Tyler Johnson Was Here(37)

Ripples of nausea and ache creep up on me.

And I don’t know when the pain is going to end.

After G-mo and Ivy leave, Mama and I remain a mess in the living room. Mama calls Detective Conaway and asks him if they’re going to get the man who did it, if they’re locking him up. They talk about the video and about Tyler and about the investigation and about standard procedure, but Mama doesn’t take their mess. She stays on the phone for hours, and after she hangs up, all frustrated and broken, she decides that she needs to be alone in her room again.





I open up the video while lying in bed, and I’m not even sure why. Each time I watch it, I feel like someone is surgically ripping out all of my insides without any anesthetic. It’s as if I notice something new—something fucking worse—the more I see and hear it. I don’t really know why the news keeps calling it an event, an altercation. I’ve never heard murder pronounced that way. What happened wasn’t just an altercation. It was fucking slaughter, man. The officer’s name is everywhere: Thomas Meredith. I feel sick.

When I click off the video, I try my best to stop myself from scrolling through the hashtags—to keep from diving headfirst into such a shallow pool of hatred—because I know there’ll only be white people waiting on me, wanting to try to hold me under the water until I go silent, waiting until I’m in total fear of blue and white. But after the tenth time of playing it, I have to take a break, before I fucking die from brokenness and rage.

I close the video and scroll through my timeline.

All I see are hashtags floating around: #PrayersForTylerJohnson and #EndPoliceBrutality, and oppressive ones, like #BlueLivesMatter.

Clicking on each brings up a slew of posts. Photos. Videos of people speaking out on their own phones. Links to similar cases. It’s all so overwhelming.

I’m seeing so many All Lives Matter bullshit posts that have my entire body shaking. People don’t fucking know that black folks were never included in the All. All-American means white. All-inclusive means white. All lives means white lives. It’s bullshit. White folks always make it about them, and I’m pissed off that they’re trying to mask their hatred with these tags.

But the craziest thing to see is all the pictures snatched from Tyler’s social media pages—pictures that even I haven’t seen before. Some of them are of him dressed in a black suit and tie; some are of him in his everyday wear: dark jeans and a hoodie. Others are close-ups of his face, as if they’re mug shots, even though he’s never been arrested once. People are saying that my father was a criminal and a monster, so Tyler had it coming. I guess that’s the most fucked-up part of all the social media bullshit.

I scroll through the comments.


Maybe if he wasn’t holding a bag of dope, he’d be alive.



Fuck black people. #WhiteLivesMatter



He looks like he’d rob a store.



What did you people want? To give him a freebie to commit a crime cause he’s black? He was a bad dude.





Tyler ≠ a bad dude.

Tyler = bright and loving.

Tyler = my brother, who was killed.

There are also comments and replies to posts that are lighter and just more, uh, human, and I don’t fucking know why, but they still hurt.


Tyler, you’re in a better place. Heaven ain’t racist.



This kid was a fucking Basketball prodigy! I’ll miss playing after school with him. #RIPBro



You deserved better than this. Your family is in my prayers. Always.





Everything in the world is just a divided and blurry mess. The real world. The online one. All of it has just become too fucked up for me to even feel human. The more I scroll and see all the photos and hashtags, the more I feel monstrous.

It gets to the point where even the hurt fucking hurts.

I try to sleep, but I can’t even get my eyes to close. I’m lying on a soft mattress, eyes wide, and Tyler’s somewhere in the morgue.





? 17 ?


I really want to just stay home and lie in bed and watch episodes of A Different World on Netflix and block the world out, but I can’t—and I don’t. A part of me hopes that Sojo High will help clear and ease my mind.

I’m hoping for a distraction.

I don’t want to look at my phone.

G-mo and Ivy meet at my house to walk with me to school. Ivy’s eating an Oatmeal Creme Pie. I remember debating about them with Tyler. He thought Fudge Rounds were better. He always had bad taste. My chest gets tight.

When I walk through the doors of Sojo High, people do one of those Red Sea splits like I’m Moses or some shit, and everyone’s staring at us up and down, whispering to one another.

“Mr. Johnson.” Principal Dodson stops me as I’m walking to my locker.

I turn around, shrugging my shoulders. “What?” And it comes out a bit ruder than I meant, but it’s too late to take it back, and besides, Dodson’s a dick. And I don’t even feel like talking right now.

He walks up to me, angry-eyed and flustered, gripping a coffee mug in his hand. “Are you ready for today?” His nose is pointed up, flaring.

I almost talk myself out of it, but I reply like a decent human being would. “Yeah, as ready as I can be, emotionally and all.” My gaze drops to the floor.