What Set Me Free (The Story That Inspired the Major Motion Picture Brian Banks) Read online

  “Why you goin’ over here?” I asked Tiana as we walked in the sunshine.

  “I like this bathroom better,” she said.

  I was focused on trying to reach this producer, so I didn’t think a whole lot about that. Students who weren’t supposed to went into the 700 building all the time. As long as you were real quiet and didn’t get caught, it was no big deal.

  One of the reasons Long Beach Poly students risked going into the 700 building wasn’t for the bathrooms. It was ’cause the 700 building had a private nook in it that everybody knew as a make-out spot—a spot where you could go to have some private time with the guy or the girl you were into at the moment.

  I don’t know what the culture is like at other high schools, but at Long Beach Poly, all that mixed-interests-intermingling stuff I talked about earlier carried over into relationships. Guys and girls at that school, they hooked up. I’m not talking about sex, necessarily, although our high school was a pretty promiscuous place. But most of the time it was just getting together to make out. Before we even got to high school, kids in my ’hood played games like “Hide and Go Get It.” That’s like “Hide and Go Seek,” except when you find someone of the opposite sex, instead of tagging them and saying “You’re it,” you’re supposed to make out with them, right then and there. And whether it was games like that or full-on boy-girl encounters, the girls were the instigators as often as the guys. It was just casually accepted that if you liked somebody and they liked you, at some point you’d get together and make out. And if you wanted to make out during school hours, or right after school, or before or after practice, the place to go was the Spot.

  You’d hear students talking all the time, like “Guess who I just took to the Spot?” or “You’ll never believe who I was just at the Spot with.” We all knew exactly what that meant. I’d been to the Spot with a few different girls during my three years at Poly, and it had always worked out fine. It was fun. It was cool. And we never got caught. It was flirty and we’d both walk away smiling. Sometimes it turned into something more. Maybe we’d date a little while, or have a relationship. But more times than not it was just a fun and kind of crazy thing to do, and that was the end of it.

  So Tiana went into the bathroom, and I stayed out in the hallway and tried the guy’s number a couple more times. If he picked up, I told myself, I would run outside before I even said hello, just so I wouldn’t get caught in that building. But he never picked up.

  When Tiana came out, I was standing with my back against the wall at the far end of the hall, near the elevator. Instead of heading out of the building, she walked toward me, to the water fountain just across from the elevator. She took a drink, and she turned her head and looked at me while she drank that water, and she smiled all flirty like, and suddenly it hit me: “Oh. This girl’s into me.”

  I have to admit, I didn’t find Tiana all that attractive. She wasn’t someone I normally would’ve been into, but when she looked at me all flirty from that water fountain so close to the Spot, my teenage hormones kicked into overdrive. I immediately thought, I wonder if this girl wants to make out with me?

  We talked and laughed real quiet for a minute right there, hoping nobody would hear us while I tried the producer one more time. She was definitely flirting, so I flat-out asked her, “Hey, want to go to the Spot?”

  “All right,” she said without any hesitation. “Let’s go!”

  We stepped into the elevator to the second floor. It was clear she knew the routine: when the doors opened, we stayed dead silent. There were five or six open classrooms on each side of the hallway in front of us, and we had to make it all the way to the other end of that hall without anyone seeing us. We had to be ninja quiet as we moved, and we were. We walked past all those open doors to classes full of students and teachers. Everyone on that campus knew who I was because of football, so anyone who spotted me for even one second would have known I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was nerve-racking. We tiptoed all the way, but we made it to the stairway.

  We were both smiling and kind of giggling that we’d make it that far. Tiana then led the way down the two flights to the Spot itself: the landing tucked down under the stairs, right next to a double door with no handles on the outside. That was the magic. Those doors were the only exit. They were locked from the outside. So no one could come in through those doors. And if anyone came out into the stairwell above and started coming down the stairs, you’d have plenty of time to hear them and get yourself together and maybe even sneak out before you’d get caught. Because the Spot was under the stairs, no one could see you from above. There were no windows. It was completely hidden from view, this place where a couple of teenagers could fool around in privacy and safety.

  Tiana was carrying a hall pass with her, which had come from her classroom. It was this big, clear-plastic, pyramid-shaped puzzle toy with a ball inside of it that the user was supposed to tip and manipulate through obstacles and holes on the inside. It was the kind of thing you’d buy from a gift store at a science museum or something. It was big enough that you almost needed two hands to hold it. She set the pass down on the bottom step and we just pulled each other back into the privacy of the Spot and went at it. We were kissing and touching, and she reached up under my shirt, and I reached up under hers. She was feeling on me and I was feeling on her. And it started to get real heated. So I reached down and started to undo her pants, and she didn’t stop me. She got even more into it, like she wanted more, and so I undid my pants and she reached right in and grabbed ahold of me.

