Tyler Johnson Was Here(35)

I hate how they keep saying “the body.” My heart stops and then starts and then stops all over again every time they say it.

“I’m here to answer any questions you might have, and will be with you throughout the entire identification process,” Mr. Garcia says. “Sound good?”

Silence washes over the room for a moment.

Mr. Garcia gets up to hold the door open for us. I’m taking so many deep breaths, and my lungs feel so damn heavy. We all file out the room, my arm interlocked with Mama’s. I can feel her shaking, like she just stepped inside a freezer or something. And I’m shaking, too.

We turn and take a few steps down the hallway, and Mr. Garcia says, “Right in here.”

I blink harder and slower as we enter the room. It’s cold, and I can hear an unseen air-conditioning unit blasting air inside. Mr. Garcia leads us to a metal table on wheels with a blue sheet over it.

My heart pounds. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t feel anything. Mama’s eyes get real wide and she’s shaking even harder now.

Mr. Garcia pulls back the blue sheet. I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to see. I can’t see this.

Mama loses it. “Oh my God!” she screams, her voice splitting in so many places.

I swallow. Then, I look.

The boy on the table is Tyler—that’s what my eyes tell me; that’s what my brain says. Same fivehead forehead. Same nose. It’s Tyler, but it’s also not. His eyes are so glossy and pale, not the familiar brown I remember. His skin is different, like a plastic mannequin’s that’s grayer than his brown. His mouth is open, like he was letting out a final breath of air. There’s dirt and grass and blood still in his hair.

My stomach twists. A sob slips out from deep within my gut.

Mama leans over Tyler’s body. She doesn’t touch him—just looks at him, like she’s trying to press in her mind that he’s really not coming back to us, or like she’s trying to scrape up some hope that it’s not really him.

I watch Mr. Garcia walk over to the other side of the room and grab a clipboard. He comes back and writes something down. “Is this Tyler Johnson?”

I can’t even nod right now.

Mama says, “That’s my son,” and I feel the whole world shake inside me.

Mr. Garcia begins to read the autopsy report. “There are three holes in the body. One in the chest, near the heart. Two in the stomach area. We found three bullets belonging to a Glock 22 lodged inside.”

My mouth goes numb.

I’m going to be sick or faint or both.

I run out the room, not even looking back. As soon as I get outside, I’m throwing up all over the steps. Everything I’ve eaten is coming out my mouth and it’s like every drop of water in my body pours from my eyes.

I wipe my mouth with my sleeve. My chest fucking hurts.

And I feel like I’m dying.





The detectives drive Mama and me back home, and the two of us have finally gone a whole five minutes without busting out into tears. We just sit on the couch, staring straight ahead, lights off and curled up into each other, like how we’d do when I was a little kid and Tyler and I would take naps with her.

Everything inside me feels emptied out. And I don’t know what to do. I can’t think about anything, and I don’t want to think about him being gone. I would be okay if the two of us stayed like this forever.





? 16 ?


The next day, Mama stays in her bedroom, the door closed but not blocking out the sound of her crying. I sit alone in the living room, staring at the TV but not really watching it, trying to distract myself from my new reality. This reality—where I’m alive and my brother is not.

I text G-mo and Ivy to tell them what happened, and they come over a couple hours before school even lets out, catching me by surprise, tears streaming down their faces, hands shaking, and it almost seems like they’re trying so hard not to look me in the eyes.

And as if words are the hardest things in the universe, Ivy stutters, “Th-th-there’s a v-v-video that leaked online.”

“A video?” This can’t be real. And I feel like the smallest thing in the room.

“Some anonymous account posted it. It’s everywhere, man,” G-mo adds. And he asks me for my phone.

I try to ignore that it’s the same phone I shared with Tyler as I hand it to him, my heart rate picking up. I sit back down on the couch.

He returns the phone to me and then places a hand on my shoulder, leaving it for a while. “We thought you’d want to see it, too.”

G-mo and Ivy sit across from me. Maybe it’s all in my head, but our living room seems to be closing in on us.

I mute the TV and hold up the phone to see the footage for myself.

I press play.

I can see him: It’s night, and there’s Tyler, walking beneath a streetlight so bright it might as well be day, his hands in the air. I hear my brother’s voice. He’s saying over and over again: “Leave me alone. I’m just going home.” There’s a cop in his uniform, his back to the camera. Tyler turns to him. My brother’s face, my brother’s body—alive. He pushes the cop away. And then the pop of a gun. Pop. Pop. The camera tilts and goes completely black.

I hear the shots replay on loop.