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Darren Ross and Gabe Brooks

Darren Ross and Gabe Brooks have been best friends since tee-ball. Their long shared history includes baseball, mutual trust, comfortable silence, and growing up as Black boys in predominantly white Portland.

How They Met

Darren and Gabe met in tee-ball around 2006–2007, when they were approximately five or six years old. They remained friends through childhood and into adulthood.

Shared History and Trust

Summer baseball practices, inside jokes, and time together without conversation became familiar parts of their friendship. Both could sit in comfortable silence without needing to explain it.

Growing up together in predominantly white Portland also gave them a shared understanding of racial isolation and the need to read social situations carefully. Both used code-switching in different settings. With each other, they could speak and behave without making those choices an object of explanation.

During the Custody Case

During the 2013–2014 custody case, Gabe saw Darren arrive at baseball practice exhausted and frightened, sometimes looking as though he had not slept.

Gabe did not demand an explanation before Darren was ready to talk. He stayed with him and continued treating him as a friend outside the crisis.

When Darren had a panic attack at baseball practice after Danny did not answer his phone, Gabe crouched at eye level and guided his breathing: “You’re not dying. It’s a panic attack. Breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out.” Once Darren explained what had frightened him, Gabe treated the fear as reasonable and offered to sit with him until he felt steady enough to move.

After Darren’s asthma hospitalization, Dana Ross sent him a “checking in” text during the custody case. Gabe read it as concern performed for the court rather than care Darren could rely on. Zoey initially struggled to understand why a mother’s message to her sick son would be read that way. Gabe explained the difference he and Darren had learned to recognize between adults’ stated concern and their conduct.

“Man, fuck that noise. Don’t answer. You know they don’t mean it,” Gabe told Darren. When Zoey questioned that reading, he answered, “Zo, you don’t know their parents like we do. Trust me—if Darren says it’s fake, it’s fake.”

Move-In Day Support

After the court appointed Danny Ross as Darren’s legal guardian and placed Darren in his custody, Gabe helped the brothers move into their two-bedroom apartment. He carried boxes and joked with Darren amid an emotionally demanding transition. Gabe regarded Darren as family and took part in the wider community effort to make the apartment a home.

Friendship and Mutual Support

Gabe sees Darren as steady and loyal: someone who shows up and whom he can trust. He also knows Darren places comparable trust in him.

Darren values Gabe’s humor and his ability to find moments of enjoyment without dismissing serious circumstances. Gabe helps him step out of his own tendency toward constant vigilance.

Gabe uses humor to make difficult periods more bearable and stays beside Darren without treating him as fragile. He respects Darren’s role in helping him understand Zoey’s intensity as a form of care rather than a wish to control him.

Darren often helps Gabe and Zoey understand each other’s different approaches to a problem. He listens when Gabe needs to talk about Jamal’s irregular work schedule or other frustrations, providing the same consistency Gabe offers him.

Gabe’s trust also affected Darren’s view of himself. Steadying a friend and mediating within the trio showed him that he could offer leadership and care. He was not only a child who needed Danny’s help or the youngest Ross son whose needs had been overlooked; he had something valuable to contribute on his own terms.

Cultural Context

Darren and Gabe’s friendship developed within their experience as Black boys in Portland. The city’s predominantly white surroundings and liberal self-image did not remove the racial isolation they encountered; its Black community was less concentrated than those in cities such as Baltimore or Atlanta. On their baseball team and in other shared spaces, both noticed when adults or peers read their bodies differently from their white teammates’. They understood each other’s code-switching and could spend time together without having to explain those shifts.

Gabe’s reaction to Dana’s text drew on his working-class experience of judging adults by what they did as well as what they said. He and Darren had seen how schools, courts, and child-welfare systems could record concern without ensuring care. That history informed Gabe’s warning to Darren and his explanation to Zoey, whose first reading of the message was more trusting. The exchange made visible a difference in what the friends had learned from their respective families and encounters with institutions.

The move-in day brought together Marcus and Renee Johnson, Coach Ramirez, the Thomas family, Gabe, and other supporters from the brothers’ Black and multiracial community. Their collective labor helped Danny and Darren establish a home after the custody case. Gabe carried boxes and brought humor into the work, giving Darren moments of laughter without asking him to treat the preceding struggle as insignificant.

The Trio

Their duo became a trio when Zoey Linnea Thomas joined them in sixth grade during the 2013–2014 school year. Zoey’s intelligence, loyalty, and refusal to define Darren by the custody case helped the new friendship take hold.

As Black children in predominantly white Portland, the three shared experiences they did not always need to explain to one another. Darren often helped bridge Gabe’s “it’ll work out” approach and Zoey’s “we need a plan” urgency.

The trio continued after Darren and Zoey began dating as teenagers and eventually married. Gabe remained family to both of them. He knew Danny, understood what Darren lost in 2022, and stayed present through Darren’s grief without reducing their friendship to crisis support.

Gabe’s Growth

Early in the trio’s formation, Gabe sometimes called Zoey “bossy,” including as a joke in front of others. Zoey objected to the racialized and gendered weight the word carried for Black girls. Darren then explained to Gabe why the label hurt her.

Gabe listened and stopped using the word after understanding why it hurt Zoey.

The exchange showed Darren that Gabe could examine his own behavior and repair harm rather than retreat into a joke. It also allowed the trio to continue with greater trust.

Continuing Significance

For Darren, Gabe was a constant friend through the custody case. Their relationship predated the crisis and continued while Darren’s home life remained uncertain.

For Gabe, Darren was a friend who knew him beyond his class clown persona. Darren understood both the enjoyment and the self-protection in Gabe’s jokes without demanding that he perform either role.

Their friendship remained visible in ordinary acts: helping with the move, sitting together at baseball practice, challenging Dana’s performed concern, and staying in contact beyond the custody case and Danny’s death.

Relationships Friendships Darren Ross Gabe Brooks