The next day, Mama stays in her bedroom, the door closed but not blocking out the sound of her crying. I sit alone in the living room, staring at the TV but not really watching it, trying to distract myself from my new reality. This reality—where I’m alive and my brother is not.

I text G-mo and Ivy to tell them what happened, and they come over a couple hours before school even lets out, catching me by surprise, tears streaming down their faces, hands shaking, and it almost seems like they’re trying so hard not to look me in the eyes.

And as if words are the hardest things in the universe, Ivy stutters, “Th-th-there’s a v-v-video that leaked online.”

“A video?” This can’t be real. And I feel like the smallest thing in the room.

“Some anonymous account posted it. It’s everywhere, man,” G-mo adds. And he asks me for my phone.

I try to ignore that it’s the same phone I shared with Tyler as I hand it to him, my heart rate picking up. I sit back down on the couch.

He returns the phone to me and then places a hand on my shoulder, leaving it for a while. “We thought you’d want to see it, too.”

G-mo and Ivy sit across from me. Maybe it’s all in my head, but our living room seems to be closing in on us.

I mute the TV and hold up the phone to see the footage for myself.

I press play.

I can see him: It’s night, and there’s Tyler, walking beneath a streetlight so bright it might as well be day, his hands in the air. I hear my brother’s voice. He’s saying over and over again: “Leave me alone. I’m just going home.” There’s a cop in his uniform, his back to the camera. Tyler turns to him. My brother’s face, my brother’s body—alive. He pushes the cop away. And then the pop of a gun. Pop. Pop. The camera tilts and goes completely black.

I hear the shots replay on loop.

Pop! One.

I fight for breath.

Pop! Two.

I’m about to black out.

Pop! Three.

No, no, no, no, no. This. Can’t. Be. Real.

I stare at the dark phone screen. And then my chest expands and retracts fast, my throat drying, a lump burning up in my gut.

“That’s not him,” I say through tears, the words falling out all jumbled and wet. “It can’t be.” I want the world to swallow me up. And it sinks in, kind of like how all the sand sinks to the bottom of an hourglass.

Tyler is gone.

I’m just going home. My brother’s last words echo in my head as I shudder, mostly out of fear and so much damn misery. I could vomit right now. My stomach folds from my racing thoughts.

I’m going to be sick. All of my breath leaves my body. And suddenly, I can’t be in this room anymore.

I storm outside, hop on my bike, and ride away as fast as I can. I don’t have a destination in mind. I just need to get away. I need to go somewhere I don’t have to think about what I just watched, where I don’t have to think about how my own brother died at the hands of a police officer, where I don’t have to think about a world without Tyler.

I need a safe place. The tears keep coming before I can stop them, drying on my chin as huge gusts of wind come over me. I let the world distort around me until I’m slamming my bike down in front of Faith’s place. There’re two cars in the driveway, so I know she’s not alone. But I don’t care. I need to be with her.

I knock on the door, hands shaking. My head feels heavy, and my throat is so dry it’s like I’ve eaten an entire box of saltines.

I clutch my elbows, waiting for her to answer, spilling my tears on her porch.

Faith opens the door. “Marvin. Oh my God. Are you okay?”

She lets me in, and I sit on the couch and tell her everything. It takes so long for the words to come out between my sobs, but she’s patient and keeps her hand on my back, rubbing it slowly. I show her the video and she flinches and says, “What the hell?”

Before I know it, there’s a set of brown eyes and long eyelashes in front of me. It’s Faith’s mama. She puts her hands on my back, telling me, “Let it out, honey. Let it all out, honey.” She doesn’t even know me, but I don’t care and she doesn’t either.

“I just don’t know what to do,” I keep saying over and over. The video is stained in my mind, playing over and over again. I shut my eyes tight, trying to shake the footage out of my head, but I can’t. I just fucking can’t.

Pop! One.

I shake my head hard.

Pop! Two.

I imagine Tyler’s final gasp of oxygen.

Pop! Three.

I’m suddenly throwing up in a small trash can. I’m powerless and I have no control over my own brain or stomach. I don’t move. I can’t. I just cry, throw up, cry, and throw up again.

Faith puts a hand on my arm. “Hey, I’m so sorry.” I look up at her and see she’s crying, too.

She hugs me.

I hug her back and let out a slight breath.

Faith’s mama offers me some hot tea. I tell her no, thank you.

She gives me a regretful face, opens her mouth, and keeps it open for a little while. Then she says in a sympathetic voice, “I’m sorry for your loss. The man who did this to your brother is going to be punished.” I think this was supposed to be a way to reassure me or something, but I only feel stunned.

