Tyler Johnson Was Here

by Jay Coles

  They call G-mo, Ivy, and me Oatmeal Creme Pies. Brown on the outside, white in the middle. We’ve embraced the name. Oatmeal Creme Pies are delicious—by far the most delicious Little Debbie snack—so we’re proudly the Oatmeal Creme Pie Squad.

  After third-period trigonometry with Mrs. Bradford, I head to the cafeteria, also known as the Lion’s Den. It’s supposed to resemble a mall food court, but the architect did a very shitty job, and if anything it looks like an old, run-down, hole-in-the-wall food joint in a bowling alley. It has a bunch of tables tossed in, scattered throughout.

  I meet up with G-mo and Ivy at our usual shabby lunch table. We’re a group of high-ability geeks who love science and A Different World as much as life itself, sitting amid a pool of jocks, preppies, tomboys, cheerleaders, gamers, hipsters, wannabe gangsters, and, you know, just the punks who are always getting in trouble. Our world is the tiniest of them all, but that’s okay, because—as I read in some book—we don’t have the power to choose where we come from. We can’t choose between if we come from the bottom or top or from a tiny world of poverty or not.

  “I told that chick I was messing around with to fuck off,” Ivy says.

  G-mo’s light brown eyes get wide. “Word?”

  Ivy says, “I found out she was straight,” and she puts air quotes around the word straight. “I told her I ain’t ever putting my mouth on hers again until they make condoms for kissing. Online dating’s a real bitch.”

  The two of them keep going back and forth, making each other laugh. It’s only three of us at a table for ten. We’re as diverse as any single lunch table gets. We’ve got G-mo, AKA a young and improved Carlos Vives, my best friend since grade school, who’s from Colombia; Ivy, who’s mixed and a lesbian (which I think is dope because she gets all the superfly-looking girls); and then there’s me, a slender, Southern Baptist black boy—not as black as skin gets but close—and geekier than most.

  G-mo and I are eating chicken quesadillas topped with lettuce and tomatoes, but they look more like extra-flattened grilled cheese sandwiches. Ivy’s smart and got an actual grilled cheese and chunky tomato soup. The three of us talk about what happened last night.

  “I’ve been checking Twitter,” G-mo says. “I haven’t seen anything. Like, nothing. It’s pretty crazy that no one’s talking about it.”

  “I thought about starting a Tumblr for the guy who got killed. He went here, didn’t he?” Ivy asks. Ivy’s not only wise beyond her age but also really caring. I love that about her.

  “That’s what I heard,” I reply. “It’s scary and sad as shit.” All my life I’ve heard about people getting killed by police, but I never really prepared myself for it to happen so close to my neighborhood. I mean, I figure if I stay out of trouble, and if I convince Ivy and G-mo and Tyler to do the same, and if I always do as I’m told by the law, I’ll be okay.

  Security guards stand around the perimeter of the cafeteria because lunch is the place where most of the fights happen. We’ve yet to go a single week in our school’s history without a fight. Out of all the schools in all the counties within a twenty-mile radius of Sojo High, our school is known to have the most expulsions. Most of which come from fights. And since our sports teams aren’t that good, we pride ourselves on being recognized for something, even if it is the highest number of physical altercations.

  I turn around and catch a look at Tyler sitting with Johntae’s crew, laughing and cracking jokes with one another. Tyler’s never sat with Johntae and his crew before. He stopped sitting with us to sit with the jocks last year. Why the hell is he sitting there now? Johntae is a notorious drug dealer in Sterling Point, a Sojo High bully, a gang member, and yep—he’s known to love weed like Kanye loves Kanye, or like G-mo loves masturbating. Defying all odds, Johntae has managed to stay in school, hanging on to a 1.9 GPA by paying geeks like me to do the work for him.

  He’s midsentence when he looks over at me, stopping his conversation with Tyler, who’s sitting directly across from him. I get the feeling that Tyler’s purposely not turning around, purposely not trying to catch me watching him. Johntae gives me the coldest look, and I find my eyes quickly shooting away, back to my tray.

  “You know what I hate?” I ask.

