Tyler Johnson Was Here(59)

“That’s right,” she says, folding up pairs of his socks and tossing them in the same laundry basket. “It helps me to think about it that way. I just wish…” Her voice trails off for a moment, and when I turn around, I see she has her hands placed against the wall. “I wish people knew who he really was. A boy with a big heart.”

I unfold the paper and read it to myself. It’s a letter. It’s addressed to Dad, written in cursive, and in it Tyler tells about how much he’s going to try to be the opposite of him when he grows up, about how much he hates Dad for what he did, about being afraid of Dad, and I have to stop reading, because it pains me to hold on to such a thing.

And I feel something in my chest. And it wants me to act on it.

I rip the letter to pieces and toss them in the trash bin, trying my best to forget that the letter ever happened, ’cause it makes me feel kind of shitty for not listening.

Tyler wrote Dad, and I wasn’t alone.

Mama keeps on keeping on with picking apart his room, until it’s nothingness, until it’s bare, until all that is left is a mattress and a bed frame and a box in the corner filled with all the tangible things we’ll remember about him.

Tyler was like our dad in many ways. He was hardheaded. He was stubborn. He was selfish. He was all of these most of the time. Tyler was a good kid, with dreams and goals for the future. Tyler was not a monster. And man, goddamn, it’s so fucking sad to me how none of this mattered seconds before he was shot.

Tyler once looked up to Dad. Tyler looked up to me, and it’s finally hitting me that I was too stupid to notice. And now, more than ever, I’m looking forward to the trial, where I’ll let the world know just how good of a kid and brother he was.





At dinnertime, Mama has everyone over for a big feast before the school year ends, using money she’s gotten from donations after Tyler’s death. She sets up an extra seat for Tyler and everything. She even scrapes up enough money to buy streamers and balloons, so it really looks like a legit celebration, like a toast for the survivors of the hood or something, and as much as I feel sick, I go with it.

She makes fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. There’s something special about all of this—sitting here with her, Faith, G-mo, Ivy. I’m mended for a while.

At night, after everyone leaves, I toss and turn in bed. That’s the new normal for me. I can’t sleep, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a doctor diagnosed me with insomnia for a lifetime. Some nights, I can’t sleep because I transport myself in the memories of Tyler. Sometimes, it’s like I hear him dribbling a basketball outside my window, shouting about how he’s going to play for the Warriors alongside Steph Curry, dribbling like he’s a mallet and the earth is a bass drum.

Tyler is gone, but the memories are not. And I’m okay with staying wide awake just to relive them.





? 33 ?


School has finally let out, which means we’ve got seventy-something days to enjoy ourselves before college, and we’re just days from graduation. Auntie Nicola used to say that with graduation comes the real world, a handful of babies, and a string of life crises.

And this means I have weeks, no, maybe days to hear back about an admissions decision from Howard.

Ivy calls and tells me that she was accepted into all four colleges she applied to, and it’s just a matter of her committing to one. She doesn’t want to stray too far from Candace, her new girlfriend, who’s already enrolled in a local beauty school.

And even G-mo tells me that he put in his application to UCLA and is pending late admission. It turns out the girl he’s talking to has some sort of connection with the head honcho over there, like an aunt or uncle or cousin or something, and his chances of getting in have, like, doubled.

Faith is going to transfer to an art school in New York with a full-ride scholarship, which she earned by submitting one of her completely original and beautiful magazine collages. I promise her that I’ll come to visit. I’m going to find a way to make this happen. Maybe after the trial, I’ll be able to think a bit straighter.

All this to say: My two best friends, and my girlfriend, have committed to their futures, made promises to their dreams, and I still feel stuck with no plan A, just a plan B titled Hood Life Forever weighing down on my shoulders.





My birthday is coming up soon, and I make it a thing to let everyone know that I will not celebrate it. I can’t. It’s not a happy day like it used to be. It’s more of a day of mourning—a day where we’ll just gather to grieve and cry over a marble cake. Knowing that this will be a year of many firsts without the other half of the equation has me numb with grief.

I’ve got over five hundred followers on Tumblr now and a shit-ton of reblogs, and according to G-mo, who suddenly claims to be an expert on Tumblr, this is big—like, really big. More people are listening. And every day, the like count on Facebook climbs higher and higher. We’re at nine thousand right now.

I’m trying to sort out which photo to upload to all the pages next. I try to keep them synchronized and updated. Yesterday, I discovered some pictures of the protest, so I just reposted them. My goal has been to post something to remember him daily.

I can’t decide if I want to post this photo of Tyler and me when we were four, the two of us sitting on Mama’s and Dad’s laps in some strip mall, the Easter bunny making the peace sign behind us—the two of us looking absolutely terrified by the giant rabbit. Tyler would wrestle me to the ground if he ever knew I was thinking about posting this. Wherever he is, I know he’s looking down on me, cussing me out under his breath. But probably with a smile, too.