"I need you to be quiet," Melanie hissed nervously, pressing one of her trembling hands to the quilted material that formed the sling in which she carried Jane Miriam Connoy, her wispy haired ten-month-old daughter. "Please," she murmured, sliding one of the carefully-sewn straps off her shoulder and cradling the wrapped-up child in her free arm. She slipped the other of the fastenings off, slowly shifting the rucksack-style contraption to mount the child less conspicuously on her back. Jane fussed quietly to herself. "Lovie, just for a few minutes more, and then you'll get your dinner. I—I need this chance."

The young woman's vividly blue eyes gazed awestricken at the building she had stumbled upon, the hand-painted wooden sign above its door labeled in promising script, "Bay Ridge Newsies' Lodging House." She scratched absently at a mosquito bite on her elbow and tentatively approached one of the large front windows. The cheap but effective muslin curtains were tied to the sides, the window pushed open to the steamy late-July air, and she allowed her gaze to roam over the interior of the room. A parlor or entryway, it seemed, or perhaps a lobby; a twin pair of shabby upholstered chairs stood as dilapidated soldiers guarding the room languidly, their fabric clashing somewhat with the grey foam cushions on the long, stiff-looking sofa. A scratched, scarcely varnished table sat strewn with playing cards, books, and assorted newspapers in the midst of the whirlwind furniture. A young woman with long, copper-colored curls of hair was lounging on one of many stiff-backed wooden chairs, her eyes laughing as she attempted to display disapproval of the boy seated cross-legged on the floor opposite her. He was gesturing to the wall and snickering, but Melanie was unable to see to what he was pointing. Instead she took several rapid steps back from the window, smiling gently to herself, and she bent to pick up her navy calico bag, its silver-colored clasp glinting in the yellow light of the setting sun.

"C'mon, Janey," the dark-haired young woman murmured to the wriggling child on her back. "We've got something to look into." Steeling her nerves, Melanie took a deep breath and tapped timidly on the weather-worn wood of the front door.

"'Eyah, who's there?" called a female voice from within. She heard footsteps on a wooden floor and then a click as the shiny brass door-handle popped open. The hinges groaned good naturedly as the door swung wide to reveal a tall, redheaded girl with startlingly beautiful green eyes. "'Eyah," murmured the young woman as she took a step back from the doorway. "Won't `cha come in?"

"Yes, please," Melanie answered delicately, stepping over the threshold in scuffed black leather boots. "I—I was wondering if you—" She broke off, a nervous laugh on her lips. "This—this is a boarding house, then, isn't it?"

The curly-headed girl nodded, stepping around Melanie to close the front door behind her. "Boardin' house, right. Fah newsgoils. Y'know—sellin' papers?" She made a bit of a gesture with her hands to signify distribution and Melanie nodded with bright eyes.

"So—so if I lived here, I could get a job. Selling newspapers." Her blue eyes literally shone, the appearance of candlelight on velveteen.

"Right." The girl tossed her curly-haired head slightly, drumming her fingers rhythmically on the wall. "We'se got space `vailable, too. Bunks, that is. Y'know—we sleep in bunks. Upstairs." She motioned with her head toward the cracking white paint on the ceiling of the entryway. "We got a bunkroom for goils and one for boys. It's—bettah that way." She cracked a grin, and Melanie smiled amiably in return. A short silence fell upon them. "I'm—I'm Penny. Penny Johnson." Extending a hand to shake, she pushed a rogue curl out of her face with the other.

"Melanie Connoy," the dark-headed young woman answered. She accepted the handshake graciously. "I—I'd like to stay here, if I could."

"Well, yah can. We'se got no lack a' sleepin' arrangements. `Dis place jus' opened up `bout a month ago, an' ain't all that many Brooklynites `dat know about it yet."

"So Bay Ridge—that's part of Brooklyn." Melanie nodded and tailed Penny as the seventeen-year-old took off at a scamper up the narrow wooden staircase.

