Tags by Walter Dean Myers

Author:Walter Dean Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

chapter two

There is a slithering in the grass. The movements of the shadowed patterns are almost invisible in the small patch of bush, except from where I hover far above the earth. On the other side of the patch, a small brown animal moves away from the green carpet and along the winding edge of a stream. It is a paca. The paca stops near the base of a tree and lifts its head to sniff the heavy, humid air. Suddenly it stops, frozen in the moment, listening to whatever is moving through the dewy grass. The paca feels a sense of doom, knowing that whatever it is that moves so silently will surely kill it.

Then a diamond-shaped head arises, hesitates for a moment before it resumes its tracking, looking for a meal. It is a moment too long. I begin my flight downward, faster and faster, my eyes fixed on the colorful skin of the snake, which is now free of the tall grass.

My downward flight turns into a dive as I fold my wings. I am a streak across the gray Andes skies. I am a black dart screaming to the earth. I am death.

And now I strike. My talons just behind the head, crushing the flesh within them. I lift my wings and rise as the snake thrashes wildly, its tail swinging around my legs. I strike the head, pulling the flesh away from the small skull.

We go up and down, no higher than the height of the paca that stands transfixed against the high grass. I tear away more flesh, this time from the eyes.

This time from the skull that breaks beneath my beak.

The grip around my talons eases. It is over. I have my meal.

All is well.

I am living on the dark side of the moon. Pretending to be in another place, sometimes another time, and always in another light, I walk among my friends and the people I know as if everything is as it should be. Nothing is as it should be.

One of the things that scare me, that wake me up in the middle of the night, is that I am too conscious of my thoughts. It’s as if there is a talk show in my head that I’m constantly watching. I wonder if everyone has a talk show in their head. Or if they have voices laying out their future.

Never mind my address. Never mind that my mail comes to 145th Street, or that I live in a place called Harlem. It is really the dark side of the moon. In the mornings, I walk past guys a little older than I am. They stand on street corners or fill up the old gray stoops on my block and watch the world go by.

“They’re not smart,” Twig said when I mentioned them. “Half of them didn’t even finish high school.”

What I know is that it doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t finish. High school doesn’t mean anything anymore. If you want to invent your own life, you need to have more than a high school diploma.

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