Tyler Johnson Was Here(2)

The cop’s head remains angled down for a while, his baton rising in the air and coming down in rapid, brutal strikes to the back of the poor boy’s head. My chest gives in and out, constricting tighter and tighter as each bloody second slips by. I’m stricken with fear.

“What the fuck?!” Ivy screams, hiding her face from the horror that’s going on in front of us. And it’s in this moment that the police officer looks over and notices us.

After cuffing the boy underneath him, the cop clutches his gun holster—gives us a glare. “Stay where you are,” he says. “Don’t fucking move.”

I’m thinking to myself: Holy shit. Oh, God. Holy shit. Oh, God.

G-mo slowly tries to reach for his bike. I can hear all the panic in his deep, gasping breaths.

“Where’re you coming from?” the cop asks. “You came from robbing the store? Bunch of thugs just ran in this direction. You one of them, huh?”

My thoughts start to run a marathon, so long and far, going miles away from this city, as hot tears streak my cold face, drying beneath my nose. “No—no, we didn’t rob anyone!”

The cop shows his hands, his knee in the boy’s back, and clutched neatly in his fist is his gun, aimed at us.

“Hold up, hold up! What’re you doing?” Tyler says.

“Hands up!” the cop shouts, foaming at the mouth from the anger inside him. The darkness kind of covers his face, but not his hatred. “Do not fucking move!”

“Ohshit,” Ivy says all as one word, her arms shaking while raised. I hear a low scream.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” G-mo goes, like he knows this is going to be the end of the road for us. We’ve heard too many stories and seen too many things not to feel like this could be it for us, that it could be a white police officer signing our death certificates tonight.

A yelp emerges from the void in my gut. The air suddenly feels rough against my skin. In that moment, I replay the time when Mama got pulled over for speeding with Tyler and me in the back seat when we were eleven. “Keep your head down,” she said to us. “Breathe right. Breathe easy.” Mama and Dad didn’t teach Tyler and me to be afraid of the cops—only to listen to their orders.

G-mo, Ivy, and I have our hands in the air like we’re reaching up to touch the sky and collect all the stars. Mama taught me that listening is as important as breathing. That it can save your life. And I’m telling myself that right now is the best time for me to listen to her. Listen to this cop. Comply. Don’t make a move. Keep my hands up. But Tyler doesn’t.

“The fuck he gon’ do,” Tyler mutters as he stands up.

I jump to my feet and push Tyler behind me, stretching out my arms as if I’m a shield. “Stop moving,” I say, giving him a worried look, seeing the reflection of a streetlight in his brown eyes. He pushes past me anyway.

“He ain’t gon’ do anything,” Tyler says. “We ain’t do nothing to begin with.”

The cop shouts, “Don’t fucking move!”

I make sure not to move. “Sir, what did we do?” I ask, trying not to sound as terrified as I really am.

The officer doesn’t say anything, just breathes heavy and keeps his gun pointed at us, wanting us to move, as if waiting for us to give him a reason to shoot, a way to get away with murder.

And it’s like he doesn’t even notice that there’s a white boy there with his face buried in the concrete sidewalk like it’s a pillow.

“What happened, officer?” G-mo asks, his voice moving slow like molasses—sounding heavy like it, too. “I’m sure this is some sort of misunderstanding.”

“Shut the hell up,” the cop barks.

“We deserve to know. We’re innocent. We’re kids. And you have a gun pointed at us. What’s going on?” Ivy chimes in, her voice filled with defeat.

Silence. I breathe out the air I’m holding in.

“Look, man,” Tyler goes, his voice not even cracking, “you’ve got a fucking gun pointed at us and shit, and we just wanna know why. We were just trying to get home.”

More silence.

Tyler breaks it. “A’ight, y’all need—”

“Tyler, be quiet!” I shout.

“No, he out here acting like—”

“Say one more goddamn word,” the officer says, “and I’ll shoot. I swear to God, I’ll do it.”

I look over at Tyler and see his face completely change, as if he’s backpedaling in his thoughts, remembering: Keep your head down. Breathe right. Breathe easy.

“Don’t fucking play with me,” the cop yells. “I’m sick and tired of fucking responding to calls because some thugs are terrorizing the poor businesses around here. Do you even know how lucky y’all are?” he asks, his hands shaking around the butt of his gun. “How lucky y’all are to have white-owned businesses in this area? Those poor people have made sacrifices, and this is the way y’all treat them? I’m sick and tired.”

“Please, officer,” I mumble, my arms looking like noodles. “Please, don’t shoot. Don’t kill us. Please let us go!”

“Boy, I swear, I’ll pull this trigger!” the officer barks. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!” And he’s not lying. His trigger finger starts shaking.