LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

chapter five.

Chapter Five.

SULLIVAN ends up telling Brittany and Diggy that he and Arthur used to go to the same summer camp.

Why he feels the undeniable urge to lie to them is beyond his comprehension, but he deciphers it when he zones out in class later on that same day. It's just a fact that he feels is just ... too intimate and outdated, as if he was just asked about his first time. The boy he was back then and the boy he is now belong in different universes to different people, belong to a time where they were different. He's not the same small boy that needed a protector, the same boy that orbited around Arthur like the moon and was all morally good because he's not, not anymore. Summer camp may be a big lie, but it doesn't pain him like it does to tell the truth.

He goes through the rest of the morning the same way he goes through re-runs on television: bored and with eyes barely open. Periods one through five are uneventful, excluding the handful of girls that called him 'the cute new guy' and asked for his social media accounts before scrambling away. The only motivation he actually has to keep going is the fact that after first period his new friends told him to meet them at his locker so that they could go into lunch together — well, Brittany told him to. It's still early in the blooming friendship, but he's beginning to learn that she's a very demanding and bossy girl. Diggy says it's "hot as fuck."

"What's the deal with these tables, anyways?" SJ finds himself questioning with a snort when it comes up again in conversation. "Why do y'all have them? I didn't think we sat at assigned tables like we were in middle school." 

Diggy and Brittany stop in their tracks and look up at the boy with the same unimpressed look on their faces. "White boy, the Round Table didn't tell you shit about this place, did they?" Britt asks, and it takes three seconds before she's already talking again.

"When we were just mere freshmen to Regis High School, this place was a fucking jungle, okay? God awful. Like, Satan himself wouldn't walk into this place because he was gonna get his own pitchfork shoved up his ass. This school relied on natural selection. It was chaos and nothing good came out of it. We all were screwed, if nothing changed.

"Then Arthur came along." She releases a little sigh when she says this, like he's a breath of fresh air in a pair of polluted lungs. "At that time, he just became the new quarterback, and the people here listen to the quarterback. Most of the seniors have senior leave after fifth period, and he and his Round Table saw their opportunity to make things right. So, they made the tables, the football team helped enforce the rules, and that was that."

"How do they work?" 

Diggy replies, "You have three options when you pick out your seat. Sit with your friends, sit with new people, or don't sign up for a table and eat out of the cafeteria. No one's gonna hate you if you choose the last option, just means you got your own thing going on."

Sullivan feels the urge to pull out his phone and call bullshit, because that's exactly what this is sounding like to him. He knows that all high schools had unique aspects about each other, but this just seems perverted and twisted. Call him cynical if you wished, but this is supposed to be a battleground, a challenge of survival of the fittest — this is supposed to be high school. Yet, here he is, talking about seating arrangements. "So everyone just abides by these rules," he deadpans as they walk through front doors into the cafeteria.

Both of his friends shrug as response. "Nobody really finds a point in not abiding — ever heard of not fixing what's not broken?" Diggy asks. 

"Plus, it's not cool to rebel if you do break the rules because nobody is really getting hurt. It just makes you an asshole."

"Arthur does not take kindly to assholes."