"Right. Kinda southeast Brooklyn," responded Penny matter-of-factly. They reached the top of the stairwell and she turned immediately to her right, pushing open a wooden door that hung somewhat crookedly on its rusty hinges. "Goils' bunkroom," she explained unnecessarily, ushering Melanie into the room in front of her.

Flopped upside down on her bunk, her hair hanging down around her flushed face, Charity sat up quickly. "Somebody new?" she inquired.

Penny nodded, glancing to Melanie to take the lead, but the pale-skinned young woman merely smiled graciously to Charity and allowed her blue eyes to flutter curiously around the small, bunk-filled room. "Yeah," Penny told the leader of the Bay Ridge newsgirls. "'Dis heah's Melanie Connoy." She turned her head to face Melanie. "'Dat's Charity. She's…our leadah. In charge. Y'know?"

Melanie nodded her understanding. "Of course. It's good to meet you." She smiled to Charity who had taken a seat on the end of her bunk, her pant-clad legs dangling aimlessly over her pillow. "Melanie's my real name, but—I'm often called Mellie. Or—Mel."

"Melanie, then. Nicknames're kinda somethin' we do a lotta `round here. We'se got Scribbler an' Little Italy ovah `dere—" she pointed to the girls who were playing a fast-handed card game on the floor in the center of the room "—an' runnin' `round someplace is Ransom, Promise…" She trailed off, shrugging her narrow shoulders. "So Melanie it is, `den." She grinned at the newcomer. "How old're yah, Melanie?"

"Eighteen," was the soft reply.

"Eh, yah'll fit right in." Charity nodded, motioning around the room with one hand. "Pick yahself a bunk. Anythin' wit'out a bunch a' junk on it ain't taken yet. We jus' opened up—`dat's how come we'se kinda lackin' in the boarder department."

Bobbing her head in another silent acquiescence, Melanie rested her navy bag at her feet. "I—I have some—some things…" She swallowed hard, rolling her shoulders lightly backward against the child sleeping warmly there.

"Just drop them on your bunk," Chrissy spoke up, grinning good-naturedly at the elder girl. "I'm Chrissy Kane, or Little Italy," she introduced quickly. "And that's—"

"Scribbler Moore," interrupted her blonde-haired partner before she grabbed the top card of a pile and began swiftly rearranging those in front of her. "Hah, that's what you get for not paying attention!" she exclaimed joyfully as she slapped something on top of the deck. Chrissy frowned and pounced on the pile, muttering curses all the while.

"Nice to meet you both," laughed Melanie as she gingerly stepped around their game and set her bag on a lower bunk. "I—I need a bottom bunk," she said hesitantly. She took a seat on her bunk and unfastened one of the straps holding her daughter's homemade carrier. "If—if I can stay."

"Sure yah can stay," Penny commented offhand. "Plen'y a' room. Ain't a problem."

"N—no," Melanie murmured hesitantly. She slung the quilted satchel around in front of her and cradled the baby to her chest, looking down at her. "I—I have—Jane."

Charity stared blankly at the young mother, her head tipped slightly to one side. "That's yours?" Melanie nodded mutely. "Like—it's your kid?" Another silent agreement. "Yah…married?"

"Y-yes," was the tentative response. Melanie slipped the quilted bag off of her daughter, revealing a big-eyed and pink-cheeked creature who stared with simple, innocent curiosity at everything around her.

"Still?"

"I—I think so." She rearranged the tiny cotton dress she had made for the baby, smoothing its wrinkles out. "It's complicated. I—I don't understand, really, myself." Still cradling the child, she reached up with one hand and tucked her gentle curls of dark brown hair behind her ear. "I—I'll understand if you don't want me to stay. It—it wouldn't be the first time." Her blue eyes were bordering on desperate.

"Well, I don't care if you've got a kid," shrugged Chrissy, card game temporarily forgotten.

"You've got a kid?" exclaimed Scribbler, her mint-green eyes globes against her face. "You look way too young to have a kid."

"I—I am too young to have a-a child," admitted Melanie in a careful tone. "But—I do." She glanced from one expressionless face to another, then stood up holding Jane in her arms. "I—even if—I'm not staying. Can I—use your washroom? She's-hungry." Her cheeks prickled with crimson embarrassment, her lashes lowering to obscure her vision. "She'll cry if I don't."

