Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers

Author:Walter Dean Myers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter sixteen

The falcon soars high above the streets, looking down at the figures below, looking for what he will eat. The idea of mercy is lost. The creatures below, the ones who don’t give a fuck, have no mercy to give. But that is all right for the falcon. He is not looking for friends.

Twig called to tell me that the little girl who was shot was out of the hospital. I told him what Midnight and Tall Boy had said, about getting revenge, which Twig thought was stupid. Which everybody with half a brain knew was stupid.

“So how’s your story going?” Twig asked. “You finished it yet?”

“Just about,” I lied.

Miss Carroll had said that you didn’t have to tell everything in a piece of fiction, but you had to know everything. I didn’t think she was right. I thought there were feelings and mysteries in stories that the author might have to think about even after a story had been published. What I knew was that I was worried about the story. It hadn’t meant that much to me as I wrote it. It had been just another story, but then I had sent it off, and the letter saying they might publish it made it more important. Showing the letter to Miss Carroll made me feel good, and what she had said about it, that being published would change who I was, came as a surprise.

“You’re still the same person, of course,” she had said. “But for many reasons people tend to look at you differently. Sometimes at parties you can hear people being introduced as So-and-so who was published in The New Yorker or some other magazine.”

I wanted that kind of party. Where people had value because of something they had created, or painted, or performed. It sounded like a get-together of my kind of people.

The story. A boy, who lives in an orphanage, is depressed. He wonders what his future is going to be. The beach is good for him, especially on colder days, when it is nearly deserted. Then one day he starts to swim out toward an island that is a bit far. How far is it? As he swims, he realizes that he is in an area almost too far for him to return. He starts back but grows tired. Then, from somewhere, a dolphin appears and nudges him toward shore.

He is drawn to the cold waters and to the distant island. He pushes himself to swim a little farther, despite his bad leg. Why does he have a bad leg? Does that just make him less capable than the other children at the orphanage? Does he think he is less capable? When he is not in the water, does he think of the dolphins? Or does he just wonder if they will be there to save him if he swims too far? Does the reader have to know?

The editor wants the story to be clearer. He wants to know if it is a story of hope and faith or a story of despair.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.