Tyler Johnson Was Here(27)

“She taught herself,” Faith says, pouring two glasses of iced tea. “My mom painted all those celebrity paintings. That’s how she stayed out of the streets. Painting saved her, and it left her with a gift.” She pauses and smiles. “One day, I think I’ll be as talented as her. Even though she’s out driving one of the city buses now.”

Faith hands me a glass. And I take a huge gulp, cringing inside from the sweetness, but it quenches my thirst. “Those are dope!”

She smiles, but something about her seems stiff.

“So about Johntae and bail and finding my brother,” I say, brushing my hands on my pants.

Her smile fades. “I can’t help you.” She sighs, looking away. “As much as I want to, I can’t.”

“Why? He specifically told me to go to you for his bail money.”

“He still thinks I’m holding on to his savings. I used it to pay for my mother’s surgery. She had to have a device implanted because of her heart failure. I never told him because… well…” She stops and looks at her palms. “If I did, he would send somebody to hurt me.”

I stay quiet.

“There’s a special kind of pain that comes with being with him. And he has these mood swings and I never know how to keep up. And I’m trying to figure out how to detach myself from him. For years, I thought of myself as a collection of almosts and could bes, but I’ve realized so much about myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I’m going to get out of here, out of this place, out of Sterling Point—finally get away from Johntae. I’m going to online school right now, but I’m trying to transfer to an art school in New York. I’ve realized that I’ve got so much potential to be somebody someday.” She takes a breath.

The music switches from Tupac to Alicia Keys.

“He holds you back, huh?”

“Johntae has these really high highs and these really low lows, and then one day, everything boils up and he comes crashing down. And more often than not, I’m the one he’s crashing down on. And once he finds out about his money… well, I just have to start sleeping with my pocketknife under my pillow again.”

“I’m sorry.” I want to offer my protection, tell her that I won’t let anything happen to her—but I know Faith is capable of saving herself. She’s been doing it since before I met her. And besides, I couldn’t even protect my own twin brother.

“No,” she says. “I’m sorry that I can’t do much to help you.”

“It’s okay,” I say, lying to her and to myself. Nothing is okay right now, but I have to pretend that it is for my mental health. I have to pretend that I’m going to come up with the bail money and I’m going to pretend that I’m 100 percent confident I’ll find Tyler.

“Why do you think getting Johntae out will help?” Faith asks, running a hand through her hair.

“Tyler was hanging around Johntae’s crew. Johntae has to care about Tyler in some way, right?” I say, trying to ignore the nagging feeling in my gut that I’m lying to myself. “He’ll help. Besides, he’d know Tyler’s whereabouts. Johntae has people everywhere.”

“I know Johntae like the back of my hand. I don’t think he’ll help you, Marvin.”

“I thought I knew Tyler like the back of mine, too, but…” I stop and look into her eyes, which are deep and brown. “Finding him means everything—everything—to me, and bailing out Johntae to help is the only next step I have.”

Faith stares up at the ceiling fan. “Sometimes missing people leave clues behind. Have you found anything?”

I sigh and then shake my head.

“The clues don’t have to be physical,” she says. “Everything you need to know about where Tyler’s gone could be in Tyler himself.”

“Yeah,” I say, puffing out air.

“Yeah, what?” she asks.

“Tyler—he’s been really different recently. He’s been distant. He’s been breaking all the rules.”

“Rules.” She laughs slightly, like the word tickles her tongue. “Maybe he’s not missing. Maybe he ran away. Maybe he was sick of the rules. Maybe all the pieces inside him fell apart.” She’s the second person to tell me this, after Ivy, and it still doesn’t make me feel any better.

I think for a second. “That’s not something he’d do.”

“People have their ways of surprising us.” Her eyes are the only stars I see now, and I cling to them like they’re the only sources of light that’ll be given to me in this dark tunnel. “Everything will be all right.”

I don’t think everything’s going to be all right. But it’s still nice to hear it.





The next day, Sunday, it’s almost physically painful to stay in my house; it’s so tense and quiet. I sit in my room in silence for a while, a tender soreness in my stomach and arms. I pull up Tyler’s Twitter page and scroll through his photos in a selfish attempt to scrape up some happiness. And it almost works until I come across this one photo I haven’t seen in years. The photo is of us wearing Transformers costumes to our fourth-grade Halloween party—he was Bumblebee and I was Optimus Prime—and suddenly there’s a weight on my shoulders and an emptiness inside me that I just want to fucking go away.