Chapter 9: The Video Kid
Jaylen Brooks had been famous before. In seventh grade, he'd landed a kickflip off the library steps and half the school had watched the clip. That kind of famous felt like sunlight. This kind felt like being under a microscope with the light turned up too high.
By first period, everyone at Brookfield High had seen the video. By second, the hallways had sorted themselves the way hallways always did.
"Yo, Jaylen." A junior he barely knew bumped his shoulder. "You good, man? That was messed up."
"Thanks." Jaylen kept walking.
"Hey — hey, can I get a selfie? With the video kid?" A girl held up her phone, laughing, and her friend laughed too, and Jaylen couldn't tell whether the laugh was with him or at him, and the not-knowing was the worst part.
Malik Turner materialized at his elbow like he'd been summoned. "She's joking," Malik said to the girl, in a tone that made it clear she shouldn't have been. "Walk away."
"Relax, it's a compliment —"
"Walk. Away."
She did. Malik fell into step with Jaylen. "You okay?"
"Everybody keeps asking me that."
"Because everybody's nosy. I'm asking because I'm your best friend and it's my job." Malik bumped Jaylen's good shoulder — careful, always careful now, of the wrist. "Seriously. You good?"
Jaylen thought about it. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be."
In homeroom, Ms. Delaney — kind, harried, the kind of teacher who decorated her door for every holiday — stopped him on the way in. She put a hand on his arm and said, in a low, concerned voice, "Jaylen, honey, I saw the video. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Ms. D."
"Good. Good." She squeezed his arm. Then, lowering her voice further: "And — this is just between us — maybe, going forward, don't give them a reason. You know? Just to be safe."
Jaylen stared at her. She meant it kindly. He could see that — her face was full of genuine worry, the worry of a woman who'd never once considered that she might be the reason. And somehow that made it worse, the way a paper cut is worse than a bruise because you can't figure out where it came from.
"I wasn't giving anyone a reason," he said.
"I know, honey, I know. I just mean —"
"What reason was I giving, Ms. Delaney?"
She blinked. "I didn't — I just don't want you getting hurt."
He walked to his desk. His face was hot. Behind him, somebody whispered something, and somebody else shushed them, and the whole room had that prickling, listening quality, like everyone was a camera with the red light on.
At lunch, it got louder. A table of sophomores started chanting — softly, then not softly — "Loiter-er, loiter-er," until a senior told them to shut up. Two girls asked Malik if Jaylen was "going to sue," like it was a lottery ticket. A kid from the basketball team, a kid Jaylen had played pickup with since summer, leaned across the table and said, "Man, my dad says your mom's gonna shut the whole mall down. That's crazy."
"She's not shutting it down."
"That's what the video says. Two million views, bro. You're famous."
Jaylen stood up. His tray was still half full. "I'm going to the library."
Malik stood too. "I'm coming."
"You don't have to."
"Shut up. I'm coming."
They sat in the back of the library, where the light came through the high windows in long, dusty bars. Jaylen put his head down on his arms. His wrist throbbed under the wrap — not bad, just there, a reminder with a pulse.
"Ms. Delaney's an idiot," Malik said.
"She meant well."
"Yeah, well, meaning well is how you get 'don't give them a reason.'" Malik was quiet for a moment. Then: "You know what my mom said this morning? She said, 'That could've been you, Malik.' And I said, 'Mom, I was there.' And she just — she hugged me for like a full minute. In the kitchen. In front of my cereal."
Jaylen laughed — a real one, short and surprised.
"I'm serious," Malik said. "She cried a little. My mom doesn't cry. She watched the playoffs last year and didn't cry when we lost in overtime, and she cries at everything."
They sat in the quiet. Somewhere in the stacks, a page turned.
Jaylen picked at the frayed edge of his wrist wrap. "My mom asked if I wanted to press charges. Like it's my choice, like there's a right answer." He looked at Malik. "Is there? Is there a right answer, or just answers that make different people mad?"
Malik shrugged. "I think the right answer is the one where you get to be sixteen again. Everything else is paperwork."
Jaylen almost smiled. Outside the high windows, a bus sighed to a stop, and for a moment the library was the quietest place in the world, and he wished he could stay in it — dust in the light, pages turning, nobody filming anything — until the world finished deciding what his face meant.
"Coach is gonna ask about practice," Malik said. "You skipping?"
Jaylen nodded. Track practice meant the locker room, meant the jokes, meant running laps while people watched him like he was a highlight reel instead of a person. He couldn't do it. Not today.
"I'll tell him you're sick," Malik said.
"I'm not sick."
"You're sick of it. Close enough." Malik stood and shouldered his bag. "Hey. Jay. For what it's worth — the video doesn't get to decide who you are. You know that, right?"
Jaylen looked up at his best friend — loyal, warm, ridiculous Malik, who'd been there when it happened and hadn't moved, who'd stood in the crowd and yelled *he's not fighting* until his voice broke.
"Yeah," Jaylen said. "I know."
But he didn't, quite. Not yet. That afternoon, walking home alone past the bus stop where the other kids waited, he felt the old familiar thing settle over him — the feeling of being watched, of having to be careful, of carrying something invisible that other people could see. He stopped at the corner and took out his phone and photographed the light coming through the maple trees: gold, broken, ordinary. Proof, maybe, that the world still had places where nobody was watching.