I got the idea for this when my friend and I were talking about Newsies. She told me that "If I got any more obsessed with that movie, I'd have to get professional help." I decided to write this short story, working off that idea. It's written out of humor and is purely fictional—No, I'm not this much of a freak. It includes no actual characters from Newsies, but it does have a lot of references to the movie, so any newsie fan should get the jokes. I had fun writing this, but it's pretty much completely pointless.

.:----:'-':----:.

"Maria... Please." My mother urged me. "Don't you want to know how to fix this? Please. Just go talk to the nice man. For thirty minutes. That's it."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Fine." I grumbled. "But I ain't happy 'bout it." My mother's face lit up and she nudged me through the door. "I'll be in the waiting room." She told me, staying outside but closing the door behind me.

I glanced around the room, cautiously taking a few steps further in. It was furnished with dark red oak tables and a couch that matched perfectly. The floor was covered with a rug that was a cross between beige and off-white.

A man, in his late forties, looked up from the clipboard he had been looking over. "Oh! Hello. Please take a seat... Maria, is it?" He asked, scanning the clipboard again. I walked over and sat down on the psychiatrist couch. "Actually... Me name's Mush." I told him.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "When your mother booked the appointment, she told me your name was Maria..." He looked down once more and flipped through his notes. "Strange...Did I call in the wrong patient?" He mumbled, talking more to himself than to me.

I sighed. "Well, me mudda' insists on callin' me Maria. Me actual name. But my nickname, which I'd much ratha' prefer, is Mush." I explained.

"Your... Mudder?" He questioned, blinking a few times in confusion. "Yeah. Mudda. Ya know, da woman who gave boith to me?" I stated. "Boith... right." He mumbled, jotting down some notes on his clipboard.

"Anyway. Let's get started, shall we? My name is Doctor Stine. I'm your psychiatrist." He extended his hand towards me to shake mine. Out of habit, I spit in the palm of my hand and extended it as well, but he pulled back quickly before I could complete the handshake. Doctor Stine stared at me for a moment with a look of disgust on his face. I simply shrugged and wiped my hand on my pants.

He cleared his throat and forced his facial expression back to neutral. "I'm just going to ask you a few questions for the next thirty minutes..." He said. "I suppose we'll start with your nickname. Care to explain why you go by 'Mush'?" Doctor Stine asked.

"He's me favorite." I explained simply. The psychiatrist furrowed his brow. "Your... Favorite?" He repeated. "Your favorite what?"

"Me favorite newsie." I explained. "Me 'nd me friends... We'se all got dibs on our favorite ones, see? We go by da names." Doctor Stine tilted his head slightly to the side, indicating that he was puzzled. "There's more of you?" he questioned.

"Shoah dere is. Dere's Race 'nd Davey... Conlon, Blink... Skittery, too." I responded. "Those are some... Ahem, colorful nicknames. Why do you have them?" The doctor asked. "I jus' told ya!" I exclaimed. "We'se all got dibs on—" Doctor Stine shook his head quickly. "No... Let me clarify. I mean, what is the reasoning behind having these nicknames. Why not just go by your birth names? Are you in a club or group or something?... Possibly a cult?"

I thought about it, tapping my fingers lightly against my knee. "Hmm... Well, sorta, I guess... We'se in a union?" I said. "Really. What kind of union." His question came out more like a statement as he began to scribble notes on the paper again. "A newsies union." I replied.

"You keep using that word, "newsie." What exactly do you mean by it?" Doctor Stine said. I sighed, getting tired of his questions. And, to make it worse, the session wasn't nearly close to being over yet. "Ya know, newsies. Hawkin' headlines, carryin' da banner?" I said. He raised an eyebrow at me. "Peddlin' papes!" I exclaimed.

The psychiatrist stared at me for a few seconds, simply blinking. "Very well." He muttered, flipping to a clean page and writing more things down. He continued to write for a while as I sat in silence. I looked around the room for a little while longer, taking in the details more carefully. My eyes wandered to a newspaper sitting on the coffee table placed between the doctor's chair and the couch I was seated on.

"Can I see dis?" I asked, motioning to the newspaper. He looked up just long enough to see what I was talking about. Then Doctor Stine nodded and returned his gaze to his written comments. "Dis recent?" I asked. "Yes. I just picked it up this morning." He replied.

I quickly thumbed through the pages, searching for something that caught my eye. When nothing did, I closed the paper and tossed it back on the table. "Ugh. No good headlines today at all. Figures." I muttered.
He made a period on the page and cleared his throat. Doctor Stine placed the clipboard across his lap and shifted his position slightly in his chair. "So... Let's talk about your clothes, shall we?" He asked. God... Even when dis guys makin' a statement he's gotta toin it into a question.

"What 'bout me clothes?" I asked. I could tell that the doctor was looking for the correct words. "Well, um... They're quite... er, interesting. It's very rare that you see someone of your... Well, age, walking around in a cabbie hat and suspenders."

"Look, mista'! I wears what I'se can afford, a'right?" I exclaimed in defense. "We can't all have da money to dress like you high-class people do, a'right? Geez, da noive of some people in dis city..." I muttered.

"Mari—uh, Mush..." He caught himself. "We're not in the city. We're in the suburbs." He told me slowly. I laughed. "Last time I checked, mista', da suburbs don't got five boroughs." I said. Doctor Stine decided that it was better to just agree with me than to argue. "Right." He stated, scribbling more things down.

"Now. When did this whole thing start?" He asked me. I shot him a confused glance. "What do ya mean?" I said. He thought about it, looking for a way to rephrase the sentence so I would understand. The doctor cleared his throat. "When did you start... "Selling papes." He asked.

"Oh! Well, see... Me 'nd Blink was in school, right? It was eight grade, I think, 'nd we was in da same history class. We loined 'bout da strike in 1899 'nd watched a movie on it, see?"

Doctor Stine nodded his head and continued to write. "Go on." He muttered. "Go on to what? I'se done, dat's it. Now I sell papes." I told him. "Now when you "sell papes", you mean..."

"Up at 5:30, every day. I catch da mornin' edition, and sometimes if me profits aren't too good I'se gotta get da afternoon, too." I explained. "Den it's back to da lodgin' house for da night."

"The lodging house." He stated, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah... Don't tell me you'se neva' seen da lodgin' house...? On Duane Street?" The look of confusion written on his face told me that he hadn't. "Big brick buildin' wit a green door? Sign over it written in gold letterin'?"

"Yer hopeless." I stated, slumping down in the chair. The psychiatrist shook his head in a pitying manner. "I'm hopeless?" He muttered under his breath, scribbling notes on the page once again.

Doctor Stine tore off a small piece of paper and scribbled something on that as well. Then, finishing up his notes, he set aside the clipboard and glanced up at the clock on the wall. "It looks like this session is over. Using the notes I've collected, I think I've come to a conclusion." Doctor Stine handed me the small paper.

"Believes that she is a newsboy from the early 1900's."

I looked up from the paper and raised an eyebrow at the psychiatrist. "Well, I could've told you dat."