If you have a brother, and he dies, what do you do? Do you suddenly stop saying that you have one? Do you pretend he was just a piece of your past that you’ll slowly start to forget?

I remember the huge protests after other shootings of black and brown kids. I need to do that, too. I need to make people aware of what happened to Tyler. I have to lift my voice, and I can’t keep being quiet, sitting around as if I’m waiting for things to fix themselves.

I stay home to be with Mama the next day, laptop turned away so that she doesn’t know I’m scrolling through pages and pages of Google searches on how to begin protests. I can’t just sit at home and cry and grieve because that ain’t going to do shit, and it ain’t going to bring Tyler back either.

Mama gets up to go into her room, but I barely look away from the laptop. The sites provide lots of advice, like to have a goal in mind, and to choose a time and location that will work for the most people, and to remember that even if someone tries to shut it down, my voice deserves to be heard just as much as anyone else’s. Some sites say I need permits to start a protest, but permits don’t always get approved. The most important part of planning a protest is making sure people know about it. Some of the biggest protests took off because word spread through social media, like Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr.

I spend most of my day looking up the most successful protests, like the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and the Black Lives Matter protests, too. And after hours of searching through sites on protests, I find contact information for a man named Albert Sharp. He coordinates protests right here in Sterling Point for civil liberties and unjust events, like the killing of my brother. I send him an e-mail. He’s the perfect person to help me plan the protest that Tyler deserves. My blood runs hot just thinking about it.

Ivy and G-mo stop over after school. They come bringing me Hot Fries and peanut butter M&M’s and stories about all the mess going around—mess ranging from general high school drama to people spreading lies about Tyler, like how he was a gangbanging thug.

I squeeze my eyes shut and practice breathing in and out.

“How’d you sleep?” Ivy asks me, breaking the quiet.

“Fine,” I lie. I couldn’t sleep last night. Something in my head, in my chest, in my stomach refused to shut off and allow me to fucking sleep. The whole night I just stared at the cloak-like darkness of my ceiling, hoping to at least feel Tyler’s presence.

My mind replays the video of Tyler’s murder—over and over again.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Man, I’m losing it.

Ivy takes my hand. “You don’t need to lie—not to us, Marvin.”

I tear up. The air’s burning my skin. I take my hand away, wipe my eyes. “I’m just sick of sitting here and not doing anything.”

G-mo raises his eyebrows. “What would you do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been looking up ways to protest. And there’s this guy, Albert Sharp. I don’t know.”

We sit there for a while, and Mama comes out of her room. She doesn’t say anything, just shuffles into the living room, her hair a mess and dark circles around her eyes. Ivy and G-mo greet her, but she doesn’t say anything—just fiddles with a cigarette and a lighter, struggling to get it lit. I look at Mama and my heart breaks all over again, because I don’t think I’m looking at her—not really. I’m looking at a shadow of her, since the real Mama is gone, just like Tyler.

But I can’t lose myself, too. I have to focus on getting him justice. Letting the whole world know that he was murdered. Having the whole world screaming his name. That’s what Tyler deserves. That’s what Tyler would want.

Mama sits down beside me on the couch.

Something’s pulling at my lungs. And my throat feels like it’s getting tight.

Shit. Shit. Shit. I lay my hands out in my lap and put my head down.

“He’s fucking gone,” I mumble, my voice cracking.

Mama’s shadow grips my hand, squeezing tight as if she’s trying to tell me something without using words, like We’re in this together. Like she’s trying to bring herself back into this life.

A breaking news alert flashes red on the TV with the caption STERLING POINT OFFICER ARRESTED FOR THE DEATH OF TYLER JOHNSON.

“Finally” is all Mama says, and it comes out in a really hopeful breath. “All I want is for that man to pay for what he did.”

A picture of the officer’s face flashes across the screen. He has chilling blue eyes and balding blond hair and a yellow mustache. I know he’ll be seared into my memory as the man who took my brother away from me. The man who looked at my brother, a living person, a working body, an actual soul, and decided to take him out of this world because of his own hatred, his own darkness. I don’t want to look at that man’s face on the TV screen, because if I do, I think I’ll scream and cry and throw up all at the same time. But I can’t let myself look away. I have to look evil in the eye—have to face him, the way Tyler did. This man’s face was the last he saw. I try not to imagine what that must’ve been like for him—the pain of bullets ripping through his body, the shock as he hit the ground, and the only other person with him is this man, his killer.

