The I.P.O. by Dan Koontz

speculating what, or more accurately, who the second listing would be.  Rumors had initially sprouted that James Prescott was going to go in a very different direction from his highly cerebral first commodity.
    Then, as interest had just started to wane in the fledgling market during the SEC-mandated 30-day hiatus between offering one and offering two, unnamed sources within Avillage had leaked that the next orphan to go public would be an athlete.  Unnamed sources were also quoted as saying that the SEC had demanded that the athlete’s ticker symbol be changed, so as not to reveal his identity.
    Day by day, the pieces continued to fall into place, and it finally dawned on Melvin why he had been set up.  His son was already at the top of the middle school All-American lists; he’d even been profiled briefly on Yahoo Sports six months prior.  The fact that he was an orphan was a closely guarded secret by the administrators at Lincoln Junior High, but the Yahoo story had touched on his dogged dedication to his terminally-ill grandmother.  With the attention to detail that had been ascribed to Prescott, Melvin knew he wouldn’t have missed that.  J’Quarius was on every high-profile division I school’s radar – his initials would become immediately recognizable, if they weren’t already. 
    Melvin had tried convincing his attorney that there was a plot against him, but the computer’s data was too overwhelmingly convincing, complete with expertly hacked dates on which he had supposedly downloaded and uploaded data, as well as fabricated emails it looked like he’d exchanged with known pornographers going back 2 years.
     
    ~~~
     
    J’Quarius was in counseling when Arlene and Hansford Washington arrived at the orphanage.  After two sessions, the counselor had more or less come to the conclusion that J’Quarius had been pushed a little too far by a bad kid.  But J’Quarius had to understand and accept the responsibility that came with his size and athletic ability.  When a Chihuahua snaps, it gets scolded; when a Rottweiler snaps, it gets put down.
    Arlene Washington was 43 years old.  A former college basketball standout at The University of Connecticut, she understood the kind of dedication it took to reach the highest levels of athletic success.  She was six feet tall, lean but with generous hips, and walked with a limping gait, trying to protect what little was what left of the cartilage in her knees. 
    Hansford stood a half foot taller than his wife and looked a good ten years younger than his 44 years.  He had made some poor decisions early in life and didn’t get so much as a sniff from a major college after spending the last 6 months of his senior year of high school in jail for check fraud.  But after his release, a local junior college coach made sure he got his GED and then took him under his wing, taught him a little about basketball and a lot about being a man, and eventually got him a transfer to a small four-year school where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sports sciences. 
    With that background, he’d gone on to become quite a coaching success story himself, having directed his inner city Chicago high school team to three state championships, while keeping his players out of trouble with the law and maintaining an astounding college matriculation rate among his players that was three times higher than the high school’s average.
    Arlene had played briefly in the WNBA, but after meeting Hansford at a local gym, she’d fallen in love, had a child, and walked away from the game for good with no regrets.
    Like J’Quarius, the Washingtons’ biological son had been a standout in middle school.  He even resembled J’Quarius from certain angles.  He’d gone on to make the Parade All-American team as a sophomore in high school, but a drunk driver had stolen him from his parents before he’d had a chance to start his junior year.  Devastated and too old to start over with a baby,