Chapter 7

Five minutes later Claire and Chuck were walking side by side. Having visited the manager, they were approaching room 203 with key in hand. They were about ten feet away when the door burst open. Tiffany Jewell and Ramona Hodgkin's dashed out to come face to face with the Coach and Claire. Both were dressed in their cheerleading uniforms. The hem of Ramona's skirt was caught in the back where it had obviously been accidentally tucked inside her panties. There was something glistening running down Tiffany's right inner thigh.

"Stop right there." ordered Coach in his coach's voice.

"We were just getting some towels." babbled Ramona.

"Really?" asked Claire, feeling bad for just having done exactly what these two girls had done, and now having to catch them at it. "Where are they?"

Both girls looked at their empty hands, like somebody had told them hair would grow on their palms if they masturbated and they were checking to see if it was true.

"Wait right over there." Chuck pointed to the front window.

The door had closed behind the girls with a sharp slam and Chuck keyed it open, swinging it wide. Claire followed him inside.

Three of the boys were in bed, covers up to their chins. Frank Zeeliff was sitting on a chair, trying to put shoes on. He had lipstick all over his face.

Frank looked up, his eyes wide. "Hey coach." he said weakly. "What's up?"

"What are you guys doing in here?" asked Chuck.

Danny Pruett said, from bed. "We're trying to sleep, coach... like you said."

Chuck moved to the bed, reached down and whipped the covers off. Danny's limp prick lay in a spermy mess that soaked his pubes and balls. Claire stared before Danny covered his genitals with his hands. He didn't say anything.

Chuck turned to the other bed, which had two boys in it. They were clutching the covers under their chins so tightly their knuckles were white.

"Do I have to show Mrs. Richardson what you two look like too?" he asked.

"No coach." they both intoned. "You got us." said George Caddy.

There was a noise from the bathroom.

Coach looked and said "I suppose the other two are in there?"

He got four blank stares back.

Chuck nodded to Claire and she went to the bathroom door, which was locked. She knocked and ordered "Open up... Sex Police!" Then she giggled. She turned around and wiped the smile off her face as Chuck shook his head sadly.

"Sorry." she mumbled. She turned back to the door and pounded on it.

It opened and two more cheerleaders came out. They were fully dressed, but in their hurry to get that way, each had grabbed some wrong uniform items. One of them was a busty girl about five feet ten, and the other was lucky if she was five feet tall. The big one had grabbed a sweater top that, once she got on, was so tight she couldn't pull it off again. Her partner had been forced to wear the larger girl's sweater top, and it almost looked like a dress on her. The tall one had a wad of tissue paper in her hand.

Claire held her hand out. "May I see that please?"

The girl's hand... and the tissue, vanished behind her back.

There was a bra lying on the floor between one of the beds and a wall. Claire pointed at it.

"Whose is that?"

The tall girl looked and then bent over automatically to pickup the bra and Claire darted her hand to snatch the tissue out of the hand that was still behind her back.

It was a soggy pile of sperm-soaked paper. Claire held it up and nodded to Chuck.

Chuck knew what he had to do. He didn't feel good about it. He didn't feel guilty at all about what he and Claire had done. They were adults. But he had sanctioned what Bobby and Lori had done, and now he was going to have to punish these kids. He tried to take a little comfort in the fact that Lori and Bobby's parent had also sanctioned what had happened. But if left a bad taste in his mouth.

"You four are benched." he pronounced.

There were four groans of complaint.

"Come on Coach, we were just having a little fun." whined Frank.

"Your fun doesn't appear to have involved any condoms Frank." said Chuck heavily. What am I going to tell the parents if any of these girls show up pregnant?"

"They won't coach." said Danny. "They all used suppositories."

Well, a good spermicidal might help a little, but still, the rules had been broken. What was more important, at least publicly, was that the eight had been caught.

It turned out that Charlie HAD come knocking on the door, telling them that Coach was coming. But the boys hadn't believed it. There was still over an hour until bed check.

