With no other way to get the money to bail out Johntae, it’s now up to me. Ivy, G-mo, and I go back to G-mo’s place to flesh out a plan and collect our thoughts, and his mom, Lupe—a short brown woman with long, curly black hair and eyebrows as bushy as G-mo’s—makes us chips and guacamole. I’ve never had it before and it tastes amazing, and something about the lime or the cilantro or whatever else is in it calms my nerves.

My phone buzzes with Twitter and Instagram notifications. People from school are uploading their pictures from the party, captioning them everything from Wild night to The night I almost got ganked. None of the photos have Tyler in them.

I sit in the middle of a brown, scraggly loveseat, Ivy to my left and G-mo to my right. Seventeen years I’ve known Tyler, and suddenly disappearing isn’t something he’d just do. My leg begins to shake from my thoughts, and I let out slow breaths.

I walk over to the window that’s across the room and press my face up against it, scanning the vastness and the limits of the city. G-mo’s apartment is only on the fourth floor of this apartment building, but I can almost see my house in the distance.

I feel someone creep up behind me. It’s Ivy.

“Hey,” she says. She takes off her blue jean jacket, revealing an Eminem/Slim Shady T-shirt, and then she starts to fan herself. “I admire you, Marv.”

I raise my eyebrows.

She flashes a smile, and I notice G-mo’s finishing off the guacamole straight tongue-to-bowl style. “I’ve never felt as tight with my siblings or anyone as I do with you and G. And I don’t mean that on no weird, straight, lovey-dovey shit either. But like family.” She looks away. “I don’t know what I would do if either of y’all went missing.”

I don’t even notice I’m crying until I feel the drops roll down my face. G-mo’s mom is in her bedroom, yelling something at him in Spanish. He answers back.

The glass bowl clinks down to the coffee table in front of the loveseat, and G-mo clears his throat. “Remember that one white girl who got kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend and it was like World War Three?”

“Yeah,” Ivy and I say.

“How come it’s not like that for Tyler? There were squad cars and search parties on every block for days. Even the day she went missing.”

“You already know why, fool,” Ivy replies, sliding back into her jacket. “Black kids going missing aren’t a priority.”

There’s a beat. “Yeah. The girl’s sister is the one who found her, right?” I ask.

“Yep,” G-mo answers, nodding and running a hand through his gelled, combed-over hair.

Everything rushes in my head. And I don’t feel as helpless, as frail anymore.

“I think we should go back out there and bring him home,” I say.

We start a three-person manhunt, taking the main road all the way down, going up hills, and cutting through alleyways. To distract ourselves from all the anxiety building inside, the whole time we rap Tupac songs out loud—“Letter to the President,” “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” “Changes,” and “I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto.”

“Let’s check around Sojo!” suggests G-mo, taking the lead, pedaling fast in front of Ivy and me. “I just saw on Snapchat that some folks went there after the party.”

And so that is exactly what we do. We investigate other places, like a local popular chicken and ribs joint that I know Tyler likes eating at, the Methodist hospital in case he got injured, and almost every neighborhood within a ten-mile radius, hoping to find little clues, like shoelaces or his do-rag, but coming up empty-handed.

“I feel like we should be, like, putting missing-person flyers on light posts and trees and front doors and car windshields,” Ivy says.

“Nah, that’s too risky. If the wrong person finds out there’s an unarmed black boy wandering around these streets, he’s as good as dead,” G-mo says.

Ivy sighs. “Riiiiight.” A look of defeat on her face.

We stop by the old Pic-A-Rag market one last time. Still nothing but yellow caution tape closing off all means of entry. This time, there’s a police car nearby, but it doesn’t look like anyone is inside it.

There’s a small food mart directly across the street, sitting rusty and tired. A white family owns it. They’re from somewhere up north, and they’ve got a white woman running the place and security cameras in every square inch of the interior. And I mean, to an extent, I don’t blame them. They’ve been robbed so many times. They’ve been in the news for weeks. They’re fed up.

