Boys like us don't make national news.That's what we'd tell each other, fleeingthe long blue arms of police LEDs.Our hightop Reeboks kissed gravelmiles of Central Pennsylvania Street. Usnot old enough to have kissed a lover. Boyslike us, cops shoot & ask questions never,we laughed. We ran. We laughed. We hollered"PIG!" as if it was just another pickup gameof basketball on blacktop. We were so young—how young is too young to teach a boy neverturn his index finger & thumb into the hammered steelof a gun. You might die. I breathe for decades,older & older & now when I close my eyesI can see Jason Pero isn't with us boys—us runningfrom cops. Jason is at home. He was a teddy bear,said his grandpa. He teased his little nephews oncein a while but that was the meanest part he had.Jason Pero is in his front yard making the bestof our Bad River Reservation, turning porch boughsinto a drum set, each stick cracking stained wood.He imagines making it all the way to high schooldrumline. & here comes that cop with report"of a man carrying a knife." & here is Jason drumming.& here there will be no justice for death, no videoevidence of Jason's dying. Just this one that plays outendlessly in my head.The greatest horrorwriters know it's worse when you can't see the monster:jaws that catch, claws that bite, hidden just off screen.In Onondaga, our clan mother says kahséhtha' I hidesomething akweriákon in my heart. But tonight, I am donewith hiding. Jason Pero was shot once in the shoulder& once in the heart. & my heart beats faster the longerI sleep. The longer I close my eyes. The longer we hide.