  That’s when we heard a door upstairs. A teacher stepped onto the landing above us and started speaking Spanish into her cell phone. We froze, still as could be, and tried not to breathe. A minute or so must have gone by before she ended her call and stepped back into the hallway. We heard a door close again, then laughed in a whisper and started at it again. I pushed my pants down around my knees, and she kept rubbing me, and I pushed her pants down around her knees, too. She still had her underwear on, and so did I, and we were both still standing up, but she seemed so into it and it got so hot and heavy that I thought for a second this might be turning into a whole lot more than a make-out.

  And that’s when I got spooked. It was way too risky. I didn’t want to do this.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “I gotta stop.”

  She looked at me like I was speaking another language or something.

  “Wait, what?” she said, her voice rising up. I’m sure no one had ever stopped her in the middle of making out before.

  “I’m sorry. I gotta get back to class,” I said.

  She looked at me like she just couldn’t believe it.

  “It’s not you,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “It’s just, like, we’ll get back to this another time, okay? We’re not through here. Uh-uh.” I lied.

  I didn’t want her to feel bad, but I could tell she did.

  I pulled my pants up and she pulled hers up, too, and she kind of gave me some attitude as we got ourselves together. She seemed mad.

  “Really!” I said. “I’ve been out of class for a minute, and I got this girl’s cell phone. I’ve still gotta make this call . . .”

  She kept looking at me with her brow all furrowed and this fire in her eyes, like I’d insulted her or something.

  “Don’t trip, Tiana. We’ll finish this, we’re gonna get together, we just gonna stop for now,” I repeated.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “All right, I gotta go!” I said to her. “You going back the way we came?”

  She shrugged.

  “Okay, bye,” I said, and I turned and stepped out the double doors into the shining bright light of that burning hot July day.

  Thankfully there was no one outside those doors. I looked back and Tiana didn’t follow me, so I assumed she went back upstairs, down the hallway, and back down the elevator on the other side of the 700 building.

  I went back to class. I gave the girl her pho
ne back, and not too long after that, school ended. I met up with a bunch of other football players and we walked over to Tommy’s, the burger joint right next to campus. We had a couple of hours to kill before practice started, and Tommy’s was great. That little brick takeout joint had a couple of tables outside with built-in plastic umbrellas for some shade, and a big bag of fries only cost like a dollar. So we all got some food and talked and filled up on burgers and sodas and then headed back to campus.

  A group of about six of us were sitting in the middle of the quad, still killing time, when we noticed a couple of police officers on campus. There were cops around all the time in that neighborhood, so we didn’t think anything of it—until two more cops showed up and walked into the entrance toward the main office. Then two more officers walked onto campus and we were like, “What the?” So me, never being the shy one, I got up and walked over to one of the cops and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” The cop looked at me and said, “Nothing. We’re just here picking up our diplomas.”

  “All right, man,” I said, shaking my head at his lame attempt at humor. “Whatever.”

  When I got back my friends were all like, “What did he say? What did he say?” and I said, “Man, he didn’t say shit. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  We kept talking and chilling for a while, until one of the football players’ dads walked over and said, “Banks, let me talk to you real quick.” I got up and walked away from the table with him and he said, “Did you get into some trouble today or something?”

  He was sort of whispering, like he didn’t want anyone else to hear us.

  “No,” I said to him. “I’m good.”

  “Okay, well, you know, when I was coming in I overheard the police out there on Jackrabbit Lane. I overheard some police over there saying that they were looking for a kid by the last name of Banks.”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

  “Okay. Well, you know, I didn’t do anything, so . . .”

  “All right,” he said, “well, you know, I just want to make sure, because I’m pretty sure I heard him say ‘Banks.’ You may want to check with your little brother and make sure he didn’t do nothing.”

  That scared me. Was my brother in trouble with the cops?

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go check on my brother.” I knew my little brother was in basketball practice behind the gym, on the outside courts, with the rest of the freshman basketball team. So I ran back there and the coach let me pull him aside.

  “Did you do something today?” I asked him.

  “No. What’s going on?” he said.

  “Well, supposedly the police are looking for a kid by the last name of Banks, but if you didn’t do nothing, don’t trip.”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” he said again.

  “All right,” I said. “Go back to practice.”

  I watched my little brother run back out onto the court, and I turned and walked back around the gym to where my friends were still hanging out.

  I didn’t think there were any other kids named Banks in our school, and I started to get nervous. Tiana had a reputation for being a bit of a problem child. She was known for bullying other girls. What if something happened after I left her? I wondered. What if she got caught on her way out of the 700 building and ratted me out?

  I wasn’t sure why the cops would care about us being in the building, unless she got into a fight with somebody and they needed me as a witness or something. I hoped that kid’s dad had overheard something incorrectly. Maybe it wasn’t a “Banks” those cops were looking for at all.

  Then my mind started running. Damn, if this girl did something on campus and somebody saw us walking together and thought I was involved, that could be bad. And then the rational side of me thought, Nah, I don’t think she could’ve done anything that would warrant the number of police I just saw.

