Tyler Johnson Was Here
Jay Coles
To Mom and Grandma, thank you for always pushing me to reach for the stars and for showing me how to speak up
? 1 ?
Here’s what goes down:
It’s just the four of us. My best friends, Ivy and Guillermo (G-mo), my brother, Tyler, and me. We’re just strolling through the aisles of a corner convenience store, rapping aloud to my favorite Kendrick Lamar song, “Feel,” taking turns rapping verses out loud.
We each choose a bag of chips and a candy bar. For me, I pick salt and vinegar Lay’s, something I could toss a mint in my mouth after and still be fine, and then a king-sized Kit Kat bar.
We go up to the register and pay for our stuff. I’m mostly excited to satisfy my growling stomach over a binge marathon of A Different World, at my and Tyler’s place.
Tyler wouldn’t normally be hanging around me and my geek friends, but this is his way of bonding with me. His way of saying I love you, bro, even though those words never fall out of his mouth. When we walk out the store, now singing the theme song to A Different World, Tyler rolling his eyes and grinning, we realize that we spent too long strolling through the aisles of packaged goods, and by the time we’re out the door, the sun has left the sky, the world darkened.
This gets Tyler a little irritated. He checks our shared phone furiously, as if he’s expecting an important message or phone call.
Our hood is called Sterling Point. Streetlights smoldering in a fog of cannabis smoke, potholes mazing the roads, gravel driveways, and garden gnomes with bullet holes. Everything is just ugly as shit, except the murals painted out on the sides of walls, black African queens holding their heads high, Tupac staring out with a small smile. But even the ugliness, I guess, is its own kind of beautiful. So I’ve learned to embrace it.
Tyler, G-mo, and I get on our bikes, and Ivy flips her skateboard right side up. We clutch our snacks to our sides, like they’ll somehow get stolen from us on the way back. And when we’re a block away from my place, we see a guy walking up our way down the block, turning from Ninth Street. He’s dragging his legs, a backpack under his arm.
I slow, and then pump on my handle brakes.
I recognize him. He looks like every other white guy at Sojo High. Skinny. Sad, like he constantly feels out of place. I think I know him from a music theory class I took freshman year. We never talk much outside of class, but we’ve shared notes.
I’ve heard all the horror stories of people walking all alone at night ending up missing or something, so I’m about to wave him down—maybe even invite him over to join us for some geeking out over A Different World—but all of a sudden, coming out of nowhere, is the striking sound of gunshots. Pop! Pop! Pop!
They come in fast and piercing blasts. Again and again.
The skinny white dude drops to the ground, shielding his head.
“What the fuck?” G-mo shouts.
And I fall on my side, my bike slamming down on top of me, crushing my chest on impact with one quick punch.
Everything starts blurring and fading like someone drugged the Kool-Aid I’ve been sipping on all day from a water bottle. As I lift the bike off me, I feel this huge pang in my head, like I got some sort of goddamn concussion from colliding with the concrete sidewalk.
My next instinct is to stay quiet, to internalize all my cussing and fear, to make sure Ivy, G-mo, and Tyler do the same. It’s hard, but I’ve gotten a lot of training.
I turn over to check on Tyler. Hot Fries are littering his chest, and first they have me thinking they’re bloodstains. I furiously search his body for any wounds, almost about to rip off all of his clothing before I finally realize.
He’s okay. I’m okay.
G-mo and Ivy are okay.
Their faces are frozen with fear, like the gunshots released all the fear chemicals in their brains. But they’re still here.
Man, what the fuck. This shit’s straight up got on my last nerve. Why’d they choose tonight for a gang shoot-out?
Then, like, out of nowhere again, I see a cop waddling toward us, and my worst nightmare has started to come true. It isn’t a gang shoot-out.
The cop is really pale, skin like a snowfall foreign to Sterling Point—the toilet of America, where shit really goes down. He has a bald head and eyes like the most chilling emeralds. Eyes that scream shitty things at me. We shouldn’t be here.
He’s dragging a boy wearing an all-black hoodie whose hands are being held behind his back—the boy screams in excruciating pain, calling out that he wants to get back home, wailing for the cop to let go of him, that he’s unarmed, that he doesn’t want to die, and reminding the cop that he’s innocent until proven guilty. But the cop isn’t hearing that shit.
And so, just ten feet away, he slams the boy on the ground. Suddenly, I’m a little kid again, watching my first body drop from a single bullet, feeling an overwhelming surge of adrenaline. Heart pounding in my chest. Cold sweats sending me shaking.
The cop keeps bashing the poor kid into the sidewalk, smashing his face onto the surface, screaming hate into the back of his head, screaming that he forgot his place in the world, screaming that his wide nose had it coming. All I can see—all I can focus on—is the cop as he pulls out his baton.
And the air I swallow is like Novocain. I go numb all over, adrenaline rising within me. My heart is doing more than beating in my chest—it’s rhythmically shredding me. I wonder if I’ll return home again. I struggle to remember the last thing I told my mother. Was it something really fucked up? I can’t think straight.