"I'm goin' fishin'."

Groans and guffaws met the pronouncement. Fish got clipped hard on the shoulder by a big, dark-haired boy with sunken eyes. Others shoved past him as he grinned widely and dropped on his calloused hands and knees, reaching for something beneath his bunk.

"You ain't gonna catch anything," Pug reminded him, rolling his brown eyes. He fiddled momentarily with his suspenders and watched the younger boy retrieve his fishing pole.

The fishing pole was really a stick, with a thick, fraying string attached to it and a rusted hook. Sometimes he stuck a worm on the end of it - that is, when he could find one. Mostly, however, he used large crumbs of bread.

Fish left the Lodging House, careful to avoid Spot. Spot hated the thin fishing pole, hated the fact that Fish stayed out late at night after selling, seated alone on the docks. Hated the fact that Fish dangled his feet over the bridge, humming beneath his breath, open and unprotected from all the horrors that came out in the Brooklyn night.

Fish sold quickly - he always did. There was something about his earnest hazel eyes and soft brown hair that drew curious looks . Most often he was walked around, but occasionally someone would take pity on him and buy a handful of papers. Many people avoided him all together. Fish's eyes were just a tad too wild for most. He was coarse and soft at the same time, all rough edges and yet smooth, too. His nose was short and the slope was odd, giving his entire face a concave appearance.

He was just a kid, barely eleven years old. A kid on a bridge, a kid with a fishing pole that only reached a foot beneath the water. And every day he went to the docks after he sold as many papers as he could. Sometimes he sat on his left-over newspapers so that his pants would stay dry. You could see him from a good distance down the bridge, sitting there by himself, his feet swinging in time to whatever ditty he was humming.

His fishing line trailed into the water. Sometimes he imagined he felt a tug, but there was nothing there but the current. Patiently, he waited to catch something.

Spot hated the boy's ritual of fishing at night. He tracked him down and shook him awake, shoving a rough finger in the boy's face. "You doan' ever go to the docks again, y'hear? Never! You hear me, Fish? One more time an' I'm gonna be real mad."

But Fish couldn't help it. The docks drew him. Many of the other boys felt it, too, but were appeased as soon as they dropped into the water to swim. Fish liked swimming, but it wasn't enough. He had to go fishing.

It ate away at his mind. Everything tasted salty to him, everything looked thin and fragile and translucent. He had to go. He couldn't sleep, he could hardly walk. Every pore in his body screamed at him to visit the docks again.

So Fish would return to the Lodging House, and wait until the others were asleep. He would exit to the roof and make his way to the docks. He hid his fishing pole on the roof so that it was always there for him. When he first returned to his familiar fishing spot, he relaxed. It was wonderful - it was like learning to breathe again.

So he sat, and he fished.

He never caught anything, no matter how hard he tried. But Fate has an odd sense of humor. Fish's body now rests underneath the bridge, sunken to the floor of the ocean, white and soft and torn. The fish that he tried so hard to catch now feast on him.

And sometimes, a lone figure stands where Fish used to sit. The boy is slender, with artistic hands and a hard heart. He often stares into the gentle waves, his face contorted with frustration and anger.

He is the one who pushed Fish in. He is the one who ignored the boy's screams, and made sure there was no way that Fish could escape the cold black tomb of the waves.

No one disobeys Spot Conlon and lives to tell the tale.