  It never occurred to me that it could be anything else, and certainly not anything I did.

  In my mind, in those fleeting few minutes, I concluded that the cops must not be looking for me or my brother at all. It must be someone else. But I couldn’t stop wondering, Who are they looking for? What’s going on? My curiosity led me to go sit on the steps just off-campus, right outside the black fence on Jackrabbit Lane where all the cops were milling around, just in case I might overhear something.

  I sat down in the shade with my backpack and pulled my hoodie up around my face as I leaned back, and right then, from the left side of me I spotted Tiana, her mom, her older sister, and three or four police officers walking out in the opening between those black bars. Tiana saw me. She saw me. I was sure of it. We made eye contact. It only lasted a half a second, but she saw me. But then she turned her head back and kept walking with those cops. The whole group of them walked right by not more than three feet in front of me.

  I didn’t know what to think except, Oh, shit. It is Tiana. She did something!

  If she wanted the cops to find me, why wouldn’t she have said, “There he is!” She didn’t do that, which made me think that maybe the cops were looking for me to ask me about something she’d done, and maybe she had my back and wanted me to get away or something.

  Oh my God, I thought. They really are looking for me!

  So as soon as they turned left and started walking, I stood up real casual and calm. I kept my hoodie on and started walking really slow in the opposite direction down Jackrabbit Lane, toward the back parking lot and the baseball fields. I walked slow, and then a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little bit faster, and as soon as I turned the corner by the baseball diamond, I shot like the fastest I could ever run. I ran all the way down that parking lot and hopped over the gate and ran across a little piece of the baseball field and over another gate onto Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. I ran onto Sixteenth Street and straight to one of my friends’ houses—a house where I knew a bunch of my homeboys were at. A bunch of my homeboys who were also on the football team.

  Sure enough, they were in there playing video games waiting for the practice to start when I burst through the door like I’d just been shot at or something.

  “Whoa! What the fuck’s going on, bro?” “What you tripping for?” “What’s going on?” they yelled.

  “Man, I think the police are looking for me,” I said, peeking through the curtains on the front window to see if I’d been followed.

  My homeboys all looked at each other and started laughing.

  “Man, the police ain’t looking for you,” they said. “Why would the police be looking for you? Like, what would they want?”

  My homeboys found it downright laughable that the cops would ever be after me.

  “I don’t know, man, I don’t know, but I think they really looking for me, bro. I think they’re really looking for me. Let me use the phone. I’m gonna call my mom.”

  I picked up the house phone and called my mom’s cell phone.

  “Mom, I think the police are looking for me,” I said.

  “Boy, what?” she said.

  “I think the police is looking for me.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, what did you do?”

  “I didn’t do nothing, I didn’t do nothing,” I said.

  “Well, if you didn’t do anything, then you don’t have anything to worry about,” she said.

  I wasn’t convinced.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know.”

  My mom took a deep breath. “Well, look,” she said, “if the police really want you, they’ll come get you from home. So you come home.”

  “Okay, Mom. Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you at home.”

  I hung up the phone and decided to bolt.

  “Watch my backpack for me,” I said, and I gave all my homeboys the five.

  “Cuz, you’re tripping. You’re tripping!” they all kept saying.

  “I don’t know, man. I’m just g
onna go home just in case.”

  I left my backpack in that house as I ran right out the front door. I ran to the nearest bus stop. It felt like divine intervention when the bus pulled up the moment I got there. I boarded and walked all the way to the back and pulled my hoodie around my face and leaned against the window, and my mind kept spinning over and over about what Tiana could have done. What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? I was sweating like crazy, and I swear you could see my heart beating through my sweatshirt.

  What did she tell the cops? Or what did somebody else tell the cops? What could she have done? What?! But I just couldn’t think of anything that girl could have done in the last few minutes of school that could have warranted all those cops showing up.

  Plus, they weren’t walking her out in handcuffs. And her mom and her sister were there. Maybe it wasn’t something she did. Maybe something happened at Tiana’s house or something.

  Slowly but surely, I started to calm down.

  Maybe my homeboys were right. Maybe I was tripping.

  Maybe Mom is right. Maybe there’s nothing to worry about.

  * * *

  I. This is not her real name. I prefer, for reasons that will soon be clear, not to see her real name in my book.

  THREE

  Accused

  As I got off the bus, I looked to the left and looked to the right, and there weren’t any cops to be found. As I walked the ten minutes from my stop to our front door on the cul-de-sac, I kept looking left and right and glancing over my shoulders the whole way, and I never saw any police anywhere.

  Everything must be fine, I thought. I’m making a big deal out of nothing.

  My mom had made it home from work before I got there, and she asked me to tell her everything the moment I walked in. “Mom, I don’t know,” I said. “Somebody told me the police were looking for me, but I didn’t do anything.”