Honor Among Thieves, Part 4

HONOR AMONG THIEVES 
By Smokehut 

PART FOUR 

Miraculously, Jessica Riggs was right. Coaches quickly gathered the team 
and told them their beloved head coach had died quietly in his sleep. No 
practices were held. Buses arrived shortly after noon, and everyone 
returned to Faulkner, where grief counselors greeted the players and 
cheerleaders as they staggered off the buses. Nobody apparently thought 
about the band, which was actually the most grief-stricken group. 

That fall, with an assistant coach, Kirby Lowe, in charge, a team that 
could have competed for the state championship won six games and lost four. 
That was enough to make the playoffs, but the Falcons fell in the second 
round. 

Josh Tomlinson started at wide receiver, but never again was he the best 
player on any field. The commonly held belief was that Harry Hargett's 
untimely death had haunted the three-year letterman. Actually, it was 
Jessica Riggs' pussy. 

Their torrid affair lingered through the end of the year but was ultimately 
a casualty of Jessica's ambition, or, perhaps, Josh's lack thereof. He had 
made only two B's in his first eleven years of schooling. During his senior 
year, he slumped to B's and C's and told his parents early the following 
year that he had no intention of going to college. At school's end, they 
kicked him out of the house and he left without resistance. The last time 
anyone in Faulkner saw him he was standing on the edge of the interstate 
with only a backpack and a guitar. 

Jessica Riggs fared much better. She went to the state's largest public 
university, graduated with honors and eventually rose to become anchor of 
the evening news at a network television station in Philadelphia. Her rise 
was aided by conquests similar to the one she had mastered seducing -- and 
ruining -- Josh Tomlinson, who had learned two things from Miss Riggs: (a.) 
how to be ruthless, and (b.) how not to care. 

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