A/N: Here's the next chapter, people! A little later than I'd planned, but also a little longer, so I hope that makes up for it!

Chapter 2:

As it turned out, Dean and Oliver did get along pretty well, and Dean did know the popular crowd. Oliver was quickly admitted in their midst, being one of the richest kids at school, and just plain likeable. To a certain crowd at least.

The school wasn't horrible, even though his parents had talked to his counsellor about his schedule. He was now taking business, like, as a class. Thea demanded that he learn how to ride horseback, but Oliver said he'd leave that to her. He was tempted to join the football or basketball team, but he'd never been much of a jock. Dean, on the other hand, was captain of the basketball team, and very proud of it.

Aside from business, his parents had forced him into taking chemistry, biology, trigonometry, management and world history. He had to take English lit, of course, which left him with no room to do anything he actually liked.

The only thing he really looked forward to were the Saturday morning helicopter flying lessons. Yeah, this school had flying lessons.

It had been a week since he transferred to FCA, and he was already flunking half his classes. Surprisingly, management and business were not among them.

He was in the middle of a really annoying world history assignment when his teacher interrupted him. "Mr. Queen." Oliver looked up, relieved to get a reprieve from his work. "Ms. Brightley requests your presence in her office."

…Then again, what was a little essay anyway? It wasn't the first time he'd been sent to the office of an authority figure, but he really couldn't figure out what he'd done this time. He hadn't even started on his plans to get expelled so he could get back to Starling. He missed Laurel, and Tommy and all his other friends, and Thea… Hell, he even missed his parents.

When he got to the office, he walked in and closed the door behind me. "Out," Ms. Brightley said without looking up from the document she'd been reading.

Oliver was confused. "But you asked for me!" he protested, feeling a little annoyed.

Ms. Brightley looked up. "Yes, and I expect you to knock next time, Mr. Queen. Now get out and do it again."

Oliver sighed in frustration and stomped out, closing the door behind him. He took a deep breath and knocked. "Come in," Ms. Brightley called.

When Oliver walked back in, she was reading the document again, and didn't even deign to look up. It annoyed him to no end. He was used to being the center of attention, of everyone looking at him, and this woman didn't even seem interested!

He considered dropping down into one of the chairs in front of her desk, but figured she'd just make him stand up again, so he remained standing, his hands in his pockets. "Take a seat, Mr. Queen," she said eventually, putting the paper away.

As Oliver sat down, he had the distinct feeling he'd just passed a test. "You're failing some of your classes, Mr. Queen," Brightley stated.

Oliver winced. He really didn't want to talk about that. "Mr. Queen's my dad, I'm just Oliver," he said instead, hoping to change the subject.

"You're going to have to get used to people calling you that eventually… Oliver," she said, conceding with a smile.

He relaxed somewhat. Brightley wasn't the worst. There were definite tyrants at this school, but she wasn't one of them. Oliver shrugged at her statement. It didn't change the fact that he wasn't comfortable with the title yet.

Brightley leaned back in her chair, studying Oliver. "Did you know we have scholarship students at this school?" she asked, completely changing the subject.

It surprised Oliver somewhat, a school this elite, allowing non-millionaires into the facility? "No, I didn't," he replied to her question.

"Well, we do. We only allow three to enter every year, and only the best and brightest are allowed in. It's a… pet project of mine, if you will." Where was she going with this? "One of the students that is currently enrolled is one of my own students."

Oliver knew that Brightley taught private lessons to the particularly gifted kids at the school, but he could never tell what it was, exactly, that she was teaching. Dean had never been very interested, so he wasn't a well of information either. "So?" he asked, curious as to what her goal was with this.

Brightley smiled, but it had a distinct smugness to it. Instead of answering his question, she pressed a button on her phone that went straight to her assistant's phone. "Send her in."

Oliver frowned at the deputy. What the hell? He turned around when the door opened. A petite, brunette girl with a ponytail and glasses walked in. She was dressed in a button-down that was closed all the way to the top, wore a knee-length skirt, and had a red pen stuck behind her ear. Which looked kind of weird. Who puts pens behind their ear? All in all, he wasn't impressed. "You needed me Ms. Brightley," she asked, her attention solely on the vice principal. Oliver did catch the sneak glance she had thrown his way when she'd first entered.

"Yes, Felicity, this is Oliver, he's failing some of his classes."

Felicity seemed on guard as she stood in front of the desk. "Which classes?" she asked cautiously.

"Chemistry, biology and trigonometry. He's scraping by in world history," Brightley answered. Oliver refused to blush at her frank statement of his grades. Nobody wants to hear about how they failed.

Felicity pursed her lips, and she suddenly seemed a lot older than Oliver had originally thought. He'd guessed she was fourteen, maybe fifteen, but she looked closer to seventeen now. "I've already talked to his parents, and they've agreed," Brightley said. "Wait, what?" Oliver exclaimed. She'd talked to his parents? What did they agree to?

