Dove Sport

Chapter Six: Rot

Blair woke up Tuesday morning with a pounding headache. Checking the time on her phone she saw she had time for the studying she'd planned. Rubbing her eyes and sitting up, Blair blinked a few times before getting out of bed and switching on her lights. Yesterday in class her English teacher had assigned them a chapter of the Catcher in the Rye to read and warned them that there would be a quiz in class. After school yesterday Blair had been too tired to function, still worn out from the weekend. Blair pulled the book out of her bag and tossed it on her desk. Then, head swimming a bit, she made her way into the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen. She took a glass from the cabinets and downed a glass of water. Placing her cup in the sink, Blair retreated back to her room to try and get some work done.

Blair worked for thirty minutes, reading and listening to the sounds of her parents getting ready for the day. She put the book away when she was done and tried to recall the events of the chapter while she got dressed. Today she dressed herself in a pair of dark jeans and a green tank top that revealed her freckled shoulders. She left her hair down but put her usual gray scrunchie on her wrist because she had cheer practice after school. Sun light was turning everything it touched in her room to gold and Blair idly decided that fall was her favorite season. The leaves were changing and so was the weather, but it was still nice enough out that she planned to enjoy it for as long as she could. A knock on her bedroom door distracted her.

"Come in!" Blair called over her shoulder as she applied mascara at her vanity mirror. Her door swung open and both of her parents come into her room.

"Hey, honey," Blair's dad said, "Just wanted to let you know we won't be home until later tonight."

"It's going to be a lot of late nights for us." Blair's mom took over. "The autopsy was finished up yesterday evening and the story is looking delectable so far. I mean, an accidental drowning, who cares? But the sociopath son of the wealthiest family in town murdered? That's a national obsession waiting to happen." Blair's mom worked as the head reporter in Doveport and since the discovery of Seth's body she'd been working overtime and enlisting her husband to help.

"Mary, I don't thing that you shou-" Blair's dad began only to be cut of with a wave of her mother's hand.

"Go warm up the car, Logan. I'll be right down." Her mother instructed. Blair's dad left with a tired sigh and went downstairs. Blair's mother came to sit on the bed behind Blair's vanity mirror. "Blair," She began, "You know what I love most about you?"

"What, Mom?"

"That you always want to see the good in people, even when it means you get hurt." Blair's mother said. "Your sister used to be like that too, trusting everyone to be kind to her even if they wouldn't be. Don't end up like Grace did." Blair's mother told her, then got up and smoothed her skirt before leaving and calling out over her shoulder, "Have a nice day at school, honey!"

On her bed, Blair's phone buzzed once.

Nick : Can we talk?

Blair stared at the message for one minute. Two minutes. Then she exited the messages app without replying and grabbed her bag for school. Meredith had been, understandably, out of sorts since the weekend and wasn't going to be able to drive her to school that morning so Blair was taking her bike instead. She'd just reached the side of her house where she kept her bike chained up when her phone buzzed again. She pulled it out to see the message.

Nick : Please?

Well, now she felt bad. As if the thought of talking to Nick summoned it, Blair remembered the conversation she'd literally just had with her mother. Don't end up like Grace did  her mother had told her. But what had even happened to Grace? Her ex boyfriend accidentally drowned and she crashed her car? Blair was fairly certain she wouldn't do that. A small smile on her lips, she texted back Nick that she would call him at lunch so they could talk.