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When he is fifteen years old, Courtland Gentry puts a bullet through his father’s head.
He does not panic. It was as if he had known this was coming all along, as if the first decade of his life had simply all been a buildup to that October night where he'd needed to protect his brother.
He tells Colt and Ry to pack a bag. He buries the gun, and his father’s body.
And then they run. They walk as far away from their home as possible, racing down sidewalks towards the sunset. Towards the ray of suns that promised a new day, a new hope.
-
Ryland is sick.
They've been on the run for three months now, scrounging up spare change for bus tickets whenever they could and sneaking onto Greyhounds whenever they couldn't. Striding away from California, running as far as they could. Ending up all the way in Miami.
And now his baby brother is sick, shaking with fever and mumbling incoherently in fitful sleep.
“Hey, it's okay.” Colt shushes Ryland, and Court feels sick. Colt is no less his baby brother than Ryland is, and now he has to watch him scramble to take care of Ryland while Court heads off to another odd job to try and get money for medicine.
Ryland is sick, and they have no medicine, no place to stay. Court musters up his best simulacrum of a smile. “Heading out for a bit, okay Ry? Be back soon. Everything's gonna be alright.”
Everything is not alright. He watches the bones on Colton’s face grow more prominent day by day as he pushes all the little food they have towards Ryland, keeping their youngest fed and protected.
And he has never felt so helpless.
-
“We need new clothes.” Colt was slowly growing taller, teenage frame stretching out the ratty old Rocky shirt he had on.
“I guess we do,” Court says absentmindedly. They’re walking down the street, going anywhere and nowhere.
They’d also run out of money a week ago, but Colt and Ryland didn't have to know that. They pile into a Goodwill just off the street, and try on increasingly ridiculous shirts including but not limited to:
AH! The element of surprise
I HAD POTENTIAL
I wear this shirt periodically
And a Cats the Musical t-shirt Colton, eternal theatre kid, insists on trying on.
Ryland reaches for a shirt with a picture of a rock with googly eyes on it, and Courtland is suddenly acutely aware of how empty his pocket six
Colt comes to stand next to him.
“I know we ran out of cash a week ago.”
Colt was older than Ryland by all of six minutes, but sometimes it did not feel that way. It was just how the twins had always been - Colt was fiercely protective of his twin brother, and had forced himself to grow up fast in order to shelter his twin from the worst of their circumstances.
Court watches Ryland check the price tag on the shirt and hesitate.
“I have an idea,” Colt says with a shit-eating grin.
They stumble out of Goodwill with the shirt stuffed in Colt’s backpack, definitely not fooling any of the employees who were probably just too underpaid to care. Colt and Ryland run down the sidewalk, one laughing like a maniac and the other happily admiring his new shirt, and Courtland lets himself smile.
Maybe they were going to be okay.
They carve out a life for themselves, despite the odds. They move back to LA; Court and Ryland visit Colt on set and watch every movie of his twice. Ryland keeps the rock shirt to this day. He does not grow up to get a doctorate, or attend any conferences, or publish any papers about the analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models. He becomes a science teacher at a middle school, and all his kids look up at him with stars in the eyes the way he'd once looked at his older brothers.
Court grows up with his hands curled tight around his baby brothers’ instead of into fists, his knuckles stained with grease from working odd jobs instead of blood.
When the siblings get together, walking down California streets again, the sunlight is bright and infinite.