"Okay," Felicity said, and finally turned to Oliver. "Meet me in the library after school, we'll work on it," she said, maybe a little nervously.

She glanced at the vice principal, who nodded in response. "Thank you Felicity, you can go back to class now."

Oliver looked back and forth between the brunette and the teacher. He didn't understand what was going on. Ms. Brightley smiled at Oliver. She was probably enjoying this…

"Felicity has just agreed to tutor you after school, Oliver. She should be able to help you get your grades up."

Oliver frowned and crossed his arms. "What if I don't want to get my grades up?"

Brightley pursed her lips and leaned forward in her chair. "Right now, you have two options, Oliver. You can accept Felicity's help, graduate and do whatever you want in college… Or you can flunk half your classes and get to stay here for another year."

"When I'm eighteen I can do what I want," he argued, but it more for show than any real conviction. The calculation he saw in Brightley's eyes told him she knew that too.

"Sure, you can. You can drop out and party as much as you want. And then what? Even your parents won't let you live off their fortune forever, Oliver." Brightley sighed, got up and walked around her desk to lean against it. "You're not stupid, Oliver. Your business teacher tells me that your insights are clever and outside the box, your management teacher thinks that you natural talent and that you grasp abstract concepts much more quickly than some of your peers. All that, and the behavior I've observed myself proves that you're a bright kid. A little bit of effort from your side will go a very long way."

Oliver didn't reply. None of his teachers had ever thought that way about him, most just assumed he was a rich slacker and left him to his own devices.

"Think about it," Ms. Brightley suggested, and moved back around her desk. It felt like a dismissal, so Oliver got up and moved to the door. "If you accept, your teachers will grade your work on a curve until Christmas break, to give you some time to catch up…" Brightley looked him over, a tiny smile that almost looked smug curving her lips. "I believe Felicity told you where to meet her."

/*/

Oliver didn't go straight back to class. He'd been dismissed from it, he was going to take advantage of it for as long as he could.

Truthfully, he really didn't want to be one of those kids who dropped out the minute they turned eighteen, and neither did he want to spend an extra year in high school… That left him with practically no choice but to accept Brightley's offer.

How hard could it be? He wasn't failing that badly: he had high D's in both chemistry and biology. Trig was going to be a little more difficult, with the string of F's on every piece of homework. He sighed. He really had no choice. He really hoped this Felicity chick was as good as Brightley said…

/*/

Felicity POV

Felicity was waiting in the library after her last class. She knew Oliver had trig last, so it would take a while to get from that classroom to the library, but she was impatient. In all honesty, she didn't have a very high opinion of Oliver Queen. He was a slacker, unbelievably rich, spoilt, and probably also completely ungrateful. And she'd be surprised if he even showed up.

She was interrupted from her internal rant when a bag was slung into the seat across from her. Oliver Queen stood behind the chair somewhat uncomfortably.

"Oliver, you came," she said in surprise.

Oliver frowned. Felicity blushed, realizing how rude she was being. "Not that I wanted to imply that you wouldn't come, I mean, you obviously need help-" she cut herself off as she realized she wasn't making this any better. "What I meant to say," she tried again, speaking slower for both their benefits, "was hi, and, take a seat. We'll start with trigonometry."

Oliver shrugged again and sat down across from her, a resentful look on his face. Felicity wet her lips and hoped she'd survive this whole tutoring thing.

"So what is it exactly you're struggling with?" she asked brightly, hoping to keep the mood up as she flipped through her own book from last year. When he didn't answer, she looked up at him. He didn't look happy. "Everything. Okay," she muttered to herself, turning to the first page.

Oliver leaned his head on his hand, looking for all the world like he'd prefer to be anywhere else. Felicity clenched her jaw and reminded herself that his parents were paying her quite a bit of money to make sure their son got at least a B. She took a deep breath and pulled out a blank piece of paper.

She was aware of Oliver frowning at her in confusion as she drew a triangle, added the length of one of the sides and two of the angles. She named the two unknown sides a and b, and looked back up to Oliver.

"What the law of sine helps you do, is figure out everything about this triangle, with just the data that's there. Let's just say that this side here is two, and that these corners are 45 and 30 degrees. Now the first thing you need to do is figure out how big this other corner is."

Oliver kept looking at the triangle, but didn't look like he was about to offer an answer. Ms. Brightley had assured her that Oliver was smarter than he let on, which was the only reason she'd even taken the offer of tutoring. Maybe she needed to find a different approach?

"You know the best thing about math?" she asked, her eyes on the page, drawing over the lines and numbers that were already there.

Oliver was frowning at her again. She didn't think he wanted to say anything, but she needed him to say something. He sighed, probably in frustration. "What?" he asked eventually, sounding a little bored.

