Victim

by Andrew Boryga

I’d had a few of my own interactions with the police, but they were benign. Almost all of them had to do with police looking for my Pops, probably for good reason, if I’m being honest.

He pointed to a path on the corner. “That path right there. Looks creepy, but it’s very short, and it’ll shoot you right out onto Main Street. You really shouldn’t walk in the dark like that. We keep this place safe, but you never know, right?” “Right,” I said. I thanked him. He smiled. And with that, he took off. I never thought about this again. Never questioned if he’d stopped me because he was actually trying to help or because I was brown. I took his advice and realized he was right. But that was then. Three years in, I had become a whole different Javi.

It was just like my college essay, I reasoned. A means to an end. But that’s how all addictions start. With one little hit. What will it hurt?

Even my shitty little college newspaper was not immune to realizing that they needed to cash in, needed to “join the conversation” if they wanted to survive. I was too naive to understand any of this then. When the editors decided to run my sample column as my actual first column and place it prominently on the front page alongside an editorial apologizing for their “dreadful history of exclusion” and promising to “do better,” I took it as a sign of my talent.

I tamped down the flames as best as I could, thanking the other students for their solidarity but pleading for peace.

Little bumps of my drug of choice arrived as my phone buzzed with a new notification.

So what if I had actually just left the library without any problems and devised the story on my walk home? Anais bought it hook, line, and sinker. She practically demanded that I write about it. So what if it hadn’t actually happened to me? It had happened to other people on other campuses and in other places, right? What mattered, I told myself, was that it could have happened to me. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t harming anyone. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

I sat back, trying to assess where Ricardo was going with this. Was he trying to out me? Extort me? “Is there something wrong?” “Yes!” Ricardo smacked the paper. “What’s wrong is that this was supposed to be me, Javi. I was supposed to have a column like this. This was supposed to be written by someone who cares. Someone who really wants to be a representative for our community. Someone who wants to lead. Not a poser looking for fucking clout.”

All I had to do was apply some more, to complain about them trying to colonize my voice and make me write to their European standards, in order to get away with how I really wanted to write.

I had entered Donlon as a kid who was only just beginning to grasp that he had an identity that was “in,” so to speak. But I left as a young man who was clear on how he could pimp that identity to his liking.

It was during this period that I first saw some real red flags. Whenever Anais showed me listings of places in the city, they were always well over my price range and in boroughs I had no interest in being in, like Brooklyn or Queens.

I figured I’d have plenty of time to write on the side. I also figured I might be good at teaching. My students, I thought, might even appreciate having someone like me come in and show them all that I’d learned. I could be their Ms. Rivas.

“Shouldn’t we do something? Maybe the woman needs help.” Mom shook her head. “Oh no, don’t worry, nena. They’ll make up by bedtime.” “Yeah,” I said. “They do this, then get high and have sex. You might hear some of that, too. But then it’s all good. At least for a couple of months, until the cycle begins again.”

“You sure this is a good neighborhood?” “Yes. I have a couple of friends who live near here,” Anais said. We passed one of Anais’s signature coffee shops, then a cycling studio. But there were other things I noticed that made my ghetto senses tingle. A liquor store with thick, bulletproof glass shielding the attendant and all the bottles. A Chinese restaurant with faded pictures of food in the window. A pair of sneakers dangling from a light pole.

I thought of Gio. The last time I’d heard from him was at the beginning of my senior year. After I became a columnist, the response time between letters grew longer and longer, until they eventually sputtered out and he never answered my last one. What would he say about this place, I wondered. My trance was broken.

It’s so obviously out of place. Don’t you see that? You came here saying you wanted to live in New York City and really help those in need. The ones at the bottom.” “I still do, Javi. I’m not selling out. I just don’t want to live in a place with roaches, that’s all.”

She looked down to the sidewalk, where the men we’d passed were howling with laughter at something. “I am a little worried about those guys, though. They give me a bad vibe.” I was impressed that Anais had the capabilities to feel a vibe. Then I remembered that she was, at the end of the day, a cop’s daughter—no matter how much she didn’t want to admit it.

The day everything changed—for me, for Anais, and, eventually, for everyone close to me—began like any other at that point in my life.

I wanted more than just my words printed on some paper. I had goals. I wanted to be on staff. I wanted to write a cover story. I wanted prizes and awards. I wanted to be a star. And I wanted to do all of that without really having to break a sweat.

