Eli Banks
Elijah Alexander “Eli” Banks was a Black American student from Greenwich, Connecticut. He attended a private school with Daisy Summers and became her closest childhood friend.
Family and Background
Eli was the only child of Isaac and Ayla Banks. Isaac worked as a pediatric neurosurgeon, and Ayla worked as a neonatologist. Both trained at Johns Hopkins; Isaac studied and worked with Julia Weston, while Ayla knew her through her professional reputation rather than direct training. They later took positions in the Stamford–Greenwich area.
The Banks household was financially comfortable, supported by both parents’ medical careers, although its earned wealth did not give the family the social standing that Danielle Summers assigned to older Greenwich money. Isaac and Ayla’s schedules were demanding, but they gave Eli affection, high expectations, and room to choose his hairstyles and try new interests without having to keep every one. They also spoke with him about being a Black boy in the largely white institutions around him.
At their Greenwich school, Eli noticed differences in how adults responded to his loudness and quick success compared with similar behavior from white classmates. He was academically strong, athletic, and able to draw. His humor and sociability were genuine, but he also learned to make people laugh when he sensed that an adult had begun to read him as disruptive rather than enthusiastic.
Personality and Communication
Eli was energetic, curious, funny, and comfortable taking up space. When he felt uneasy, his jokes came faster and louder; when he was badly hurt, he became quiet enough for Daisy to notice the change. Anxiety also increased his movement: he bounced, paced, or drummed on nearby surfaces.
Friendship with Daisy Summers
Main article: Daisy Summers and Eli Banks
Eli and Daisy attended the same private school in Greenwich and became best friends around age eight. They stayed on FaceTime for hours and often fell asleep while the call remained open. Eli called Daisy “Daze” and sometimes crunched chips into the microphone to provoke her teasing. Daisy heard his snoring through the call in the morning, and she recognized when his jokes were an expression of distress rather than play.
Eli knew that Daisy composed music before she shared her work with Jacob Keller. He asked to hear her compositions for a year without pressing her to play them. When Daisy played for Jacob first, Eli admired her willingness to share the work rather than treating her choice as a rejection.
Their contrasting communication styles gave Daisy room to be louder and less guarded. The friendship also gave Eli a relationship that did not depend on his humor.
Danielle Summers publicly tolerated Daisy’s friendship with Eli while looking down on the Banks family. Daisy began to notice the difference between Danielle’s polite manner at school and her judgments about Eli’s family.
As they grew older, Eli recognized romantic feelings for Daisy before she recognized her own. Their closeness at eight remained a childhood friendship; their later romantic relationship developed from that existing trust.
Health
Eli had hypersomnia and severe sleep inertia. In childhood he slept deeply, snored, and was difficult to wake even when his parents called to him, opened the blinds, or tried alarms. He sometimes insisted he was “up horizontally” before going back to sleep. He often fell asleep again in the car on the way to school, then became animated once he had arrived. He could also fall asleep during passive activities, including classroom films, silent reading, and time in waiting rooms. Ayla texted Daisy more than once before school about the effort of waking him; one message read, “I’ve been trying for ten minutes. Pray for us.”
Isaac and Ayla discussed his sleep and activity in private. One of their conversations included this exchange:
“Do you think he—” “I don’t know. He’s doing fine.” “But the sleep.” “A lot of kids sleep hard.” “Not like this.”
They worried about overlooking a medical need but also about how a diagnosis might be used against their son at his predominantly white school. ADHD was suspected but had not been diagnosed; Eli’s high achievement did not erase either the sleep difficulties or his parents’ concern.
Physical Characteristics
At eight, Eli was tall and solidly built for his age, with the softer contours of a child’s body. His skin was deep brown, his eyes dark and quick, and his speaking voice had a depth that surprised adults expecting a younger child’s register. Some adults read his size and voice as signs that he was older than he was. His hair changed often as he chose among fades, twists, a small Afro, and braids; Ayla took him to the barber regularly and let him choose.
As Eli grew through adolescence, sports made his build more muscular and brought him trophies. The tendency of some adults to read his body as older or more threatening intensified as he grew, a response Isaac and Ayla had tried to prepare him to recognize.