It was the girls who wanted to stop, but all four boys had been trying, on a bet, to cum at the same time. They had insisted that Charlie was just jealous and that nothing would happen.

By the time things had settled back down Claire no longer felt guilty. All four of the girls were simpering idiots. Tiffany had convinced them that the big suppositories would protect them from pregnancy, so they had gone along with the crazy scheme. Claire had been using the same kind of birth control when she got pregnant with Lori.

"You have to tell your parents what happened." she told the girls once she had them huddled together outside the room. "If you don't, we have to. In fact, we have to anyway. You can tell them yourselves, and when we contact them they'll already know and tell us they know. But, when we tell them we're going to tell them that you were told to inform them. So you may as well do it yourselves. If you're going to try to act adult, you also have to take responsibility for what you choose to do."

None of the girls liked that idea, but they were left with little choice. They left for their rooms, heads down, feet dragging.

On the way back to the room Claire spoke. "You know, if they can't do it... we really shouldn't do it either."

He looked at her. "Ever again?"

"No silly" She blushed at the hurt in his voice. It made her feel good. "Just while we're here. I think my dating life is going to improve when we get back home."

"Yes it is. OK, I'm with you." he said.

When they got to the room the kids were dressed and watching TV.

Claire explained what had happened, and what decision had been made because of what had happened.

"That means you two too." she said.

Surprisingly, both teens just nodded their assent. They knew what they had 'gotten away with'. They also knew what was likely to happen without those four players, and it sobered them.

Chuck and Claire presided over a very quiet bed check that night. The news had spread. The night passed uneventfully, though all of them had a hard time getting to sleep and talked for several hours into the night in the darkened room.

The next day the four players suited up, but sat on the bench. The four cheerleaders were also benched, but they wore civilian clothing so they wouldn't stand out in the crowd.

The first half went as expected, and the team was twenty-one points behind at the half. Parents who had come to see the game, driving for hours, began to approach Chuck and demand to know why four of his best players weren't in the game. Two sets of those parents were Frank's and Danny's.

It almost got ugly when Chuck was forced to tell the parents why the students were benched. First Frank's father tried to play it all down, but Chuck insisted that rules were rules. Then Mr. Zeliff demanded to know why he wasn't called and notified when the... infraction... had been discovered. Chuck explained that the kids had been given the option of telling their parents first. The two men began to bluster, but their wives, thinking, no doubt about what the parents of the girls involved would say when THEY found out what had happened, pulled their husbands away forcefully.

It should have been a slaughter.

But Chuck found out that if you take four second and third stringers, who were motivated by the fear of public humiliation, they played a lot better than he thought they would. The rest of the team knew their honor was on the line too, and even though they started the game down and angry that the coach wouldn't let their friends play, by halftime they knew they'd have to deal with it or lose.

Claire never found out what Chuck told them in the locker room. She heard that all four boys apologized for putting the game at risk and demanded that their replacements be given every opportunity to succeed. And, in the second half, the team bounced back. They were, for the most part, a passing team, but they employed the run more than half the time in the second half. Charlie, sure that he'd be killed if he were tackled by the opposing linemen, decided that dancing and twisting his way OUT of those tackles was the way to go. He had a talent for it too, that he'd never known before. The first time he scored a touchdown, it was on a thirty-five yard run that caused him to have to leave the field after it was over. He had almost peed his pants and was so weak he just ran off the field. He regained a significant measure of aplomb when he was attacked by elated teammates who pummeled him and shouted insanely.

Another boy, a second string running back was smaller than Danny had probably ever been, and the holes the line opened for him seemed big enough to drive a truck through. He carried the ball twelve times and always got at least eight yards on each carry. On one carry he was finally brought down at the one yard line.

In the end, they lost, but it was only by two points. Oddly, compared to what they had thought would happen, the team was upbeat about it. They had discovered that they'd have a decent team the next year, and that teamwork paid off. It was a valuable lesson.