The “conversation” could still be found on Twitter and other social media outlets. But things online no longer stayed online; they were remarked upon by world leaders, they changed policies, they got people fired and condemned.

What was important was that his name and picture had been trending all over social media, signaling that his murder was one of the ones to pay attention to instead of the countless others that happened every single day.

The classroom groaned. Tyrell laid his face on the desk. “Deadass, I’m tired of talking about race, Mr. P. We had Spanish history month, the day Rosa Parks sat on that damn bus, MLK’s b-day, Black History Month, Malcolm X’s b-day. Like, shout-out to all them, power to the people and shit, but I’m tired of always talking about all that stuff, bro.”

But it didn’t take Anais long to realize that despite all this talk, all she really did was launder taxable money for the rich. “I looked through the books, and do you know that the majority of the money goes toward funding these big events and paying our salaries?”

Each day it seemed I woke up with a new name to chant. A new face to look at and say, Damn, so young. A new criminal record to pick apart. A new police chief to hate. A new officer who “feared for their life.” A new item mistaken for a gun. A new movement mistaken for an attack. A new set of body camera videos that made us all wonder, deep down, who was right and who was wrong.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Anais crossed her arms. She hitched her hip to the side, glared. “I don’t know, Javi. Maybe I am. All I know is that some things just don’t add up. There’s the way you talk about your childhood versus the way your mom talks about it.

I’m ashamed, now, that I didn’t feel all that guilty about sending the piece off. I even felt a little proud of it. I’d actually tried this time around, actually taken the time to read it over and over, tinker with things, and make sure the lies stung as much as possible. Perhaps that’s how delusional I was. Perhaps that’s how heartbroken I was. I didn’t consider Anais getting hurt.

Delight washed over me, but fear soon followed as I read the rest of the email. “Because this will be a substantially longer—and more prominent—piece than we’ve ever run from you in the past, we will need to do some homework on our end,” Rebecca wrote. She said Anais could remain anonymous in the piece, which was “great legal cover, anyway,” but “internally,” they wanted to make sure she was aware of the story and didn’t refute some of the central claims.

It was in my apartment that evening that I realized that, for the very first time, I had gone viral.

Yeah, maybe I am privileged. Maybe I don’t have your street smarts. Maybe I did have it easy growing up. And maybe something about that gives me anxiety. But I don’t deserve this. What you’ve done to me is evil, Javi. I’ll never forget it.

I felt like I was in the center of a big room with a massive audience of people clapping for me. It was, basically, a legal drug.

Nick sat.

Too many industries, including the media, were too white, and everyone had suddenly come to an agreement on this. Everyone suddenly had to show their commitment to change in order to stay relevant. Everyone in the writing world had also agreed that hiring a token writer or editor of color and fast-tracking them to stardom was a perfectly fine solution.

I got a kick out of the thought of one man trying to write about the entirety of the minority experience in the United States. Trying to capture all there was to capture. While everyone else on staff, ostensibly, wrote about the experiences of white people. It was an inherently dumb job. But also, for me, a perfect one.

“Wait, Gio? He’s out? Right now?” “Yeah. He’s either out or he ran away from prison. No sé. Either way, I saw him outside with his grandma.” “You spoke to him? And he didn’t say anything about me?” “Not really, no. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Javi.”

My next story. My greatest story yet. A story I already knew that Nic, Rebecca, and Twitter would eat up. They had to. It was the perfect cocktail of poverty, strife, racism, and injustice that they loved. A tale of two boys from opposite sides of a beat-up building in the ghetto. Two paths that diverged in a cinematic way, only to reunite so the more successful of the two (me, obviously) could teach the other his ways. The best part, I thought, was that I wouldn’t even have to make it up. It would be my transitory piece, my first experiment in telling something like the truth.

“It’s cliché. But I have to ask.” “What? ‘How was it?’ ” “Yeah.” “Oh, real fun. Very educational. You should go visit sometime. Just don’t stay too long. I overdid it.” We laughed.

“I bet a lot of them were innocent, right? You know how the system is.” “Maybe. It’s not so black-and-white. To be honest, some of them probably need to be locked up. Some of them are just monstrous motherfuckers. But some of them got dealt a bad fucking hand, too.