  “Yo. Mrs. Bradford? Don’t we all,” G-mo shouts a little too loudly.

  “No, no,” I say, sighing. “I hate how I feel trapped. I feel, like, boxed in. I feel like I’m the mouse from Flowers for Algernon, like I’m destined to be this geeky black boy with no sense of direction for the rest of my life. Man, I wanna live. Man, I just wanna be like them sometimes. I wanna fit in. I hate not fitting the part.” And then my eyes wander back over to Johntae and his posse.

  “Those guys?” G-mo goes. “Wangsters? You want to be a wangster? Who are you and what have you done with my best friend, Marvin Darren Johnson? Because the Marvin I know would never think about being one of them. Do you not remember that we almost lost our lives because we were mistaken for some of them? Fuck that.”

  “I don’t want to be a gangster,” I say. “I just want to… fit in with them. You know?”

  “I get you,” Ivy replies, and it’s kind of nice, because Ivy is also always the understanding one. She just gets things, gets my way of thinking, like she’s the girl doppelganger of me. “It’d be nice to fit in with the cheerleaders.”

  “You look like one,” G-mo mutters to her.

  “Yeah?” she asks. “My chest is so flat, though. I hear that’s what the coaches look for.”

  “That’s why you gotta get in there and bribe the shit out of the coaches. That’s what a lot of them did,” he says. “Like, one girl brought in blackberry pie.”

  “Only white people make that shit,” Ivy says. We laugh.

  Before I can say anything else, it happens. The fight. Today’s fight ends up being between two girls. One black, big, and mean girl wearing a short skirt against another black, tomboyish-looking girl. They go at it hard, flinging weave everywhere, slapping each other with lunch trays, and then the fight makes its way over to us. One of the girls slams the other right on top of our table, the wind of the motion blowing in my face, and from here, everything sounds like crunches and bones breaking.

  G-mo, Ivy, and I jump back from the table, and then security and Principal Dodson run over to stop the girls from ripping each other’s heads off. After they go, all that’s left around us is a lingering waft of sweat and musty armpit and hair grease.

  Later, after fifth period, I get called into Principal Dodson’s office. The tiny room is filled with coffee stains and spilled mustard trails and stacks of old papers and books, and it takes only a couple seconds for me to break into a sweat, beads falling into my eyes. The office smells and is as hot as the devil’s ass crack, and it makes me literally itch all over, to the point where I have to make a mental note to shower ASAP.

  Principal Dodson looks like a fifty-year-old ex–football player: broad shoulders, a mean expression always on his face, a line of sweat running down his black forehead like he’s coming from the gym. Most of the teachers here are white, and I used to think Dodson and I would get along because of our shared culture. Nope. One time, he wore icicle-shaped cuff links just to prove he’s made of ice. He has a reputation of being a dick, so most try to avoid him.

  “Mr. Johnson,” he says. “Do you know why you’re in my office?”

  “No, sir.” My hands get a little clammy and sweat coats my palms thickly, like my hands got dipped in jars of Vaseline, so I wipe them off on my pants.

  And then Dodson leans back in his desk chair, waving a packet in my face. “You know what this is?”

  “No, sir,” I answer, unable to read what’s on the pages.

  “Look closer.” He tosses me the papers.

  It’s the paper I recently turned in for my English class. The one about my favorite show, A Different World.

  “Why should I give my time to someone like you, who doesn’t really give a damn?” Dodson yells at me from ac
ross his cluttered desk, books and piles of paper covering the surface. His voice is loud and piercing, stabbing my ears.

  “But I put a lot of thought into that paper. The assignment was to write about a piece of art I find inspiring. Dwayne Wayne is my hero, and this show actually paints my reality.”

  Dodson just laughs in my face, like what I’ve told him is the funniest thing he’s heard in a while. A tear even rolls down his cheek—that’s how hard he laughs. And then when his laughter winds down, he glares at me in silence, waiting for me to take back my words. I stare at him, too. My hands get moist, and sweat beads my palms again.

  “So, you really think some TV show counts as art?” Anger gleams in his eyes, like days of rage that have been building up are about to be unleashed on me.