And I’m feeling really conflicted right now. This sort of thing happens too often. Innocent people getting killed by the cops. I’ve heard it so many times. No indictments. No convictions. No punishment at all. I mean, this is a step in the right direction, and I should be happy, right? They’re treating this officer’s actions as a crime. But for now at least, he’s still alive, and that’s more than what can be said for Tyler.

Ivy and G-mo exchange looks, and Ivy keeps shaking her head, like they’re having a telepathic conversation.

“What?” I say. “What’s going on?”

Ivy lets out a breath, and G-mo leans forward in his seat. “There’s been anger, you know, for what happened,” he says.

“Just say it, man.”

He sucks in air. “Well, some people are angry that there’s anger.”

I squint at him. “What do you mean?”

Mama just sucks on her cigarette, staring at the TV.

G-mo licks his lips. “See for yourself. It’s all over Twitter.”

I pull out the phone I shared with Tyler and scroll through my Twitter feed until I find what they’re talking about. Tweets that go beyond saying Tyler’s a gangbanging thug. Tweets that take it too fucking far. Tweets that say he deserved what he got. Shit about police having the right to protect themselves. I scroll until I see a video with a kid from school—some white guy named Lance Anderson, a senior at Sojo High. He and some other random kids with matching plain white shirts talk into the camera, saying how it’s such a shame that the cops are being punished for doing something real good for the city. He’s called for a protest in defense of the cop who murdered my brother; it’s going to happen on Christmas Day.

I give Ivy, who’s across from me, a look, and then I glance at G-mo, feeling my heart beat hard inside my chest—so hard, because there’s never just enough with these white people. Racists like this dude always find a way to make matters worse, find ways to justify hate. We never gave them a reason to hate us. But they don’t even care about that. They’re so fragile and afraid of people who are different that they have to give so much hate to others just to feel big, just to feel alive.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Ivy says quietly.

G-mo gives me this tight-lipped frown and glances at the TV and then back at me, his eyes wide and infuriated. “What the literal fuck is going on? Are people seriously this ignorant? Lance can’t actually be this motherfucking stupid, can he? Sorry for the language, Mrs. Johnson.”

My jaw tightens and my heart pounds.

Breathe, Marvin. Just keep breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

Ivy looks as if she’s still processing all of this. Her fists are clenched at her sides, like she’s ready to punch a hole straight through the dude’s face.

“Why don’t some white people want to acknowledge police brutality?” I ask, feeling like the world has just used me to wipe its ass. “Why don’t they care about us?”

“Some won’t even say the words ‘police brutality,’ bro,” Ivy says.

I shake my head. Mama stands up from the couch and gets Auntie Nicola on the phone. I can hear her voice as she sits in the kitchen—can hear as she begins to sob, which puts an aching in my chest.

I want one more chance to talk to Tyler—to see his smile, to hear his laugh, to save him, to tell him how he was always the better part of the equation.

I remember when Mama made Tyler and me go to Bible school on Sundays. The Sunday school teacher kept calling Tyler a prophet, saying one day he would grow up to be a teacher of the word of God himself, that he’d recruit more believers. I remember Tyler going around school bragging about what the teacher told him.

And I smile. And my eyes water. And I fucking hurt.

G-mo and Ivy stay as long as they can, until their curfews, and then they bike and skate home when they have to.

When I get in my bed, I text Faith, telling her about how I can’t ignore this huge gaping hole that’s consuming me every single second of every single day. She texts back, saying she’s going to pick me up.

Faith pulls to a stop in front of my house after I sneak out my window. The car ride is silent for the most part, which I really fucking need right now. At least for a little while longer.

We ride past a series of abandoned buildings, all rusted and covered in vines and weeds—graffitied up and sad, leaning back a little, like the construction of the hood wants to take a step away from itself, travel back a couple decades in history.

