In his letters, Mike wrote to Trevor about keeping his chin up. Get back to church, he’d advise. Ignore the bullshit. Give yourself a second chance. So Trevor stood in the pews with his parents every Sunday at Grace Christian Fellowship. He went to Wednesday evening Bible Study and he went on spring break mission trips and he was a summer counselor at a Baptist camp in Pennsylvania. Sometimes he let himself feel that love Jesus supposedly wanted to give him. He prayed for strength and he thought about justice. Mike loved hearing the stories of the girls who wanted to stay technical virgins. I bet you do just fine, he wrote back. And it was true. Mike’s letters came weekly, long missives where his big brother considered where he’d gone wrong and imagined a better path for himself. But the path was never going to be better. The path was no student loans for felons. No Section 8 for felons. Limited professional licensing for felons. Even more limited jobs. The path, when he got out in the middle of Trevor’s senior year, was living at home, scrounging for work from friends’ parents, online classes, depression, weed. Trevor tiptoed around his brother’s molten anger and his parents’ increasing desperation; he kept his grades up and his head down, and when the thick packet from NYU came in the mail the next spring, his mother and father took him out for lunch and told him they were thrilled and proud but that they didn’t want to make too big a deal at home.

“Your brother is happy for you, too,” said his dad. “We just need to be mindful of how he’s feeling right now.”

Trevor almost wept, right there over his steaming fajitas. He’d spent his whole life looking up to his brother. His funny, creative, kind, capable brother. Mike was a grown man, and here they were, the people who knew him best, talking about him like he was a fucking baby.

So should one mistake ruin poor Chad’s life? Yes. That’s exactly what it should do. But he wasn’t going to argue the point with Ridley Drake. Ridley Drake was summa cum laude at arguing. The night before Trevor had been thinking about what the lawyer in Canton told them about the deal that took his brother’s life away from him: It’s the best I can get. The DA wants to make a point, said the lawyer. Selling drugs to teenagers will not be tolerated in Canton. Selling drugs to teenagers will ruin your life. The lawyer said the DA wouldn’t listen to reason but Trevor suspected something different. Trevor suspected the DA wouldn’t listen to their lawyer. Because $10,000 wasn’t enough for a lawyer people listened to. It wasn’t enough for a lawyer like what Chad got for free.

“Sure,” said Trevor.