“What mistakes do you think you’ve made?” Gio laughed. “I was a dickhead, Javi. Somewhere along the way, all I cared about was money and bitches. Overlooked a lot of shit because of it.

“And you don’t think any of it is true?” “I don’t know. Maybe some of it is. Some of it is interesting to think about. Kinda like when we used to spend all that time wondering if Jay-Z really was in the Illuminati. But, after a while, you know what I noticed about them conspiracy heads?” “What?” “That’s all they talked about. They always found ways to insert it into conversations and shit. They made it their whole life. Soon as I realized that, it turned me off.” “Why?” “Because it’s another trap. Just like Manny, the crew. If I went down that hole, that’s all I’d think about, too. I’d just be wasting more and more time.”

Disbelief isn’t a strong enough word, dear reader. “You’re telling me that you, Giovanni Ernesto Mejia, read the fucking Rag?” Gio’s face became stoic. “You know I know how to read, right? I’m not a fucking caveman.” I imagined Gio in his cell. Legs crossed at the knee, sipping a coffee. Reading an article in The Rag about the merits of sustainable vegetable gardens on people’s roofs in Brooklyn. “I’m not saying you’re a caveman. I’m just surprised. Can you blame me? You weren’t much of a reader before.” “I’m a surprising dude, what can I say. I’ll also have you know, motherfucker, that I got my GED upstate. Among many other certificates—bitch. And, not for nothing, I’ve always liked reading. Sometimes I was jealous you had all these books in your room, and that you and your moms would go to the bookstore. That sounded dope. I just made it seem like I didn’t care. I thought people would call me corny. It was dumb. That’s what I’m talking about right there. That’s the sort of stuff I shouldn’t have cared about.”

“I’m not a liar,” I told Gio. “It’s called taking artistic liberties. Look it up.” Gio flapped his hand. “Call it what you want.”

Gio grabbed a fistful of leaves and let each leaf fall to the ground one by one like petals. “Why the hell they wanna hear from me?” I gripped his shoulder. I finally understood how Mr. Martin felt that day in his office. He saw in me something I couldn’t see for myself. An opportunity to be great. “Because you were in prison. You were in a gang. You were failed by the system. Your mom died young. And you’re brown and you’re from the Bronx. Fuck. You have it all.” Gio started to say something but stopped. He stood up. “I should probably get going.”

“I don’t want to be a big deal. I don’t want nobody feeling bad for me. I just want to get on with my life, Javi. That’s all. I don’t care about any of that stuff you were talking about.

I couldn’t get a word down. Writing something true, writing something real, putting the “game” aside, felt like standing in the middle of the Cross Bronx, butt-ass naked. I realized quickly that I was afraid of many things: what people might say, how they might respond to how I actually felt, to what I actually thought. In hindsight, my mistake was that I did not dwell on this fear, did not interrogate it or push through. Instead, I chose to stick to the script. I decided to give people the version of the story they wanted to hear.

I smirked as I hit Send. I imagined Rebecca reading the email, the sour look on her face as she spotted Nic’s email address cc’d, the understanding, finally, perhaps, that I was not one to fuck with. Nic’s response, which came in less than an hour, was just what I expected. “Javier. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Rebecca and I have spoken. Your concerns are valid and I’m sorry if we caused any discomfort. This story is FANTASTIC. Just what we’re looking for. We will run it as is. More from us very soon!”

“I’ve decided this is going on the cover of the next issue,” he wrote. “In a big, big way.”

If my story, if this story that you’re reading right now, were a ride, this moment would be right near the top. The part where you’re climbing and climbing and it looks like you’ll keep going up forever. But instead you get just the slightest, teeniest glimpse of the crest. And then comes that sinking feeling, burrowing deep into the pit of your stomach, as you begin the descent.

I wasn’t so delusional as to not recognize the leap from being a name printed in small type in a magazine to being a face broadcasted on television screens in homes, airports, and bars across the country. The level of recognition that would bring was also an opportunity for cracks to start forming in my armor.

When Gio answered the door, he looked annoyed. I felt like a pest. Like the kid that doesn’t get the fucking hint.

“What do you mean, you knew that was what I really wanted?” “Come on, Javi. I known you too long. You weren’t trying to see me on some homeboy shit. I peeped game. It is what it is.”