Everything about this place looks uglier up close, when you really see it for what it is and not what it used to be. Especially at night, when everything is just washed in darkness and violence—so brutal and so shallow. Groups of boys wearing all black huddle around fire hydrants—not because they are curious as to what would happen if they were to open it, but because the tip of the hydrant is a great place to set a dime bag and lethal weapons for intimidation. And I make a mental promise to myself that one day I’ll really make it out of here. I need to make it out of here.

“Thanks for the ride,” I mumble. My voice sounds dry and raspy.

“It’s cool,” she answers, stopping at a red light. And she just nods at the road in front of her, flipping hair out of her brown face. And I get chills. I’m left telling myself that I shouldn’t even be getting chills right now. I feel guilty, looking at Faith and feeling the way I do about her when my brother is dead.

I gaze back out the window at the constellations, but they have me feeling more boxed-in and trapped, reminding me I’ve got a bunch of tunnels of darkness to walk through, because I was born into this skin, this hood, this fate. And I’m quiet, wondering how I go on from here.

She clears her throat and rolls down the window to let some air in. “You know my heart is bleeding right now, right? I’m so sorry,” she says, but it’s like it’s physically uncomfortable for her to say the words, like she’s suddenly remembering all the people she’s lost in her own life at once. “And I hope the man who did it gets put away for life.”

“Me too,” I say, staring into her eyes.

“Will there be a funeral for Tyler?” she asks, and inhales deeply from the crack in her window, continuing down some dark street.

“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.

One night, as sirens blared and gunpowder rained down outside my cracked window, I called out for someone—maybe Mama—to come and fight away the monsters in the dark. But when I called, Tyler came instead of Mama.

He walked in and sat on the edge of my bed, a worried look in his eyes, like he, too, felt uneasy at the sound of sirens. Like he, too, could see the monsters. He checked under my bed to soothe my fears.

And all of a sudden, I’m really fucking hating Marvin Johnson, because I could never be like Tyler, could never be as brave as him, could never soothe his fears. I couldn’t even fucking be there for him when he needed me most.

And I’m reminded of three things: 1) I’m a complete fuckup; 2) monsters can appear in broad daylight; and 3) Tyler will never again physically be here.

We were born together. He wasn’t supposed to die without me. And he wasn’t supposed to go out like he did.

Despite my unwillingness, a couple more days squeeze on by anyway. I spend each day pacing back and forth throughout my house, sitting in silence, refusing all food, and repeating this over and over again.

I’m mid-pace in the living room when the six o’clock news comes on, and I see my brother’s name flash in big red letters again.

I call out to Mama, who’s in the bathroom with the door locked, probably just sitting on the toilet seat with the lid down like she has been for most of the day, sobbing and sniffling into a roll of toilet paper. She runs out and sits down next to me with the toilet paper in her hands; it’s all wet-looking and shredded in random places. She’s wearing a silky white blouse. Her hair is pulled back, straight, strands tucked behind her ears. She looks like she’ll be going to Tyler’s funeral for the rest of her life.

The news reporter is talking about the hearing. This hearing is crucial, Mama tells me, and will determine whether or not we get justice. But this hearing isn’t going to bring Tyler back, so I don’t care as much as Mama does. Mama and I exchange glances before returning to the TV screen.

And I’m left thinking to myself that this is a huge change for her. Yesterday, she signed the papers to have Tyler turned into ashes and placed in a silver urn so she wouldn’t have to put him in the ground, so he could come back home one final time, and she was a turbulent hurricane of emotions, like no one would ever really understand how much she’s hurting. And I couldn’t really feel all the emptiness, because I did not allow myself to.

I don’t think you can ever quite fill the emptiness of something you lost that was everything, everything to you. The hurt still keeps on.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Focus. Focus on what Tyler needs: justice. The whole world screaming his name, knowing that he was here—knowing that he mattered.

I grab my laptop and scroll through Albert Sharp’s website. He hasn’t responded to my e-mail yet, but even if he doesn’t, I know what to do. Decide on a place, decide on a time, send out a message over social media. I know that G-mo and Ivy and Faith will help spread the word. I know they’ll help me make sure no one forgets my brother.