I, personally, have never had a problem with the lady. Most times, when Mama would take me with her to shop for a few items with whatever little change she had at the bottom of her purse, the lady would greet us with a smile, offer to bag our items, and even wave good-bye. And to Mama, this gave her hope about other kinds of people. To Mama, these little gestures kept her coming back, making this place her go-to for groceries.

And it sucks that I can’t remember her name. I mean, on second thought, I don’t think she ever bothered to learn my name either. It was just black and white for the three of us.

We stop inside to see if the woman caught anything on any of her surveillance cameras from last night, or even the past couple days—something to give us a lead. I walk into the store, hearing the welcome jingle from a bell atop the door.

Ivy and G-mo wait behind me for a moment. I walk to the counter where the white woman stands, and I squint really hard to read her name badge. “Miss… Deb, umm… my brother, Tyler, has been missing for a while now and I was wondering if I could see your security footage? Like, to see if the cameras caught his whereabouts?” I hold on to such a strange hope—a hope that, in my head, goes a lot like: Sure, it’s right over here.

But, no. “I can’t do that,” she says, “and besides, some men in fancy suits already stopped by and got all the tapes.”

“The detectives?” I wonder out loud.

She nods, her hands resting on the counter.

I put my head in my hands. I ask her if she has at least seen Tyler. Maybe, at some point, she saw someone who looks almost like me come in and buy their whole supply of Arizona Iced Tea and hot Cheetos. But she shakes her gray head.

“Half-off candy!” G-mo says, excited and distracted, breaking off to stroll through the aisle, flipping through the Skittles. Ivy follows to fetch and retrieve him.

A tall boy, about my age, with a duffel bag slung across his shoulder walks into the little store, his hood over his head, brand-new Jordans squeaky clean. But he doesn’t come in alone. A white cop follows him. It’s a casual sort of thing. The kind of thing where everything is just so coincidental that you don’t think much of what’s unfolding before you.

The boy walks down the half-price candy aisle also, and for some reason he sets his duffel bag down. He browses up and down the aisle, in careful selection. I watch him as he takes steps forward and then steps backward. And then he trips over his bag, sending Ivy and the whole rack of half-price candy tumbling to the floor. Everything is loud and clattering, putting the policeman and the cashier on alert. And without hesitation, the cashier presses the blue flashing panic button next to the cash register, even though there’s already a cop in here, even though there’s nothing to even panic about. It was just an accident.

This isn’t going to be good, I think to myself, feeling it all over, like an aching bolt of lightning inside me. And I’m suddenly remembering back to years ago, when I first heard of a black kid getting killed by the police for—and I quote—“playing loud music and disturbing the peace.”

I run down the aisle to check on Ivy and help pick her up from the floor, her hands wrapped around her head.

The cop and the cashier run over, too, and the cashier slips on a few bags of Tropical Skittles. Her head hits the floor hard enough to bleed, no, hard enough for a concussion, no, hard enough for all our melanin to be blamed.

The police officer clutches his side as he bends down, saying, “Ma’am, are you okay? Ma’am, are you okay?”

And I just stare as I lift my friend up, thinking—Man, there are three people on the floor. And all you see is this white woman.

The woman has a split on the side of her head, and blood starts to ooze out. She bites her lip in pain, shaking her head, her bottom lip trembling like she saw a ghost and it knocked her down or some shit.

“Oh. My. God,” the boy says, confused, his hood falling off his head.

And before the boy can scoot closer to the woman to check on her, she tosses her hands up and says, with so much irritation in her voice, “I’m all right—”

“That doesn’t look so good,” the cop interrupts, examining her head.

G-mo places a hand on my shoulder and Ivy lowers her head, taking off her Los Angeles Lakers hat. And the three of them are not looking at us, and everything inside me is saying to run.

The cop helps the lady stand up.

“I think he was trying to rob me. He looks like one of them hoodlums who came in here the last time,” the lady says, holding her head. And I think, Well, maybe it’s a concussion talking. ’Cause I certainly didn’t see any sign that he was trying to rob this place.

