When I think about those four years I let Sammy struggle alone, I’m disgusted with myself. She had plenty of help with Tavion. Her mom and grandmom supported her; my parents and her other friends looked after her too. They gave her all the support she needed to be a good mother, but she had no one to help her exist without Taron. Everyone knew him, but we were the only surviving family he had, so we were the only ones who truly understood how grim a world without him in it was. She thought we’d navigate that emptiness together, but I let her down.
I’m just grateful she let me back into their lives when I got my head out of my ass.
When I walk into Tavion’s high school, he’s sitting in the front office with his arms laid across the backs of the chairs next to him, not a care or ounce of remorse on his face.
His face morphs into that of innocence when he spots me. “Oh, hey, Micah. I told them not to bug Mom because she don’t have her phone on her at work.”
She works long hours as a nurse while going to school to be a neuropsychologist, so she can’t always drop everything to get to his school.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she knows everything they had to say.”
His eyes stay glued to the floor after that. His principal calls me back to her office to explain that Tavion’s been suspended due to fighting. Again. I’m not surprised—Tavion is no stranger to fights and most of them are in defense of someone else. He’s always going out of his way to help the people around him. He’s like his dad in that way.
Once I’m done talking to the principal and usher Tavion out to my car, he rushes to his own defense. “Hear me out. I had to do it. These kids were messing with this guy in our class. He’s got a stutter and they thought it was funny to surround him and cut him off every time he stuttered.”
“So you fought ’em all?”
“Nah, two of ’em ran away, but the last one, yeah, I did.”
I can’t be mad about that. I would’ve done the same thing. “Look, I get it. I really do. But how are you supposed to finish school when you spend half the time being suspended for being a vigilante?”
He stares out of the window, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. “Some things are more important.”
“You sound just like your dad.” If Taron were here, he’d be celebrating. He’d probably take Tee to all of our spots around the city bragging to everyone how his son is basicallyThe Equalizer.
Tee’s jaw clenches, a storm brewing behind his eyes. “I wouldn’t know.”
A red light gives me a chance to really look at him. I recognize that pain on his face, that feeling of being adrift and not knowing who can throw you a lifeboat. Of being angry and not knowing where to aim it or even what’s the point.
“Light’s green,” Tee says when I don’t move.
I let the silence linger, the sound of my engine and the world outside these windows serving as a placeholder until I can figure out the right thing to say. “We don’t talk about him much, huh?”
“At all,” he huffs. “You don’t talk about him at all. Every time I ask Mom a question about him, she shuts me down. When I go to the barbershop, the old heads always point out how much I look like him but never want to talk about him. Do you know what it’s like to walk around and have everyone know more about where you come from than you do?”
Most of the people in the neighborhood who knew Taron don’t speak about him. His death rocked a lot of people, but none more than Sammy. She thought the two of them would build a life together. She pictured them growing old side by side while raising Tee and probably giving him a sibling or two. When that dream was snatched away, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about him or even think about him. She would lash out at anyone who tried to go down memory lane, until eventually everyone followed her lead and stopped talking about him altogether. Locking him away in a box was the only way she could stay strong enough to keep going for Tee. We all understood that.
Unbeknownst to us, all we’ve managed to do is put a Band-Aid over a wound that’s still festering. We thought time alone would heal it, but it’s only added to the infection.
The thing about death is that it’s never final. The end of someone’s life is merely the start of a quiet suffering that spans generations.
I can’t bring Taron back to Tavion any more than I can bring Chi Chi back to my mom or Tanya back to Dani and myself. I can’t bring themback and I can’t make it right, but the cycle of staying silent about those we’ve lost in the hopes of easing our heartache has to end.
“What do you wanna know?” I ask.
His head snaps in my direction. “Really?”
“Ask away.”
As I turn down another street, I watch as every question he’s ever had about his dad floats to the front of his mind. He scratches his head with indecision as if my offer will turn back into a pumpkin at any moment and he’ll lose his opportunity.
“Take your time,” I add. “I’ll answer any question you have.”
His shoulders relax a bit. He’s grown into a formidable young man, molded in his father’s image, but when he looks at me like this, all I see is the little boy he used to be. The five-year-old who forced me to walk around with him wrapped around my leg. The seven-year-old who was overjoyed to be cast as a tree in his school play. The ten-year-old who learned the hard way that he was deathly afraid of roller coasters.
“What was he like?”
“Hmm,” I ponder as I reverse into a parking spot at a diner close to Tee’s house. “He was unintentionally funny. Like he wasn’t the type to crack jokes, but he would just say the most off-the-wall stuff in earnest, and it would crack everybody up. He also loved anything to do with ghosts.” I switch the car off. “Wanna hear how he forced me to help set a trap for a ghost he swore was living in his grandparents’ house?”