Chuck took a lot of heat from school officials, though, instigated primarily by Frank Zeliff's father, who demanded that Chuck be disciplined for "losing control of the team" and for having "insufficient chaperones to adequately supervise the students." He made his demand at a school board meeting. No one had mentioned in public why the four boys were benched. Chuck had to tell Mr. Black, the principal, what had happened, but the official word put out was only that they had broken non-negotiable rules.

So, when put against the wall at the school board meeting, Chuck stood up and said "I made rules. It doesn't matter what they were. All that matters is that they were broken and the kids knew what would happen if I found out they were broken. I stand by my decision."

A school board member, a friend of Tom Zeliff, who had brought the complaint, asked "Mr. Bondurant, what rule exactly was broken?"

Tom Zeliff started waving, trying to get his friend to withdraw the question, but the man didn't see him. He thrust his chin forward belligerently.

Chuck looked at Mr. Zeliff, who tried to wave him off too. But by then he was pissed that this whole thing had been blown out of proportion.

"The players were caught... being involved sexually... with four of the cheerleaders." he stated flatly.

When the pandemonium died down - and that took a while - the board members wanted to know all the salacious details. Chuck wouldn't tell them. He said that information had been given to the parents involved, and that, as far as he was concerned, it was in their hands. If THEY wanted to make the details public, then THEY could, but HE wasn't going to.

Then he sat down.

The board members wouldn't drop it, though. They were under the impression that, since they were elected officials, they had some kind of right to know about the details of the allegations. When Chuck wouldn't tell them, then they demanded that, since a decision had to be made concerning whether or not the kids would be suspended or expelled from school, they had to know the details.

Chuck stated that, since they were not actually school officials, and couldn't suspend or expel anyone, it would be a violation of the kids' privacy to tell them what had happened.

One board member, Paul Stevenson, stood up. "Mr. Bondurant, who were the girls involved in this incident?"

At this point only Frank Zeliff had been identified to the public at large, and then only because his father had decided to try to throw his weight around. Those who had been at the game knew which players had been benched, and a few officials in the school knew. But Chuck had told no one who the girls were. The team knew, and the cheerleaders all knew, of course, but they had closed ranks upon returning to the school and finding themselves in the limelight.

For once, the kids weren't talking.

"The girls parents have been notified. I don't believe the names of the girls are pertinent to the issue in this meeting, mister Stevenson." said Chuck.

"I don't believe you want to keep your job Mr. Bondurant." said Stevenson.

"That's the first thing you've said all night that I agreed with." said Chuck. And he got up and walked out.

The news flew like wildfire through the community. Coach Bondurant had caught kids having sex! Of course everyone in town knew that kids had sex, so that wasn't odd. But the Coach wouldn't give the names publicly, and that was something the gossip mongers just couldn't resist. The boys' names were assumed, of course, because people at the game had seen them sitting on the bench. Rumors flew and everybody was unhappy. Parents grilled their kids, but the kids all decided that the adults were being nosey and stayed clammed up.

Mr. Black explained to Chuck that, by contract, he had to stay the rest of the school year, and couldn't just walk out. Chuck agreed, but stated that if he started getting hassled by the school board, or began to get "disciplined" for stupid things, he'd leave and they could sue him if they wanted to. Since Mr. Black knew the names of the kids involved, and agreed with Chuck that their situation should be handled by the parents, he agreed. He was also under a lot of pressure, except that no one knew that he actually knew the names.

Thankfully, even with all the noses poking into his business, Chuck was relieved that no one seemed to have found out that he had stayed in a room with a female chaperone. That would have blown the lid off things even more.

Back at home Bobby, Lori and Claire tried to settle back into what had been routine before the trip. It was impossible. As Claire lay in her bed she couldn't help but wonder what her children were doing. Her bed suddenly seemed too big... and too empty. Every night she reminded herself to get Lori to the Doctor to get a prescription for the pill. Every morning she lost herself in work and forgot.

Lori never reminded her.

Claire was bent over her desk working on several files when a shadow fell across her desk. She looked up irritably. Nancy, her secretary, knew she didn't want to be interrupted and should have called her first. Chuck was standing at her desk, a half smile on his face.