Tyler Johnson Was Here(21)

“Yeah,” Ivy and I say.

“How come it’s not like that for Tyler? There were squad cars and search parties on every block for days. Even the day she went missing.”

“You already know why, fool,” Ivy replies, sliding back into her jacket. “Black kids going missing aren’t a priority.”

There’s a beat. “Yeah. The girl’s sister is the one who found her, right?” I ask.

“Yep,” G-mo answers, nodding and running a hand through his gelled, combed-over hair.

Everything rushes in my head. And I don’t feel as helpless, as frail anymore.

“I think we should go back out there and bring him home,” I say.





We start a three-person manhunt, taking the main road all the way down, going up hills, and cutting through alleyways. To distract ourselves from all the anxiety building inside, the whole time we rap Tupac songs out loud—“Letter to the President,” “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” “Changes,” and “I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto.”

“Let’s check around Sojo!” suggests G-mo, taking the lead, pedaling fast in front of Ivy and me. “I just saw on Snapchat that some folks went there after the party.”

And so that is exactly what we do. We investigate other places, like a local popular chicken and ribs joint that I know Tyler likes eating at, the Methodist hospital in case he got injured, and almost every neighborhood within a ten-mile radius, hoping to find little clues, like shoelaces or his do-rag, but coming up empty-handed.

“I feel like we should be, like, putting missing-person flyers on light posts and trees and front doors and car windshields,” Ivy says.

“Nah, that’s too risky. If the wrong person finds out there’s an unarmed black boy wandering around these streets, he’s as good as dead,” G-mo says.

Ivy sighs. “Riiiiight.” A look of defeat on her face.

We stop by the old Pic-A-Rag market one last time. Still nothing but yellow caution tape closing off all means of entry. This time, there’s a police car nearby, but it doesn’t look like anyone is inside it.

There’s a small food mart directly across the street, sitting rusty and tired. A white family owns it. They’re from somewhere up north, and they’ve got a white woman running the place and security cameras in every square inch of the interior. And I mean, to an extent, I don’t blame them. They’ve been robbed so many times. They’ve been in the news for weeks. They’re fed up.

I, personally, have never had a problem with the lady. Most times, when Mama would take me with her to shop for a few items with whatever little change she had at the bottom of her purse, the lady would greet us with a smile, offer to bag our items, and even wave good-bye. And to Mama, this gave her hope about other kinds of people. To Mama, these little gestures kept her coming back, making this place her go-to for groceries.

And it sucks that I can’t remember her name. I mean, on second thought, I don’t think she ever bothered to learn my name either. It was just black and white for the three of us.

We stop inside to see if the woman caught anything on any of her surveillance cameras from last night, or even the past couple days—something to give us a lead. I walk into the store, hearing the welcome jingle from a bell atop the door.

Ivy and G-mo wait behind me for a moment. I walk to the counter where the white woman stands, and I squint really hard to read her name badge. “Miss… Deb, umm… my brother, Tyler, has been missing for a while now and I was wondering if I could see your security footage? Like, to see if the cameras caught his whereabouts?” I hold on to such a strange hope—a hope that, in my head, goes a lot like: Sure, it’s right over here.

But, no. “I can’t do that,” she says, “and besides, some men in fancy suits already stopped by and got all the tapes.”

“The detectives?” I wonder out loud.

She nods, her hands resting on the counter.

I put my head in my hands. I ask her if she has at least seen Tyler. Maybe, at some point, she saw someone who looks almost like me come in and buy their whole supply of Arizona Iced Tea and hot Cheetos. But she shakes her gray head.

“Half-off candy!” G-mo says, excited and distracted, breaking off to stroll through the aisle, flipping through the Skittles. Ivy follows to fetch and retrieve him.

A tall boy, about my age, with a duffel bag slung across his shoulder walks into the little store, his hood over his head, brand-new Jordans squeaky clean. But he doesn’t come in alone. A white cop follows him. It’s a casual sort of thing. The kind of thing where everything is just so coincidental that you don’t think much of what’s unfolding before you.

The boy walks down the half-price candy aisle also, and for some reason he sets his duffel bag down. He browses up and down the aisle, in careful selection. I watch him as he takes steps forward and then steps backward. And then he trips over his bag, sending Ivy and the whole rack of half-price candy tumbling to the floor. Everything is loud and clattering, putting the policeman and the cashier on alert. And without hesitation, the cashier presses the blue flashing panic button next to the cash register, even though there’s already a cop in here, even though there’s nothing to even panic about. It was just an accident.

This isn’t going to be good, I think to myself, feeling it all over, like an aching bolt of lightning inside me. And I’m suddenly remembering back to years ago, when I first heard of a black kid getting killed by the police for—and I quote—“playing loud music and disturbing the peace.”