Killing Me Softly: A Thriller Romance Novel

Chapter 17

Sure enough. They moved the service to the high school football stadium. There were just too many folks coming to attend Mary Jo's funeral.

Janice rode with me into town when police were re-directing traffic across town from the church to the stadium that morning. We drove by Jamie, one of the officers directing traffic, as he was rotating his arms and pointing toward the stadium parking lot. When he saw my car, he waved and gave a small smile, but I drove right past him without waving back.

I could barely stand to look at him.

"Should have run his ass over," I said to Janice when I drove past him.

"Mm-hmm," she agreed with an angry look on her face.

"What a piece of shit," I said to her and followed behind the cars in front of me.

You would have thought a celebrity had died or something. Other officers directed cars to park in the grass and along the streets. The parking lot was so full. They set up cones shortly after I found a spot between two trucks in the grass.

"Shit," Janice said when we stepped out of the car and saw hordes of people walking up to the main stadium entrance.

The press was there with tons of cameras, filming different angles of everyone driving in and lining up. You would think it was the Super Bowl or something. There weren't even this many cars at homecoming.

No lie. It seemed like the entire town of Yoakum was there and more! Perhaps folks from Corpus Christi, where she was known to contribute to others through community work as well. Mary Jo was larger than life, even in death.

The sun was already high in the clear blue sky, and I immediately regretted wearing black. Everyone else probably did, too. People were fanning themselves with Mary Jo's funeral programs, the ones they handed to us at the stadium entrance. On the front, it had Mary Jo's beautiful face with large, cursive font around it that said "A Celebration of Life".

"This is so crazy," Janice said to me as we did our best to find a good place to sit in the bleachers and see the service.

Flashbacks of homecoming and football games came to mind when we sat on the bleachers.

There it was. The same old stadium. The same old track. The same old rusted scoreboard and chain link fencing. So many memories flooded my mind of sitting on the bleachers and watching Theo run track or scrimmaging in the mornings out on the field. I was absolutely out-of-my-mind in love with him, and I never imagined anything bad ever happening to Theo back then.

They had set up the portable homecoming platform with artificial turf mats. It was beautifully decorated with displays of floral arrangements and portraits of Mary Jo on easels. There was a podium with a microphone next to Mary Jo's closed, a silver casket piled high with a large spray of red roses and pink lilies. They must have been her favorite flowers because there were several floral arrangements with pink lilies.

There were small rows of seats for her immediate family on the stage with chairs draped with black linens. They looked very similar to the fancy chairs Mary Jo had sat in on homecoming night, waiting with the other homecoming candidates.

I remembered when the homecoming king and queen winners were announced in 2002. I was there keeping an eye on football jersey #1, which belonged to Yoakum High's all-star quarterback, Theo Jameson.

"Go Bulldogs!" I remembered shouting and cheering. "Go Theo, woooo!" I doubt he ever heard me cheering for him.

I never forgot that homecoming night. Theo looked breathtaking in his homecoming tuxedo.

Lo and behold, our homecoming king and queen were none other than everyone's favorite, gorgeous couple, Theo and Mary Jo. I remembered how happy they looked that night and how I wanted to go home crying because I wanted desperately to be her, looking like Miss America next to him.