This paper uses Crystal Laura's "Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison-Pipeline" as the central text for exploring a term I refer to as "imaginary existence." The "imaginary existence" confines Black boys and other students of color to a particular narrative that prevents teachers from being able to teach with love and continues to set up schools as sites of exclusion. This paper concludes with a call to teacher education to improve pre-service teacher training in order to begin shifting the narrative of Black boys as bad.