"Right heah," murmured Penny, stepping toward the doorway and pointing Melanie toward the appropriate place. "Nobody'll go in if yah shut the door, `leastwise not wit'out askin'."

"Th-thank you," Melanie managed to say graciously. She ducked into the prescribed area and latched the door shut.

The bunkroom was still.

"Well," muttered Scribbler. "Not like—you know—there's something wrong with her."

"The kid'll cry. Lots. All night." Penny rubbed her forehead. "Y'ever been `round kids?"

"Sure. Lots of them," Scribbler stated.

"'Dat're `dat little? What is `da t'ing—months old? Can't be a year. It's tiny." The copper-haired young woman just shook her head tiredly. "Don't wanna say no, though. Criminy—t'ink how hard `dat'd be."

"Miserable," stated Charity in a low voice. "We'll let `er stay, a' course. Ain't turnin' nobody away. But—if `dere's problems—we'll find `er someplace t'sleep downstairs."

"Downstairs," agreed Chrissy softly. She nodded her pale brown-haired head. "She seems awful nice."

"Real nice," concurred Penny. "She's got my curiosity up."

"Like how'd she end up with a kid?" Scribbler asserted with a slight smirk in her eyes.

"She's married, Scrib." Charity smiled at the slightly older blonde girl.

"Next question," Penny interjected. "If she's married, what's she doin' heah?"

"Wit' `da kid," added Scribbler almost triumphantly.

"I—I feel sort of sorry for her," Chrissy spoke up carefully.

"I feel real sorry for her," Charity replied curtly. "Christ, the girl's eighteen, married t'some kinda dimwit, an' livin' on `da streets—wit' a kid." She shook her head, her short blonde hair swishing slightly around her ears. "Ain't nothin' fun `bout `dat."

"No," mused Penny. "No, `dere ain't."

"Excuse me?" Melanie's quiet voice and delicate figure appeared in the doorway, her knuckles rapping lightly on the frame. "Can I come in?" She was holding her baby on one hip, twining a strand of dark hair nervously around the fingers of her free hand.

"Of course. There's no door that's not open to a Bay Ridge newsgirl in this house," Chrissy assured her with a bright smile.

"Then—you're saying—I can stay." A sweet smile attached itself to her pale-skinned face as Melanie glanced toward Charity, who nodded ever-so-slightly an affirmation. "Oh—I promise I'll keep her quiet," the brown-haired young woman stated in a rapturous, intense tone of voice. "I—I'll be good to have around, really. I—I love sewing, and cooking, and things. I—I'm so glad." She managed a slightly girlish giggle, walking back toward her bunk and setting Jane down on its bare mattress. Her blue eyes stayed focused on the gathered Bay Ridge newsgirls.

"No problem," Charity stated in a slightly nonplussed tone of voice, but a smile tugged at the corners of her stony expression.

"I'll buy a basket, tomorrow, for her to-sleep in." Melanie nodded swiftly, biting her lower lip lightly as she studied the arm-waving, milky-mouthed child gazing at the unoccupied bunk above her. "Oh, thank you so much. You've no idea—how—much this means to me."

Moonlight spilled ghost-pale like skimmed milk, blue-white at its shadowy edges, slightly disrupting the monotonous blackness that cloaked the Bay Ridge newsgirls' bunkroom. A few slim tendrils of pearly light fell with eerie accuracy on the tiny closed eyes of Jane Connoy, highlighting her miniature dark curled eyelashes and creating caricature shadows that engulfed her blonde strands of scanty hair. "Oh, Janey," Melanie murmured inaudibly, her lips moving but scarcely a sound sliding from between her sleepy lips. The young woman's dark hair was spread halo-shaped across her pillow, her left hand draped over the side of her bunk. In the sticky midsummer heat, the warm baby sleeping upon her belly made it impossible for the eighteen-year-old to get any amount of sleep.

"Mel?" came a timid whisper that floated infinitely on the still nighttime air.

