Tyler Johnson Was Here(16)

“Marvin?”

I pause a bit longer, a lump in my throat. “Tyler is missing.”

“What do you mean he’s missing?”

“He’s missing. He never came home. I don’t know where he is.”

I hear one of them gasp.

“I don’t know what to fucking do,” I say.

“Do you think he was arrested? The police have been arresting people!” Ivy says.

I hang up on them, annoyed.

What really went down? Did Tyler get arrested? Or worse—and my heart almost stops at the thought—did he get caught in the cross fire?

But if I’m alive and my friends are alive, Tyler has to be alive, too.

I change into a pair of joggers and a plain white T-shirt. The air starts to smell of burnt toast and cigarette smoke, and that means only one thing: Mama is finally awake and waiting for Tyler and me in the kitchen, probably thinking that he should be home by now, even if he did stay the night at someone else’s house. I wonder what she’ll do when she realizes he isn’t here.

I build the courage to go into the kitchen and face Mama. “Good morning,” I mumble to her. Her back is turned to me, hair rollers entangled around her head. She just exhales a puff of smoke, side-eyeing me like she’s a step ahead of me.

She’s got plain bagels in the toaster, and she’s got a shot glass, a bottle of whiskey, and a stick of butter, and I even notice she has out Dad’s favorite cereal: Cap’n Crunch. And I know now that something is really bothering her. Mama hasn’t bought Cap’n Crunch since before Dad got taken away.

She’s too quiet, and I know she’s thinking about Dad. At least she isn’t thinking about Tyler. There’s no use in having both of us worry about him.

I look down at my hands, where I’m holding my phone. He could call at any moment from a friend’s cell or something. Or even better, he could come walking through the door.





After eating, Mama and I find our way to sitting on the dingy and holey little red sofa in the living room, watching the news. The picture on the television screen is grainy and wobbly and the signal is poor, like it belongs in the home of a ghetto family.

The newscaster is a white woman with straight white hair. “Live report in Sterling Point,” the lady says, her voice nice and calm and firm. “Yet another tragedy in the area. I’m standing in front of an old Pic-A-Rag market, where last night a party ended in a shooting, leaving two dead and three severely injured.”

The camera zooms in on the inside of the building, and I glance at the wall where Tyler was in a chokehold. I see police officers with gloves gathering all the debris, trying to scrape up DNA. And then the camera zooms in on a series of ambulances. EMTs are hauling away two bodies in blue bags.

The camera zooms out and pans back to the woman, a close-up shot, as if all of this is being played like a movie. “Authorities say eighteen-year-old gang member Johntae Ray Smith and two unnamed, underage suspects were arrested at the scene last night.”

Mama cuts off the news and flips to watch thirty seconds of some soap opera before she turns the TV off completely, and then I realize I’m still staring straight ahead, in absolute shock, as the news report plays over and over again in my head.

Johntae and two unnamed suspects got arrested. And that’s all I can think about.

Tyler is in jail. Tyler is in jail. Tyler got locked up and he’s in jail. The thought tastes so bitter. It’s giving me a prickly feeling all over.

I blink, wiping away at my eyes, about to self-destruct like a grenade, because I may not have gotten killed last night, but this will kill me—Mama will kill me, when she finds out we went to that party and now Tyler’s in jail… or worse.

Two dead.

I sit on the little red sofa, familiarizing myself with the holes.

There’s a pounding on the door, like metal bars are being used to break the door in. Mama and I freeze.

She gives me a look. Her eyes are cold and helpless, like answering the door is just as fatal as going to a drug dealer’s party the night of a shooting. She gets up, looks through the peephole first, and then cracks the door a few degrees, enough for natural light to shine in on her bare feet. She opens the door wider, and two white detectives stand there with aggressive expressions. One of them is rather slender and has slicked-back blond hair, and the other is bald with a round, extended belly. The two of them, standing here together, means only bad news.

“Does Tyler Johnson live here?” the one on the right asks boldly, showing his badge. Detective Bills.

Relief floods through me. Tyler can’t be in jail if the cops are looking for him. But then, where could he be?

Mama nods, saying, “Yes. He’s my son. Why?”

I squint to read the other one’s name. Detective Parker.

“Are you Tyler Johnson?” the bald one, Detective Bills, asks me, raising his eyebrow, like he’s just caught me red-handed, like I am on America’s most-wanted list.

I shake my head fast. “He’s my twin.”

“Twin?”

“Yes,” I say, “my older twin. Only by a couple minutes, though.”

“And who’re you?” Detective Parker asks, his nose wiggling, showing all the stress wrinkles on his face from years of locking up boys who look like me.

“Marvin,” I answer.