “Look, I’m scared tomorrow’s gonna come and change everything. If there was a way I could grab hold a’ somethin’… Just to make time stop. So’s I could just…” she cocked her head, gazing at Katherine like a painting in the Louvre. “Keep on lookin’ at you.”
Kath took a few slow steps closer to Jack, like how you’d approach a scared animal. That’s suddenly how Jack felt. Katherine paused, waiting for her to run away again. Jack always ran. But now she felt like she was made of stone. Or ice. Katherine took one beautiful, uncalloused hand, and cupped Jack’s cheek. It felt like melting.
“You snuck up on me, Jack Kelly,” she whispered. “I can’t put it into words.”
Jack, against all odds, let out a giggle. “Well, that’s sayin’ somethin’. You never stop talkin’.”
Katherine laughed and shoved her playfully. But Jack wasn’t letting any more than a foot between them. She grabbed Kath’s arm and pulled her back close. Again, Kath was almost speechless. “Jack… you’re like no one I’ve ever met. You turned my world upside down.”
Jack took one of Kath’s curls and twirled it in her fingers. “You’re an angel, you know that? Heiress, we was never even meant to meet. But you saved me. You- you believed in me.”
Katherine’s eyes shined like the stars making her backdrop. She pressed one, timid kiss to Jack’s lips again. She smiled against Jack’s lips. “Love will do what it does, won’t it?” she said, almost to herself. The girls sank down against a railing, holding each other like buoys in a storm.
“If things were different…” Jack said somewhere in the night, holding both of Katherine’s hands.
Katherine leaned her head on Jack’s shoulder. “What, if you weren’t going to Santa Fe?”
“And if you weren’t an heiress, and if your father wasn’t after my head, and…” /and if you weren’t a girl./ The words hung in the air, both refusing to accept what would face them if they ever made it off the roof. “Kath, if this is gone tomorrow…”
“Don’t say that.”
Jack stared up at the sky. The sun was close to rising. “Just… I’ll know it happened. What ya’ did for me. Either way, I don’t regret a thing.”
“I don’t regret anything except not kissing you sooner, Kelly.”
Jack flushed. She would not let go of Katherine Pulitzer until someone tore her away.