One for the Team

36 | after

"Yes, but you can –"

Archie tried hard to pretend he wasn't crying, but his face was a big tell. Blood rose to his cheeks. His eyes coated in tears.

His voice was strained when he said, "Tell them you're sorry. It– it was an accident. It's not fair. They can't take you away because of an accident. Just say you're sorry, Finn." "It doesn't work like that," Finn stopped him, but by then his little brother's sadness had boiled into a frustrated rage, and the only way he knew how to deal with it was to pound his big brother's chest with his fists.

"No! No, it's not fair!! You were dumb, you didn't know what to do. They don't teach you that at school. Tell them that. You were helping him. You were trying to –"

"It doesn't work like that," Finn said again, trying to stop Archie's fists with his own hands. His voice rose to the point that Finn thought soon Mrs. Hawthorne would be ringing the bell to tell them to stop with the noise.

"Then make it work like that!!" Archie demanded. "You can't go away! They can't take you away. It's not fair!"

"Archie," Finn said, holding his fists and looking his little brother in the eyes. "It's okay. You can come see me, and it won't last forever either. At least I don't think so."

"Please, please, please, please, please, please don't go!" Archie cried, and then went back to hitting his brother.

The next day, he threw all of his comic books away, and when Finn asked, hands working on his tie, Archie said he didn't want them anymore.

"They're bullshit. The hero doesn't always win in the end. I don't want them."

Finn took them out of the trash and put them back on their shelf before they left for the courthouse anyway. His mother saw him do it and smiled. Finn thought he wouldn't see his mother smile any time soon, but he did.

Like Archie, his mother already knew about what had happened to Levi Brightly before Finn told it that morning in court. In fact, in a way, she had known it even before Finn himself told her the night before.

She knew it in the way mothers know things. She might not have known Finn had been cutting class, but deep down, she knew this, and so when he told her, the tears she cried were knowing and resigned. She cupped his cheeks in her hands and told him it was okay. He had done the right thing, and he would have done it sooner if it hadn't been for her, for their family.

"You're just a kid, Finn," she said, hands caressing his curls, long and tangled. "It wasn't fair to ask you to be anything else. It's okay. You can go. We'll be fine. You made sure of that, didn't you?"

She meant the money transferred to her account, enough money to pay the fines and to keep afloat for a good while. His father would step in. He would have to. He might still think Archie wasn't his son, but there was no doubt Finn was.

Another thing she knew before Finn said it out loud in the courthouse that morning was that he loved the dead boy. Again, she had known the way mothers know. She had known because her older boy had always been turned in on himself, and it seemed to her that this other boy had come and turned him out and into the world. She could feel his happiness like a breath of fresh air.

Not many people knew this, naturally, and so when it came out of Finn's mouth, a deep gasp came out of the audience's, and if later he had accessed his social media, he would have found all types of messages, but he did not, nor did he care to.

In any case, Finn's sentence came like it came for Milo, and like it would later come for Ace. Two years in prison, after which he would meet with a parole board and have his situation re-evaluated. Finn thought two years weren't enough but didn't dare to open his mouth and contest it, for fear of suggesting a life-sentence and have it provided to him. When the police came to take him at last, Archie jumped out of his seat and over the table where Finn's district defense lawyer was proudly putting his things away – he'd done the best he could with the situation at hand – and clung to his big brother like a madman. The cries were loud and ugly, and everyone wanted to look away but found that they couldn't.

Archie pleaded with the police. His brother was sorry, "Tell them, Finn, tell them you're sorry!!" They couldn't take him. It wasn't fair. He didn't mean it.

This went on for a good five minutes because no one really dared to lay a hand on a crying kid with Down Syndrome, and he did cry. He cried as he had never cried in his life. Snot came out of his nose and drool exploded out of his mouth, and he pleaded, and pleaded, and pleaded, but in the end, the police had to take Finn away.

Levi Brightly's mother cried too. Finn couldn't look her in the eyes, but in the end, he did. He looked both Levi's mother and father in the eyes and said he was sorry. He was so sorry. He would be sorry for the rest of his life and even that wouldn't be enough.

They never answered him, and he thought it fit. He didn't deserve it.

Ace Moskowitz's trial came next, and there was no slick and expensive suit either, just a very old black one Ace had once borrowed from Finn to attend a stupid prom at school, and never given back for reasons of his own. There was no family for him either, or a lawyer to talk his way into a lighter sentence.

Ace was not surprised by any of this. He was surprised instead by the following. He had walked past Finn as he walked out, the first time he saw him after their kiss. Finn didn't look at him, which suddenly made the room much colder than it actually was for Ace. He had his wrists in handcuffs, as Ace would soon have, and his nails were colored white, and Ace knew then.

He knew all of his disgusting ugly jealousy of Levi Brightly had been laid on a terrible truth. He knew the reason Finn never seemed to like Ace in the same terrible way Ace liked him wasn't that Ace was a boy. It was that Ace was Ace.

People wanted to look away from this too, from the Ace that sat down for his trial and cried for the first time in years. Cold silent organized tears that fell one after the other, as if waiting for their turn, drawing wet lines down Ace's hard cheeks. People wanted to look away, but no one did.

Ace pleaded guilty. He knew, perhaps better than most people, what a lost fight looked like. Because he had been the mastermind, and because of his not-so-clean record, Ace was sentenced with ten years in prison, which could very well be dropped to half, depending, once again, on the parole board meetings throughout the years.

His mother wasn't there to see it, but he wished she was. He wanted to look her in the eyes and say: You're welcome. You are, aren't you? Am I not a good son, mother? Was this not the very best gift I could ever give you? To get you rid of me. To send myself away? There you go, I'm gone, mother. You're welcome. You are. No problem. No worries. I'm gone. I'll be gone for a while. You were right. I am just like him. I am. I read the script, all right. I fit the costume. Let me play the part.

But his mother wasn't there, and so he kept it to himself.

He saw Levi Brightly's parents, and they saw him, and he thought of opening his mouth, but he never did. He wanted to tell them he never really had anything against their son. It was just that Finn Sexton had been the only item in a list he visited often, and their son had come very close to taking that away from him. In fact, in the end, he had.

This list wasn't an actual list. Ace never dared to write it down anywhere. He had it in his head. He thinks he's probably had it there since he first found out about death. He calls this list reasons to stay alive.

Before the night they buried Levi, that list had been composed of one time and one item only.

1) Finn Sexton

Now, the list is composed of nothing, and when Ace finally sits down against the cold wall of his small cell in Northwoods Penitentiary, he asks no one.

"Is it selfish of me to leave?"

And no one answers, "No, get out of this place."

Ace looks at the sheets over the thin mattress of his cell and does nothing. He thinks someday he will, but tonight he just pushes them back and slides inside to sleep, or try to.

In his own jail cell, Finn Sexton does the same thing, the mattress so thin he can almost feel the iron frame underneath. He had wondered long and hard about what it would be like to finally find himself in a jail cell, and all the wondering had taken him to scary places, but he didn't feel scared now.

He felt relieved. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, where he deserved to be. There was nothing to hide, nothing to be done. He had done it. He felt, perhaps for the first time in a long time, like himself.

And so that night, when he finally closed his eyes, sleep came to him at last.