LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

chapter twelve.

Chapter Twelve.

A few days later, Sullivan gets a phone call while he's in the middle of watching Hunting Hitler. Normally, he never takes phone calls once the search for the world's worst human comes on, though, today he's made an exception — he wishes he didn't.

He doesn't even take a glance down at his phone before he's holding it up to his ear and greeting, "How may I assist you today?"

"Oh shit. I may have the wrong number." Quickly, his eyebrows crinkle with confusion at the amount of femininity the voice has, and at how he doesn't know who it is yet. So he sits for a moment, quiet and bewildered, and answers the stranger back.

"Well, keep talkin' and we'll see." 

"This is SJ, right?" 

After he's had time to process the voice, he recognizes it belongs to Collins Buchanan, a sophomore who also happens to be in his seventh period class. She's a cute and petite girl with a good head on her shoulders. Collins is also funny, his type of funny, the kind of twisted and dark humor that ninety-eight percent of people wouldn't understand. So yeah, he considers her a good acquaintance by definition. 

SJ says, "Oh yeah! Hey, Collins. How can I help you? You need help with the take home test or somethin'? I know you were having trouble with it in class." 

"You saw me attempt to do it?" 

"Of course I did, ya little nerd. I'm like the Eye of Sauron, I see all," He teases, grinning. It's nice, to be able to have a light and decent conversation with someone that isn't Diggy or Brittany or the ceiling of his bedroom. "As people with surnames as first names, we have to stick together in the fight with the majority."

Collins giggles from the other side of the phone. "We should be fighting with Mr. Clayton, his class is kicking my ass. However, as much help as I should be getting on that thing, I actually had to ask you about something else."

"Yeah sure, Collins. What do you need?"

"I'm just gonna come out and say it," she says. "I know you've heard about Kyle ditching me a week and a half before prom." 

Picking up the television remote to turn the volume down, he admits, "Maybe I've a little through the grapevine." He's heard a lot. One didn't have to be apart of the Secret Service to hear about the star senior Kyle Prior and how he ditched Collins to go with Courtney Anderson after his parents found out he was secretly dating a black girl (it didn't hurt that Courtney gave him head underneath the bleachers, either). Though, the news doesn't surprise him — it's a universal truth that all Courtneys are evil and all Kyles are idiots. "Why?"

There's silence on the other end of the line, as if she's afraid to say what she wants to. Eventually, she does decide to reply. "Don't get mad, but Arthur told me this morning that you were thinking about taking me to prom." 

Dead silence.

"Oh, did he now?" Sullivan doesn't know whether to hang up and call Arthur to cuss him out to the high heavens, or to just say what a typical thing of Arthur to do, say whatever it takes so SJ wouldn't be so lonely. 

"He did, but don't be mad at him." 

"I'm not, I swear! I just ... I didn't want you finding out this way." Or at all, because it ain't the fucking truth. He knows he doesn't have to do this, that he's not obligated to take this girl out because Arthur told some dumb-ass lie. It wouldn't be his fault if Collins didn't have a date for prom, but that doesn't mean he's going to let her suffer for Arthur's mistake, either. So, being the young man that he is, he feigns a smile and makes his voice sound as convincing as his mother taught him. "Of course I want to go to prom with you. I can't think of a better person to go with."