Newsies have secrets. Everyone knows this.

Newsies have to lie to survive. Everyone knows this.

Newsies see each other as a family. Everyone knows this.

Newsies will sometimes cry over what they've lost. They let no one know this.

Newsies aren't affected by pain, or loss. At least the older ones aren't. After all, the kids need someone to look up to.

So there, in the city of New York, divided into its hardened boroughs, the older newsies hid their pain.

They'd witnessed horrible things. Starvation, people that had spent too long in the cold winter, disease, death. It hardened them. Made them stronger. They were strong.

Yet…..the death of ones they knew, they trusted, they loved. Those hurt. Those sent them spiraling.

But they got over it quickly. They had to. Weakness wasn't an option.

So as Jack Kelley dreamed, Racetrack Higgins shouted at horses, and Spot Conlon was watching over his boys on his tower of crates, they ignored the horrors around them the best they could.

As they went on with their day on October 12, 1899, not that far away, something happened that would change their lives.

In Albany, New York, a small girl hid in a crate as her parents screamed.