Tyler Johnson Was Here(42)

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Mama hasn’t said anything about it. Besides, we don’t have very much family, so it would just be the two of us and Auntie Nicola anyway. Money’s also pretty tight around the house.” But just the thought of a funeral for Tyler has my heart in my stomach. How does someone go about doing something like that anyway? Like, how could you plan to put your brother in a box to be stuffed in the ground forever?

Faith asks me about my folks and about how Tyler and I grew up. And I tell her everything, which makes me sound like I’m the epitome of the stereotype for black boys. Dad in jail. Mama worked hard to keep the family stable, raising two boys—playing the role of Mama and Papa. And I tell her that Tyler and I grew up like peas in a pod. For years, we were squeezed together, side by side, knowing each other through and through, playing basketball in the streets and NBA 2K on the weekends when shit went down, and then one day our roots split from our pod and we slowly started growing in different directions.

“One time, Tyler and I made a bet on Super Bowl Forty-Seven. Forty-Niners versus the Ravens. I was for the Ravens and he was for the Forty-Niners. When the Ravens won, he got so mad because he had to give me five dollars.” I press down a small laugh.

“Oh yeah?” She flashes me a smile.

“We didn’t talk for a week,” I say, and it hits me that I’ll never get to talk to him again.

There actually were a zillion things I could have said to him that final moment at the party. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to tell my brother that I was afraid we were going in two separate directions, that I was scared I’d lose him forever. And now it’s too late. I’ll have to live with that.

She gives me this sad look. “You blame yourself, don’t you?”

For a moment, I struggle to respond. I do—I blame myself for not being there enough for Tyler when he needed me. I blame myself for saying all the wrong things and doing all the wrong things. I blame myself for letting him hang around Johntae’s crew.

If only I could have stopped everything. Suddenly, the image of Tyler shot dead on the ground, blood pouring out of him, his cold body all alone and abandoned, takes control of my thoughts. I blink hard, trying to flash the image away, my fists balling up at my sides.

I nod and gulp my answer to her, like a baby trying to utter its first word. When she cuts off the car and pulls the key out of the ignition, I come crashing back to reality.

“I just don’t want to believe it. I just don’t know what’s real.”

“You loved him, and I’m sure he loved you. That was real—and that’s all that matters,” she says.

Fuck, man, I feel tears coming up.

“It hurts, Faith,” I say. “I’ll never get to see my brother alive again.”

Dammit. A few seconds slip by, and I stare at her Betty Boop floor mat on the passenger side, wetness on my face.

I look up and realize that we’re at some fancy-looking building that definitely isn’t a part of Sterling Point.

“Where are we?”

“This is my dad’s law firm,” she says. “I’ve never met him, but this is where I came when my best friend, Kayla, got killed in a drive-by.”

I wipe underneath my eyes, scanning the building.

“I went all the way to the roof and overlooked the town. I thought about jumping right then,” she says. “I looked up and it was like I heard her telling me that she’d come back and slap the shit out of me if I jumped.” She laughs.

I’m so glad she didn’t. I’m glad she stayed. But I’m feeling like I want to jump myself right now.

She reaches for my hand. “My point is that I know what you’re feeling inside. I know that ache inside your heart. And I’m living proof that losing a loved one doesn’t stop you from beating yourself, blaming yourself, wanting to die yourself, but Kayla is in me as much as Tyler is in you. They’d want us to fight, not surrender.”

I look into her brown eyes. “Yeah. You’re right.”

She gives me this side-smile that makes me want to smile back.





Eventually, she starts the car again and we get moving, just enjoying each other’s company, moving at forty-five miles per hour through the empty streets, talking about how the best way to make sure Tyler gets justice—the best way to make sure I do right by him one more time—is to take the fight inside me to the streets. We have to demand it. We have to do everything within our power to raise our voices. We have to protest. Just praying and hoping for justice and grace and mercy won’t help us right now.

Faith tells me that Frederick Douglass said, “I prayed for twenty years. Nothing happened until I got off my knees and started marching with my feet.”





Faith drops me back off at my place. I get in bed and stare at my ceiling, thinking about Tyler’s cold, lifeless body, damaged and barely recognizable, and I put a pillow over my face and scream and cry into it as loud as I can.

It’s the thought of living a life of fear that takes me back to the day Dad was dragged away. I’d started having trouble sleeping because I was afraid there were monsters in my room, hiding under my bed and waiting for me in my closet. The monsters cast their big-ass silhouettes along my walls, creating shapes that made me feel small.