One for the Team

36 | after

The boys found guilty of the Brightly's case are accused and convicted of involuntary manslaughter on a Saturday morning, and everyone in town seems to be there to see it happen. If asked later if they'd been there, however, no one would admit to it. It was one of those things in life people wished they could unsee.

The first one to come up was Milo Wilds, courtesy of his lawyer, who had other important commitments to attend to in that cold morning.

Milo appeared in a slick expensive suit, sat down on the chair appointed to him, swore to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and so did. His father sat through the whole thing, in an equally slick and equally expensive suit, and watched it all in fascination.

Milo thought his father was most likely taking inspiration for one of his stories. He thought his dad cared little for him, but in some strange way, finally cared more than he ever did before. Because finally, Milo had become what his father loved the most in the world, what his father had always loved more than his own son. Milo had become one of his characters.

He had decided to confess when the police showed up at his house, because there was no one around to tell him what to do, except for the police, and the police were being really clear on what he should do. Tell the truth.

He did. His lawyer said, and later in court came through with it, that the best-case scenario was that he would serve two or three years in prison and, if all went well in his parole board meeting, two more on license in the community. This would be possible if Milo pleaded guilty in court and paid the totality of the fines imposed, which he (and his father) would.

If all three trials had gone as smoothly as Milo Wilds' one did, then maybe people wouldn't have denied their presence later on. Milo sat still during the whole thing, and once again no one figured out that the reason for such stillness was the inhale of a blunt the size of a fat kid's middle finger.

Milo also spent the entirety of his trial convincing himself that jail couldn't really be that bad. He could do what he did best – nothing. Nothing at all. He could work out like in the movies, get big and strong. He could get himself a drug supplier, maybe even make some money for himself. He could do all that. It couldn't be that bad.

Fine, his dad had written him into a murderer. He thought he could ride that horse until it fell dead then. He could and he would.

Finn Sexton's trial was next. There was no slick and expensive suit, just the one he had worn for the funeral, less the blood that drenched it after. He still had the ugly stitches, and the purple and yellow bruises, and the bad swelling, but now he also had Levi's white nail polish on his own nails.

He painted them himself, in his bedroom, the night before, and his little brother laughed when he saw it, but eventually asked if Finn could do his too, which he did. Archie knew what had happened before Finn sat down in that courtroom and told it to all the people in there, maybe all the people he knew.

He knew it because the night before Finn told him. He didn't want to. It made him sick to his stomach to think Archie could hate him even half as much as he hated himself. It didn't matter to him that he hated himself because he didn't care for his own opinion, but Archie was different. Archie was the love of his life, and now Archie would hate him.

But Archie didn't hate him. Archie sat crossed legged across from his big brother in bed and heard the story until the very end. He didn't like to watch his big brother cry, especially like that, but he didn't say anything. It took him a while to understand what he had just heard, but this is how he did it.

"You're going away," he said.

Finn understood then that his brother wouldn't hate him for what he had done, but for what he was about to do. Leave. He would go away.