  “A Different World was—is—more than just… some TV show,” I shoot back at him, as confident as ever, pressing my fingers into his desk to emphasize my words. “A Different World shows blackness in a way not many other shows do. It taught me that I could be successful, even when people think otherwise. It taught me not to be afraid of daring to be different. The characters knew what it meant to be like me.”

  Dodson laughs sarcastically. “So, a TV show taught you that, but not important writers like Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison?”

  “Sir, that’s not what I’m saying,” I mutter, shrugging my shoulders. “Not to be rude or anything, but black people aren’t a monolith, and we’re allowed to be inspired by more than one thing or a handful of people. Hughes is my favorite poet, but that doesn’t mean he’s the only person who inspires me.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Wait, no—your paper is definitely more ridiculous.”

  My heart sinks in my chest. And I remember what Dad wrote in his letter. It’s best to cry when it’s dark and I’m alone. So right now isn’t the time to cry, even though I feel like just busting out in a watery stream.

  “You really have the audacity to think that MIT’s gonna accept somebody who doesn’t take school seriously? I’m going to be real clear with you. Unless you’re going to start treating your education with respect, you might as well keep MIT out of your vocabulary.”

  “What?”

  “This is real life, not the movies. Boys like you don’t have a place at MIT. Or any of the prestigious schools in America.”

  “Well, Mr. Dodson, sir, I’d like to think otherwise. I think there’s plenty of room for boys who look like me. But people like you make it hard for us to see that.”

  “Who do you think you are?” he bellows, getting out of his chair, leaning in toward me. “You go to Sojo Truth High School, one of the worst-rated schools in the state. To the admissions committee, your high-ability classes, your straight As, your inspiration—none of that means shit.”

  “But… sir…” And suddenly, I just want to scream at the top of my fucking lungs, because right now I’m reminded that I’m not enough, never ever will be enough. That I will never get out of here. A Different World is just fiction. There’s no future for people like me.

  He rolls his eyes and balls up a fist, almost gnawing on it ’cause he’s on edge.

  “Get out of my office and get to class” is all he says.

  I exhale deeply before grabbing my backpack and my paper and walking toward his office door. Just when I touch the doorknob, it creaks, and his ceiling fan wheezes. I look back at him and see his eyes still glued to me.

  I tell him, “Oh, and by the way, if you ever get a chance, you should watch an episode. It’ll show you what education has the potential to be. You might even like it.”

  And I leave his office.

  • 4 •

  In the hallway, as I head back to class, I run into Johntae and Tyler shaking it up like they’re longtime friends or something. The hallways are normally tight and crowded as shit, the stench itching my nostrils, but right now they’re empty. And out of all the possible combinations in all of Sojo Truth High, my brother and Johntae are the only two standing in front of the science lab, slapping hands and smiling at each other. What could Tyler possibly be doing with somebody like Johntae?

  I clear my throat loud enough to interrupt this fuckery going on.

  And shit gets hella awkward.

  Tyler looks at me. He stands there in his Sojo Truth High sports hoodie and jeans. He nods with a forced smile. The way he looks at me tells me he’s hiding something. The look on his face shows he’s becoming someone else. And for a split second, I’m thinking, Maybe this is how Cain looked at Abel?

  “What up, bro?” he says.

  “Nothing, nothing much, just… uh… coolin’.”

  He chuckles before walking down the hallway to his next class, his backpack, unzipped, dangling on his left shoulder. “Catch you later, then, bro! Oh, and remind Ma that I’ll be home a little late—I’m hanging with some dudes.” He gives me that warm brotherly smile.

  “All right.” I wave at him until he’s completely out of sight.

  And it hits me that I am all damn alone in the hallway with Johntae. Even if he and my bro are suddenly tight or whatever, he could still give me shit.

  He blinks real long and hard. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Marvin the tree monkey,” he grunts. A whack-ass line to scare me, but it works. There’s a lump in my throat, and my mind runs through all the possibilities of what’s about to go down. Around other people, Johntae does only minor things to me, like shove me into my locker and knock my books out of my hands, Karate Kid–style—but now we aren’t around other people. I blink, flinching hard, my heart racing.