"Mmm?" The elder girl didn't dare raise her head for fear of awakening her infant daughter.

"Saw you moving around," explained the same soft voice. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"Hot, having a baby sleeping on you," Melanie answered as quietly as she could. She held her breath, barely permitting sufficient oxygen to enter and leave her lungs. "I don't want to wake her," she added with intonation scarcely above the pitch of exhalation.

"I understand," came the response. Silence once again pervaded the room.

"Aaah," whimpered Jane, wiggling sleepily against her mother's body. "Mwaaa…"

"Janey, Janey…" Melanie stroked the child's back, bouncing ever-so-slightly up and down on her thin mattress. The baby only grew more agitated, pushing against Melanie's skin and entering the first stages of honest-to-goodness crying. Panicking slightly, the dark-haired girl sat up quickly, cradling the baby and pushing her face to her chest to muffle her wailing.

"C'mere," murmured the voice from before, and a thin young woman slipped off her bed and went to the open window, pushing its warped wooden frame open a bit further and gesturing for Melanie to step out onto the fire escape.

"Th-thank you," whispered Melanie, carefully sliding through the window. She stepped briskly down the iron stairs after the girl, her sleepy eyes unable to discern anything but that her guide's hair was somewhat dark. Soon after, they reached a railing, which the leader slid down and Melanie grasped lightly in one hand as she finished her descent. "Thank you," she repeated upon reaching the concrete sidewalk below.

The girl walking in front of her had pale brown hair, and she moved with a slim, silent grace that sat as easily on her shoulders as the warm midsummer air. "Maybe she was too warm?" suggested the young woman as she waited for Melanie to fall into step beside her. Out in the late-night darkness, Jane had calmed somewhat and was only whining and wiggling in her mother's arms.

"Maybe," murmured Melanie, holding the baby tight to her chest and walking slowly, methodically, placing one foot after the other on the cobblestones. "A little bit of walking will probably help her."

"Lucky for you, this is a pretty good part of Bay Ridge," commented the girl. "Mostly if you aren't by yourself, nothing bad will happen to you. Of course, Bay Ridge isn't really all that great in and of itself, but for Bay Ridge, we've got a pretty good location."

"Well, I'm not alone," smiled Melanie. "You know my name, I'm sure, because I'm the new girl—Melanie. But I'm afraid I don't know yours?" She tipped her head to the side, her sleep-disheveled dark hair falling imperfectly to her shoulders.

"Kalandra," answered the girl simply. She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Kalandra McAllister—or Tiptoe, which is mostly what they call me around here."

"Tiptoe...because you're so—"

"—quiet," finished the sixteen-year-old with a pleasant nod of her brown-haired head. "Right."

"The only nicknames I have are Mel, or Mellie," shrugged the older girl as they turned the corner. "Nothing particularly interesting."

"Melanie's a pretty name," Tiptoe said while they continued to walk quietly along the street. "Melanie Connoy, right?"

"Correct." Melanie adjusted her hold on Jane slightly, resting the child's face against her chest. Pale eyelashes were fluttering almost closed, and her ten-month-old daughter seemed to be nearing sleep once again. "Melanie Sarah Connoy-after I was married, of course. Before I was married, my name was Rydell. Melanie Sarah Rydell." She pressed her lips together a little, smiling tightly. "The whole bit about—you know—me being...here..." She trailed off a little, shrugging her shoulders infinitesimally to keep from disturbing Jane. "It's a bit confusing. Even to me."

"Well, you don't have to share," Tiptoe said quickly as they turned once again in their circling of the residential block. "It's not like everyone tells everyone else their whole history."

Melanie nodded a bit. "If you don't mind."

"Don't mind a bit. I haven't told you anything about my past, and even if I had, I wouldn't be so forward as to expect you to share yours." Tiptoe paused, pointing across the street to a brick-faced building with a ratty green canvas awning staked in front of the door. "In the basement of that apartment, there's a neat little Italian restaurant."

"In the basement—?" replied Melanie, her blue eyes bright with interest. "Doesn't seem like a very good spot."

