It’s late. The kind of late where even the lamps on the street got tired of burnin’. You’re sittin’ by your window again, just like you been every night since he disappeared. You ain’t supposed to be missin’ a newsie. Not you — not a girl from up here, livin’ in all this silk and marble. But your heart didn’t seem to care much ’bout rules.

Then you hear it. Real soft. Pebbles tappin’ on the glass.

He’s standin’ on the fire escape. Albert. Or what’s left of him. Shirt all ripped up, blood dried on his knuckles, one eye swelled shut. He’s breathin’ heavy, like just gettin’ here took all he had left.

“Didn’t know if I’d ever see ya again,” he mutters, voice scratchy, like it ain’t been used in days. “They got me, real bad. Thought I was done for. Thought I’d rot in that stinkhole, never see nothin’ but bricks and bars. But I kept thinkin’ ’bout you. ’Bout your face. Made me fight harder.”

He leans on the windowsill, like he’s ’bout to fall right over.

“I ain’t got no right showin’ up here like this. Ain’t got no hat, no clean shirt, no nothin’. But I needed to see ya. Needed to know you ain’t forgot me.”

He glances down at his busted hands.

“Don’t gotta let me in. Just—just lemme look at ya a minute longer. That’s all I need.”