  Johntae’s a legit thug who dresses like the stereotype of one. Black do-rag. Bandana. Black T-shirt so long that it passes his knees. Baggy jeans. White kicks, untied and polished.

  He steps closer until we’re only inches away from each other. “I swear you and your geeky friends are some little Creme Pies, always acting all gooey and white,” he bellows, holding his pants up with one hand, the other pointing in my face.

  “Well… maybe you need to reconsider your definition of what it means to be black.” I struggle to speak, the words feeling almost physically painful as they fall from my tongue. “Being black doesn’t just mean repping the hood, right?”

  Johntae laughs an unexpected laugh. It’s a booming one, like an overly amused hyena, with a little hood in it—like you can hear his hard life in between the has. He gets even closer, until I can actually feel him breathing on my face. “Blood, you don’t know nothing about the hood. You don’t get that experience until you’re shot and stabbed in the back from being out there on the streets selling dope to get by, you hear?”

  I gulp, swallowing down a knot, and nod like his words are death sentences.

  And then he steps away and scans me up and down, his eyes stopping for a bit too long at my chain. It was my dad’s chain, and it’s one of the only pieces of him I still have. Shit. I feel the world narrowing and closing in.

  “Hot daaaamn,” he says lowly, his fist pressed to his mouth. He pauses for a short moment, looking into my eyes, and then continues. “Oh yeah, you gonna have to give me that.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, lil nigga. Give me your chain.”

  “It’s worthless,” I lie to him.

  He cocks his head up and bites his lip. “I don’t give a shit.” He launches his body at me and slams me against the wall of metal lockers, cold against cold. My head hits hard enough for a concussion, and my vision blurs for a moment. He grips my collar tightly in his hands, his fingernails cutting into my neck. As I wheeze and gasp, my head feeling like it’ll explode, he says with a sneer, “I’m not gonna repeat myself.”

  I nod, my eyes slowly closing from the pressure.

  Then I’m released. My skull doesn’t feel like it’s slowly breaking into tiny pieces anymore. And I have a grip on my vision again.

  Slowly but surely, I pull the chain up from around my neck and drop it into his open palm.

  �
��Why me?”

  “You ain’t like me,” he says. “That’s why.”

  “What?”

  “You different,” Johntae says before waddling down the hallway toward C-Quad, his pants nearly tripping him at his ashy ankles. And he chucks me the bird, muttering, “Pussy-ass bitch.”

  Man, ain’t this some fucked-up shit.

  Just when I get ready to head home, I look both ways and see Tyler in the distance.

  He’s standing around with Johntae and his crew, pants sagging lower than usual, wearing his gray sports hoodie and a snapback. I don’t understand how, even when it’s been so long since he’s played sports, Tyler still manages to wear that hoodie.

  Tyler looks at something in his hand as Johntae talks to him, poking him in the chest. It’s like he’s in trouble, big trouble for some shit. And my heart is beating so hard.

  Tyler pulls out a folded baggie and slips it into his other palm, closing it tightly, and then he eases it over to Johntae. It’s all shady as hell.

  Johntae smiles, nodding in appreciation.

  Tyler nods back, but in fear. My heart thuds in triplets now.

  And then I catch Johntae slip Tyler a wad of cash.

  God, please, no.

  I stand there, just watching Tyler talk and laugh with Johntae. But instead of waiting for my nuts to drop and rescuing Tyler, I end up walking home, taking a shortcut through a series of backyards, climbing fences, and cutting through gated communities.

  • 5 •

  I look around me, taking in everything I see, until I start to breathe this neighborhood, exhaling it, knowing it through and through. Little girls playing hopscotch written in multicolored chalk on the sidewalks. Older boys playing football on opposite sides of the cracked street, dividing them even more, degrees of separation between them. Parents sitting in lawn chairs on their porches, sipping cheap coolers. Fake smiles. Fake nods. Fake happiness.

  When I walk into my room, I see that G-mo’s already made himself a ham sandwich and Ivy’s lying across the foot of my bed, flipping through a Game Informer magazine, her phone blaring “Hip Hop Ride” by Da Youngstas as loud as it can.