Tyler Johnson Was Here(41)

I squint at him. “What do you mean?”

Mama just sucks on her cigarette, staring at the TV.

G-mo licks his lips. “See for yourself. It’s all over Twitter.”

I pull out the phone I shared with Tyler and scroll through my Twitter feed until I find what they’re talking about. Tweets that go beyond saying Tyler’s a gangbanging thug. Tweets that take it too fucking far. Tweets that say he deserved what he got. Shit about police having the right to protect themselves. I scroll until I see a video with a kid from school—some white guy named Lance Anderson, a senior at Sojo High. He and some other random kids with matching plain white shirts talk into the camera, saying how it’s such a shame that the cops are being punished for doing something real good for the city. He’s called for a protest in defense of the cop who murdered my brother; it’s going to happen on Christmas Day.

I give Ivy, who’s across from me, a look, and then I glance at G-mo, feeling my heart beat hard inside my chest—so hard, because there’s never just enough with these white people. Racists like this dude always find a way to make matters worse, find ways to justify hate. We never gave them a reason to hate us. But they don’t even care about that. They’re so fragile and afraid of people who are different that they have to give so much hate to others just to feel big, just to feel alive.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Ivy says quietly.

G-mo gives me this tight-lipped frown and glances at the TV and then back at me, his eyes wide and infuriated. “What the literal fuck is going on? Are people seriously this ignorant? Lance can’t actually be this motherfucking stupid, can he? Sorry for the language, Mrs. Johnson.”

My jaw tightens and my heart pounds.

Breathe, Marvin. Just keep breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

Ivy looks as if she’s still processing all of this. Her fists are clenched at her sides, like she’s ready to punch a hole straight through the dude’s face.

“Why don’t some white people want to acknowledge police brutality?” I ask, feeling like the world has just used me to wipe its ass. “Why don’t they care about us?”

“Some won’t even say the words ‘police brutality,’ bro,” Ivy says.

I shake my head. Mama stands up from the couch and gets Auntie Nicola on the phone. I can hear her voice as she sits in the kitchen—can hear as she begins to sob, which puts an aching in my chest.

I want one more chance to talk to Tyler—to see his smile, to hear his laugh, to save him, to tell him how he was always the better part of the equation.

I remember when Mama made Tyler and me go to Bible school on Sundays. The Sunday school teacher kept calling Tyler a prophet, saying one day he would grow up to be a teacher of the word of God himself, that he’d recruit more believers. I remember Tyler going around school bragging about what the teacher told him.

And I smile. And my eyes water. And I fucking hurt.

G-mo and Ivy stay as long as they can, until their curfews, and then they bike and skate home when they have to.

When I get in my bed, I text Faith, telling her about how I can’t ignore this huge gaping hole that’s consuming me every single second of every single day. She texts back, saying she’s going to pick me up.





Faith pulls to a stop in front of my house after I sneak out my window. The car ride is silent for the most part, which I really fucking need right now. At least for a little while longer.

We ride past a series of abandoned buildings, all rusted and covered in vines and weeds—graffitied up and sad, leaning back a little, like the construction of the hood wants to take a step away from itself, travel back a couple decades in history.

Everything about this place looks uglier up close, when you really see it for what it is and not what it used to be. Especially at night, when everything is just washed in darkness and violence—so brutal and so shallow. Groups of boys wearing all black huddle around fire hydrants—not because they are curious as to what would happen if they were to open it, but because the tip of the hydrant is a great place to set a dime bag and lethal weapons for intimidation. And I make a mental promise to myself that one day I’ll really make it out of here. I need to make it out of here.

“Thanks for the ride,” I mumble. My voice sounds dry and raspy.

“It’s cool,” she answers, stopping at a red light. And she just nods at the road in front of her, flipping hair out of her brown face. And I get chills. I’m left telling myself that I shouldn’t even be getting chills right now. I feel guilty, looking at Faith and feeling the way I do about her when my brother is dead.

I gaze back out the window at the constellations, but they have me feeling more boxed-in and trapped, reminding me I’ve got a bunch of tunnels of darkness to walk through, because I was born into this skin, this hood, this fate. And I’m quiet, wondering how I go on from here.

She clears her throat and rolls down the window to let some air in. “You know my heart is bleeding right now, right? I’m so sorry,” she says, but it’s like it’s physically uncomfortable for her to say the words, like she’s suddenly remembering all the people she’s lost in her own life at once. “And I hope the man who did it gets put away for life.”

“Me too,” I say, staring into her eyes.

“Will there be a funeral for Tyler?” she asks, and inhales deeply from the crack in her window, continuing down some dark street.