"There's people in there almost all the time!" exclaimed Tiptoe. "And they don't have a sign or anything—it's just people talking to each other, like I'm talking to you right now."

"What's it called?" asked Melanie.

"I—I don't rightly know," Tiptoe chuckled in response. "I guess it never occurred to me to ask anyone. But it's lovely, and inexpensive. A good place for...a date..." She let her words trail off a bit. "'Though, you are married, so..." She laughed a little, a bit of nervousness in her voice.

"I'm married," agreed Melanie quietly. "And I don't know—what I'm allowed to do. See, Jason—my husband—he just...left."

"That wasn't good of him..." Tiptoe commented, allowing her to continue; it was obvious she wished to share this with someone.

"No, it wasn't. Jane—" she held up the finally-sleeping baby a bit to make sure Tiptoe knew who she was talking about "—was only three months old at the time." She paused, studying the little girl. "I—I think he wasn't ready for—for being married, and—and having children." Her lips were white at the edges where they were pressed together out of consideration. "Granted, that doesn't excuse him for what he did, as it was his decision to do all of—that. Be married, that is, and—have children." A faint blush crept over her cheeks, but the midnight black covered that with reasonable skill and she shrugged just a little as she continued. "So I was, you know, doing everything I could to at least keep the apartment. We needed somewhere to live, as is—well—apparent. But I didn't have much money and Jane kept me very busy, being so extremely young. After a few months of scrounging, pleading with the landlady, and generally making a wreck of myself, we ended up getting evicted-that is, kicked out-of our apartment."

"Well, that wasn't nice," Tiptoe stated as Melanie paused, seemingly to straighten out the events in her head.

"I can understand that, of course. It was obvious we would never be able to pay what we owed. An eighteen-year-old girl with a daughter and, apparently, no husband, is not a particularly desirable person to have around, anyhow." Melanie shrugged a little before continuing. "I took a job in a sewing shop and left Jane with a friend who I had met immediately after we moved to Bridgestone. That's—where Jason and I moved, just after Jane was born. At any rate, the man who ran the shop...didn't...treat his employees so nicely." Tiptoe frowned a little; they'd stopped walking and were standing in the pale yellow glow of a streetlamp. Melanie was talking animatedly and it was apparent to the younger girl that it felt awfully nice to finally explain this entire mess to someone. "I—had to quit. And I was getting an awfully poor reputation, and the people in Bridgestone were being...terribly unkind to me." Melanie shook her head a little, looking down at the baby. "People think you're—awful filth—when they think you're a girl with a baby and no husband. It's—completely unfair, really."

"Well, nobody here thinks that," Tiptoe told her softly.

"That means an awful lot to me," answered Melanie in a murmur. "An awful, awful lot."

"Is there—more you want to tell?" asked the sixteen-year-old after a moment, her green eyes luminous in the dark.

"I moved to New York with her and got a job housekeeping. But Maria, who I had rented the tenement in which I lived with, got sick one day, so I took Jane to work with me. And even here, even a housekeeper, who couldn't prove her married state and who was found to possess a daughter, was suddenly such a terrible person and horrible influence... Anyhow, I lost that job." She swallowed hard. "That was...a few days ago."

Tiptoe watched her with her eyes still round. "That's terrible," she finally said.

"I'm—rather tired of all the judging," Melanie replied quietly. "I haven't done a single thing—well, not much of anything—wrong. And everyone thinks I'm terrible and without morals."

"Not here," repeated Tiptoe. "Here we've all got our own troubled histories. Here, in this lodging house," she motioned to the building in front of them, "everyone has imperfections, and we put up with everyone else's. It's what makes us able to keep on living."

"I'm glad I found this place," murmured Melanie as she took a deep breath and gazed levelly at the boarding facility. "Because I was afraid if I heard another thing about me being a mess-up, I'd probably start believing it."

"Welcome home, then," smiled Tiptoe as she made her way up the two concrete stairs to the door. "We're glad to have you."

Melanie stepped up the stairs herself, then shifted Jane to one arm and squeezed Tiptoe's shoulder lightly. "Thanks," she murmured. "You're a good friend."