I don’t even feel like being.

As I keep my head in my hands, Faith and her mama take turns trying to comfort me. “There’ll be justice for y’all,” her mom says. “You have all my empathy.”

But I don’t even deserve empathy. If anybody does, it’s Mama.

Part of me regrets leaving Mama alone. I wasn’t thinking when I left. She needs me, and I need her—now more than ever.

I leave Faith’s house, and as I ride back under a fading, starry sky, my stomach feels like a churning abyss, and I hurt too much not to start tearing up.

At home, G-mo and Ivy are still at my place. Mama’s come out of her room, and I take one look at her, and I can tell she’s seen the video, too. The TV is on with the volume down low, and on the news I can see images of the video that captured the last minute of my brother’s life. Tyler Johnson has become breaking news, and I feel raw and pissed off that the last few seconds of his life and his death are on display for the whole fucking world to see. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

There’re Chinese food cartons scattered across the coffee table, the smell of soy sauce and fried rice reminding me that I’m hungry and that I still have to eat because I’m alive, even if Tyler is not.

“Hey, Marvin,” G-mo says. He’s standing next to Mama. She’s still and quiet, just staring forward.

I nod at him and walk over to Mama. I pat her on the back, doing my best not to have a breakdown again. There’s so much I want to say and so much static in my brain, and I can’t find a way to say it. I just keep rubbing her back.

Ivy’s lying on the floor, going through a photo book Mama put together last night, showing me some of her favorites.

Ivy points to this one picture of Tyler and me when we were little, playing cops and robbers with Dad. The two of us are in tank tops and shorts. In the picture, Tyler and I are each holding a water gun, and Dad’s chasing us.

Ripples of nausea and ache creep up on me.

And I don’t know when the pain is going to end.

After G-mo and Ivy leave, Mama and I remain a mess in the living room. Mama calls Detective Conaway and asks him if they’re going to get the man who did it, if they’re locking him up. They talk about the video and about Tyler and about the investigation and about standard procedure, but Mama doesn’t take their mess. She stays on the phone for hours, and after she hangs up, all frustrated and broken, she decides that she needs to be alone in her room again.

I open up the video while lying in bed, and I’m not even sure why. Each time I watch it, I feel like someone is surgically ripping out all of my insides without any anesthetic. It’s as if I notice something new—something fucking worse—the more I see and hear it. I don’t really know why the news keeps calling it an event, an altercation. I’ve never heard murder pronounced that way. What happened wasn’t just an altercation. It was fucking slaughter, man. The officer’s name is everywhere: Thomas Meredith. I feel sick.

When I click off the video, I try my best to stop myself from scrolling through the hashtags—to keep from diving headfirst into such a shallow pool of hatred—because I know there’ll only be white people waiting on me, wanting to try to hold me under the water until I go silent, waiting until I’m in total fear of blue and white. But after the tenth time of playing it, I have to take a break, before I fucking die from brokenness and rage.

I close the video and scroll through my timeline.

All I see are hashtags floating around: #PrayersForTylerJohnson and #EndPoliceBrutality, and oppressive ones, like #BlueLivesMatter.

Clicking on each brings up a slew of posts. Photos. Videos of people speaking out on their own phones. Links to similar cases. It’s all so overwhelming.

I’m seeing so many All Lives Matter bullshit posts that have my entire body shaking. People don’t fucking know that black folks were never included in the All. All-American means white. All-inclusive means white. All lives means white lives. It’s bullshit. White folks always make it about them, and I’m pissed off that they’re trying to mask their hatred with these tags.

But the craziest thing to see is all the pictures snatched from Tyler’s social media pages—pictures that even I haven’t seen before. Some of them are of him dressed in a black suit and tie; some are of him in his everyday wear: dark jeans and a hoodie. Others are close-ups of his face, as if they’re mug shots, even though he’s never been arrested once. People are saying that my father was a criminal and a monster, so Tyler had it coming. I guess that’s the most fucked-up part of all the social media bullshit.

I scroll through the comments.

Tyler ≠ a bad dude.

Tyler = bright and loving.

Tyler = my brother, who was killed.

There are also comments and replies to posts that are lighter and just more, uh, human, and I don’t fucking know why, but they still hurt.

Everything in the world is just a divided and blurry mess. The real world. The online one. All of it has just become too fucked up for me to even feel human. The more I scroll and see all the photos and hashtags, the more I feel monstrous.

It gets to the point where even the hurt fucking hurts.

I try to sleep, but I can’t even get my eyes to close. I’m lying on a soft mattress, eyes wide, and Tyler’s somewhere in the morgue.