Felicity smiled at him. "It has laws, rules it can't break. People aren't that easy, they're all different and they follow their own rules to an extent. It's much harder to figure people out than math, Oliver, but you seem to have grasped the former concept perfectly."

Again, he frowned at her in confusion, but she didn't expect him to say anything anymore. She turned back to the page. The whole reason she'd said that in the first place. "The thing about triangles is that the corners always add up to the same number." She looked at him expectantly.

"180," he said. He'd hesitated, but she suspected it wasn't because he didn't know the answer.

Nodding, she picked up her pencil again. "Right, so if you know that, you can figure out how big the angle is, right?"

Oliver rolled his eyes, but got a pencil out and neatly wrote: 180-75=105. She grinned. She knew he wasn't dumb!

Their lesson continued mostly like that. Felicity explained everything, Oliver listened, and occasionally wrote down the answer, mostly when she made him. They were making great progress, though. He had quickly grasped what the law of sine was about and solved minor problems without difficulty.

He'd also forgotten to hang on to his surly attitude about halfway through. He still hadn't said much, but he didn't frown as often, and he'd nodded as she talked. Felicity felt like they were making real progress here.

"We've been working on trig for almost an hour now," Felicity said, looking at her phone. "Maybe we can try some-" She was interrupted by Oliver's ringtone, which he hastened to answer. "Yes?"
"...chemistry?" she finished her question under her breath.

He put the phone against his shoulder and looked at her. "I have to take this, it's a friend from Starling," he said, got up, and walked a few paces away.

Felicity sighed, but inwardly told herself that they'd pick it up tomorrow. She packed her books away and put the exercises they'd worked on in Oliver's binder. He'd done more than she expected today. At the least, that was a start.

/*/

Oliver POV

"Hey Tommy, how's everything going in Starling?" Oliver asked with a grin. He and Tommy talked about every other day – Dean often joked that he talked to Tommy more than Laurel – but it was still great to hear from him.

"Oh, you know, same old, same old."

"How'd your date go?" he asked, still grinning. He knew Tommy hated referring to it as 'dates', since he was never serious about the girl in question. He was a hopeless romantic deep down inside.

"Urgh," was his eloquent reply.

"That bad?" Oliver was shushed by a librarian-looking person, so he walked out and sat down on a bench in the hallway.

"She was completely juvenile. I was tempted to ask if she had a bedtime at 9. There are less and less good fish to catch down here. How about over there, anyone I should know about?"

Oliver rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Not yet. Besides, I'm with Laurel, remember?"

Tommy snorted. "Yeah, like that's ever stopped you. Come on, give me the juice, there must be some hot girls over there."

Laughing, Oliver ran a hand through his hair. "There are. Man, you should see them. Speaking of, has your dad made a decision yet?" he asked, genuinely curious now.

Tommy sighed. "I'm sorry man, dad got it into his thick head that I needed more stability, so he doesn't want me going off to school in a different state. If you ask me he just doesn't trust me and wants to keep an eye on me."

"Oh come on!" Oliver groaned. "This is a school for rich kids, it has the best security in the world, and it's about as snobbish as you can get. I mean, the colors are emerald and titanium. We even have a freaking titanium bird in the entrance hall, complete with infrared beams and a pressure plate. What more does he want?"

"To make my life miserable?" Tommy suggested. "But hey, you'll be back over Christmas break, right?"

"As long as I don't pull anything too stupid off, yeah. Mom threatened to leave me here if I misbehave," Oliver replied, stretching his legs in front of him. Suddenly, Felicity was standing next to him, looking a little sheepish.

"Hey, dude, I need to go, I'm meeting Dean later. Talk to you later."

"Okay, bye!" Tommy replied and hung up, leaving Oliver alone in the hallway with Felicity.

"Hi. You left your bag in there, and I was about to go, but I figured you wouldn't want to leave it there unguarded. Not that anyone would steal anything, security's too tight, trust me, I hacked into it myself, and-"

'"Felicity," Oliver interrupted, unable to keep a small smile from pulling at his lips. She was odd, but it was at the very least amusing to watch her flail once she started babbling.

"Right, sorry. Your bag," she said, holding the item out. Oliver graciously took it from her, offering a smile in thanks. "Was that a friend?" she asked.

She seemed genuinely curious, and it wasn't like it was a secret, so Oliver told her. "Yeah, that was Tommy Merlyn, he's been my best friend for as long as I can remember."

"Merlyn? Like Merlyn Global?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Yeah, his dad's the founder and CEO. He was supposed to come here after Christmas, but Mr. Merlyn decided he didn't want that," he said, maybe a little resentfully.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking like she really meant it. "I should get going, I promised my roommate I'd help her with something. I'll see you tomorrow after class again?" she asked.

Oliver nodded. Felicity smiled again, turned and walked away down the hall. She was a little odd, and Oliver couldn't quite figure her out, but she might not be too bad. There was something about her…

A/N: What did you think of Felicity? Leave me a review!