Ivy, G-mo, and I exchange looks.

The cop kicks the boy in his ankle as he tries to lift up from the ground. “What’s in the bag?” he shouts.

“Sir,” the boy says softly, his hands at his sides, “I didn’t steal anything. And I wasn’t ’bout to either. I promise.”

“What’s in the bag?” the cop repeats, louder.

“My bag?”

“Yes, your goddamn bag!”

“CDs,” the boy answers, “just CDs. That’s how I’m funding my college.” And he points to the words running across the front of his hoodie: PENN STATE.

The cop snags the bag from the boy as he stands. He unzips it and turns it upside down, dumping everything out all over the candy-covered floor. Sure enough, a few dozen loose homemade CDs fall out, and so does a little dime bag of weed.

The cashier woman walks to the freezer and pulls out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and puts it to the side of her head. Then she walks back to the front of the store, trusting that the cop will get everything settled.

The cop picks up the dime bag, shoves it in the boy’s face, and then puts it in his uniform pocket. His dispatch radio is giving him orders, but he doesn’t listen. “You forgot to mention the part where you’ve got drugs in your bag, too,” the cop says. He blinks his pale blue eyes faster.

“But… sir… can I…?”

“Shut up!” the cop barks, coming closer to him.

I can feel my heart beating in my chest, and the three of us take steps back, crushing packs of M&M’s and gummy bears, wanting more than ever to flee this place but not wanting to leave the poor kid all alone.

I slip out my phone quick enough to snap a photo of the boy and the officer to post in case things go horribly wrong. And I think maybe this is my subtle way of showing the boy that I see him, that I am here, that he’s not alone in this—a boy, with a tear-streaked face, miming with his hands that he has an explanation to stay alive.

“But, sir,” the boy says.

“You deaf? I said shut up!” The officer kicks the boy in the ankle again, harder this time. The cop rolls his eyes and coughs two words: “Damn thug.”

“No, you don’t understand,” the boy says. He has this confused expression, like he’s unsure of what’s actually happening. He struggles to collect all of his CDs from the floor, like maybe he’s worried about them getting scratched up.

“Boy, sit your ass back down.”

“I promise I wasn’t trying to rob this place. I was just getting some snacks. See—look,” the boy adds, reaching into his pocket—maybe too quickly, too black, I don’t know, but in seconds, the cop shoves the boy into a rack of chips and then body-slams him to the floor. Face-first.

We jump back as we hear the smack.

There’s blood and another crunching sound, like bones being split in half, ringing in my ears. The cop has the boy tied in a submission lock, his arms twisted tight behind him, the boy crying real tears now and screaming, fighting out of the hold.

“Yo!” G-mo yells at the cop. “You’re hurting him. He wasn’t doing anything to you. Let him go, man.”

The cop ignores G-mo, still slamming and kicking the boy around like a rag doll, a plaything. A thing to be brutalized.

“OH MY GOD. WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!” I find myself screaming this over and over again as everything happens in front of my eyes, open wide—so wide.

“Stop it!” Ivy screams, picking up candy packages and throwing them at the cop’s head. “He’s just a kid.”

And that rings in my head: He’s just a kid.

He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid.

The cop yells, “Everybody shut the fuck up.” He looks at the three of us. “You three better get out of here before you’re next.”

And now I’m wondering: What does next mean? Next to be treated like a punching bag or an animal? Next to lose my life? I could fucking throw up right now.

The cop slaps some handcuffs on the boy, and the boy wails, trying his best to break free.

“Goddamn thugs think you own this place. Fuck it. You’re gonna learn a lesson today.”

My gaze falls to the floor, and I watch blood pool around the poor boy’s mouth, desolation in his eyes, and he’s coughing and crying and choking and screaming and choking and crying and coughing and begging for this torture to just stop, until he falls silent, beaten unconscious.

My heart shatters into a billion pieces, my thoughts shifting and sorting, one at a time, unable to place themselves. Because nothing makes sense right now.