The news crew arrived on a Wednesday afternoon in a van with the station's logo on the side, and Jayden watched from the living room window as they unloaded cameras and a microphone on a long pole. His stomach was doing things he didn't have a name for.
"You don't have to do this," Denise said for the third time. She was standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. "Priya says it could help, but it's your call. Nobody will think less of you if you say no."
Jayden thought about the emergency meeting, about Greer's voice saying "suspicious behavior" like it was a spell that made specifics unnecessary. He thought about Officer Doyle's hand around his wrist. He thought about the letter in his desk drawer and the coin in his pocket.
"I want to," he said.
Evelyn Shaw had set the whole thing up. She knew the reporter, a woman named Carla Mendez, from the library's community programs. Evelyn had called her and said, "There's a story on Maple Ridge you need to hear," and Carla had listened, and now here was the van.
Carla was younger than Jayden expected, with a warm voice and a way of looking directly at him that made him feel like she was actually listening. She explained how it would work: she would ask questions, he would answer, they could stop any time. Daniels and Alvarez would be in the background if he wanted, or not. His mother would be just off camera.
They set up in the driveway, with the hoop in the frame behind him. Jayden sat on the porch steps, ball resting against his knee, and tried not to think about how many people might watch this.
"Just tell me what happened," Carla said, "in your own words."
So he did. He told her about shooting hoops on a Saturday afternoon. About Mr. Greer watching from across the street. About the police car pulling up and the officer grabbing his wrist hard enough to leave a mark. About the meeting where a room full of adults talked about him like he was a problem to be solved, using words like "suspicious" without ever saying what he had supposedly done.
"It was basketball," Jayden said. "That's it. I was playing basketball in my own driveway."
Carla asked how it felt. Jayden looked down at the ball against his knee.
"It felt like I wasn't supposed to be there," he said quietly. "In my own house. Like I had to prove I belonged somewhere I'd lived my whole life."
They talked for twenty minutes. Carla asked about his father, and Jayden told her about Sergeant Aaron Carter, about the hoop he installed, about the coin. Daniels stepped into the frame for a moment — Carla asked if he minded — and said, "This young man's father saved my life. I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for Aaron Carter. And this is how his son gets treated? In his own driveway?"
The interview aired that evening on the six o'clock news. Denise made spaghetti, and they ate in front of the TV like it was a normal night, and then Carla's face came on, and then Jayden's, sitting on the porch steps with the hoop behind him, saying, "It felt like I wasn't supposed to be there."
His phone started buzzing before the segment was even over. Texts from teammates. From kids at school he barely knew. From his cousin in Atlanta. By ten o'clock, someone had clipped the interview and posted it online, and by morning it had been shared thousands of times.
The comments poured in. Most of them were supportive — people saying it was outrageous, people sharing their own stories. A few were ugly, the way online comments always are, and Denise made him promise not to read those. Coach Bennett called to say the team was behind him. The principal called to say the school was proud of him, which was a strange thing to hear, but Jayden appreciated it.
Then the local paper picked it up. Then a regional station. A sports blog ran the headline with a photo of Jayden mid-jump-shot that Diane Foster's husband had taken at a game last season. Somebody started a hashtag with his name and the word "driveway" in it. Daniels showed him on his phone, shaking his head.
"Your dad would've hated this," Daniels said, grinning. "All this attention. He was the most camera-shy man I ever met."
Jayden laughed. "He'd hate it, but he'd watch every second."
Not all the attention was comfortable. A van from a national outlet parked at the end of the street for a day, and Greer — Jayden saw him through the window — stood on his porch with his arms crossed, watching. For once, Greer was the one being watched, and he clearly didn't like it.
At school on Friday, something happened Jayden didn't expect. Between classes, a freshman he didn't know stopped him in the hallway. The kid looked nervous.
"Hey," the kid said. "I just wanted to say — what you said in the interview. About having to prove you belong. I feel like that sometimes too."
Jayden didn't know what to say, so he just nodded, and the kid nodded back and walked away. But it stayed with him all day. He had gone into the interview thinking about himself — about clearing his name, about the hearing. He hadn't thought about what it might mean to anyone else.
That night, Daniels found him in the driveway, shooting free throws in the dark.
"You did good, kid," Daniels said.
"I didn't do anything. I just talked."
"That's doing something." Daniels leaned against the garage door. "Your father used to say that silence is a choice too. Most people choose it because it's easier. You didn't."
Jayden shot, and the ball swished through the net, barely disturbing it. Across the street, Greer's house was dark. No curtains twitching. No phone calls.
"Do you think it'll change anything?" Jayden asked. "The hearing, I mean."
Daniels was quiet for a moment. "I think it already has."
Above them, the porch light buzzed. Jayden picked up his rebound and shot again, and this time he wasn't thinking about who was watching at all.