Dove Sport

Chapter Five: Dead Man's Float

There were two ways to label time in Doveport now.

The before, and the after.

Before Seth's body had been found, many people in town- his friends and family especially- had been holing out hope that somehow Seth was not actually dead. That he'd hit his head but had survived and Meredith was mistaken about him slipping into the water. They'd hoped to come by the school and see Seth in his classes. That was before.

After his body was found the people of Doveport were forced to accept the horrible truth: that Seth Lark was undeniably, irrevocably, dead. Faced with his bloated, waterlogged corpse and a bullet in his forehead there was no alternative to this truth. The whole town knew now that Seth had been murdered. For some of them his body's appearance was only a confirmation of this fact. All eyes were on the coroner's office when the autopsy was preformed on Monday morning.

On that same morning, Arsen Payne found his phone buzzing with texts from his old friend Nick. He had been getting the textbooks needed for his morning class, back turned to the row of lockers behind him, when he read the text.

Nick : Do you think I could get out of Physics if I say I'm too depressed by the investigation to talk about Newton's laws?

Arsen stared at the text on his screen blankly. Ever since the news had broken on Friday night that Seth's body had finally been recovered Arsen had been fighting nausea. He shut his locker with a click and typed out a quick reply.

Me : That's not funny. A kid is dead, Nick.

Arsen walked a bit further down the hall and paused by where a group of students had congregated around Seth's old locker. A memorial had been put up and students had taken to leaving pictures and little notes taped to it. Arsen moved on, swallowing down any lingering guilt he felt and remembering what Nick had told him the night before.

***

The clock on his phone said it was 11 p.m. but Arsen felt like it was much later. He'd spent the last two days feeling like he was being eaten alive by guilt. Laying in his bed, Arsen couldn't rid himself of the horrible what-ifs. What if he and Nick had told the police what they'd heard? What if the shot was connected to Seth's killer? What if they had stayed instead of running?

Scrubbing at his face, Arsen groaned and sat up. He thumbed his pass code into the phone and pulled up his text messages only to realize there was no one left for him to talk to. Arsen had known Blair since they were kids and she was one of the few people he bothered to keep ties with. He opened their past conversations only to close it again when he recalled the time. She'd probably be asleep by now or at least trying to sleep. He considered his minimal contacts again before blowing out a breathe a pressing the call button.

"Hello? Arsen?" Nick's voice came through the speaker on the third ring.

"Can you come get me?" Arsen asked, trying to keep his voice even. Last week when he'd encountered Nick at the school he'd wanted nothing to do with him. Now though, he could think of no one better to vent to. After all, they were both in this together.

"Can I- Is something wrong?" Nick's voice was worried on the end of the line and Arsen heard him fumbling around, likely looking for his keys or shoes. He realized suddenly he might have woken him up.

"No, nothing's wrong." Arsen assured Nick as he heard him mumbling an explanation to his roommate, "I just need to talk." Arsen texted Nick the address to pick him up at and spent the next twenty minutes trying to make it look like he was still living at home.

Over the summer Arsen's father, Ben, lost his job and developed several addictions which ended up costing him his family. Arsen's mother took his younger sister and moved to Connecticut to live with her brother until Ben got his life back under control. Arsen had worried about his father being all alone and was too attached to his friends so he'd stayed behind to live with his dad. Only, things hadn't worked out. Rather than getting a job like he'd promised, Arsen's father sank deeper into his drinking and their family home on the fringes of town had fallen into disarray. Eventually, Arsen had grown tired of watching his dad dig himself deeper into the hole he was wallowing in, and he left.
The plan had been to stay with Blair. That's what he'd told his dad, at least. Arsen was not staying at Blair's place. Instead, he'd been camping out in the back room of the car wash he worked at. This was where he told Nick to pick him up from.