Tyler Johnson Was Here(24)

“Word,” G-mo sighs.

“And we just stood there and ran like pussy-ass bitches,” she moans, her chest heaving.

“Ivy, goddamn, how many times do I gotta tell you that I’m a pussy-ass nigga and I like being one?” G-mo shouts. “That’s how I keep my life.”

“That’s ’cause you literally got nine functioning brain cells. You keep being a pussy-ass nigga, and that’s what they gon’ keep treating us like.”

“Whatever, I guess,” G-mo says. “When’s the damn rapture? Because that was so fucked up.”

“Who do you even call when the cops are the ones being the bad guys? Who do you even beg to protect you?” Ivy asks, putting her hands on my sore shoulders.

I shrug. And I have no answer—not a good one, at least. But I know not all cops are bad. Auntie Nicola was one, and I know she’s a good person. In her time as an officer, she did a ton for the community: got people the help they needed and made them feel whole and safe—what good cops are supposed to do. I remember Auntie Nicola telling me stories about catching bad guys and how she’d seen some of her colleagues use their power to do some pretty messed-up things to people, but she always made it known that there’d be cops like her on my side.

My mind flashes back to when Tyler and I used to spend our middle school spring breaks with Auntie Nicola in Indiana. She’d take us to the skating rink on the east side of Indianapolis on the weekend. There was something about picking each other up off the floor when we fell, laughing, that made those times mean everything to me. Tyler’s laugh slips into my head. I never thought I’d miss it, as loud and gut-busting as it is, but I do. It’s been a while since I’ve heard him laugh and actually mean it. All the happy, funny, quiet little moments between the two of us growing up get stuck in my head, like me and Tyler just sitting on the ground, putting together thousand-piece puzzles, and making peanut butter sandwiches, saying nothing, just watching each other eat. It’s the thought of not getting any of this back that has my chest constricting. Tyler may have strayed away, but I need to find him.

I don’t know how long I blank or how long I just sit there not saying anything, staring at a single point, a crack in the street, my thoughts splitting into a million fragments. But, somehow, I snap back together, and I’m on my bike, pedaling fast.

The whole time, I feel like I’m just drifting with no real sense of direction. In the air, the pigeons fly in salute to the pale, rubber sky, and this is what comes to life, like a giant machine built against me, paining me, all the way until I get home to face Mama. I’m going to tell her the truth about everything. About the party. About Tyler. I have to.





? 12 ?


When I get inside, Mama grabs her first-aid kit and applies all kinds of stuff to the cut on the side of my face: rubbing alcohol, peroxide, and some type of fast-healing cream in a little yellow-orange tube. I gasp—not because of the sting, not because she’s heavy-handed, but because I have to tell her the truth, and it’s making me wince.

“It’s all right,” she reassures me in a hushed tone. “You gon’ be all right. You safe now.” She kisses my forehead and thumbs my cheek.

I’m fucking shaking.

I have to take deep breaths and run through all the words in my head, because I don’t even know how to say what I’m about to say. I open my mouth, and I almost trip over the words. “Mama, I have to tell you something,” I say. It feels like there’s a pillow on my face, a pang in my chest. “I don’t know where Tyler is,” I say. “I thought that I—”

She interrupts me, furrows her eyebrows. “Wait—what do you mean you don’t know where he at?”

My stomach twists and turns. I tell her about the party, about Tyler and Johntae, about the gang, about how I lied, about how I’m sorry and how I’m blaming myself for everything. Everything.

“After the party, he just vanished,” I say. I’m about to throw up.

She cranes her entire body around and rips through her purse for her cell phone, and I know she’s about to call the cops again. She’s not called this many times in one week since that night Dad got so drunk and high that he crashed their old green Yukon XL into someone’s backyard.

Mama holds her hair away from her face as she calls the police to report Tyler missing. I try to remind myself of what Ivy said, telling myself that he’s out there and that he’s alive and that he’s safe. Mama paces while I stand still in agony.

It feels like the world stops rotating.

Mama glances at me, a hand over her heart like at any moment she’ll have a heart attack, as she tries to explain everything. I move over to sit on the couch, familiarizing myself with its holes like usual, pulling out cotton and putting it back.

It takes her far too long to get the report filed. I guess if you’re black, there are some additional steps that you’ve got to take. The person’s low voice streams out of the phone, and I hear everything. They ask her if my brother is in a gang, if he’s been in any trouble with the law lately, if he has any enemies—after each of which Mama says, “No.”

When Mama gets off the phone, she has this ghostlike look in her eyes. “We gotta go down to the station and talk to them,” she says without looking at me, her head hoisted up. “They got more questions.”