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16 years ago

Iris Ann Russel West was pretty sure she hated Barry Allen.

"That's perfect Barry." The ten-year old beamed under Mrs. Graham's praise. "Class we should all try to be more like Barry with our math homework.

Iris' eyes narrowed, but she was watching him, so she saw the slump of his narrow shoulders as the teacher urged the rest of class to be like him.

Barry made his way to his seat as Mrs. Graham wrote another problem on the chalkboard, ¾ x 5/8, convert the answer into a decimal.

Barry Allen's scrawny, white arm shot up, and Mrs. Graham chuckled at that. Iris rolled her eyes.

"Barry you can't answer all the problems, you have to leave some for your classmates." Mrs. Graham's voice was warm and gentle when she spoke to Barry, and Iris decided she definitely hated him.

Besides being perfect at math, he was always watching her and looking away and stammering. It was weird, he was weird. He'd given her a caterpillar once.

"Iris come up to the board to solve the problem."

The girl ground her teeth in frustration. She'd been so busy glaring at Barry that she'd forgotten her strategy for avoiding math problems, act casual and keep your head down.

"Yes, Mrs. Graham."

She also hated math. It wasn't like the other subjects. She was good at those, reading, history, science, art, gym. Math was her only problem ever since fourth grade she'd been struggling, but had still managed to get a C in math. Now in fifth grade she was actually falling behind, and this was a problem. An F' in math meant no summer trip.

There was always something new with math which should have been exciting, but as soon as she started to grasp one thing the teacher introduced another. And while she worked on the new one she forgot the old one, but then you always needed the old one for something else.

Iris was pretty sure she could convert the fraction into a decimal, but she couldn't remember the all the steps to multiply fractions. Did you cross multiply? She was fairly certain that division was involved somehow.

She tried to do what she remembered, but half way through the problem a couple of kids snickered. Her stomach dropped to into her shoes, and her face flamed hot with embarrassment.

"Iris," Mrs. Graham prompted her.

"I-I don't remember." She admitted before glancing back at her classmates to see Barry Allen watching her.

"It's alright Iris. Class, can anyone help Iris with her problem?"

Barry Allen's skinny, white arm shot up again. Mrs. Graham laughed that delighted chuckle and called him to the board.

Iris stood and watched as he erased her work and completed the problem explaining it perfectly in a clear, high, voice.

"It's easy." He looked at her beaming with pride and Iris only glared and stomped back to her seat.

She definitely hated him.

So when she found herself sitting across from him, Barry grinning like an idiot she almost got up and left the room. She hadn't exactly been excited by the idea of staying after school, but she needed to pass math. When her parents told her Mrs. Graham had arranged a tutor she had accepted. Her new bike, the trip to stay with her mom's family in So-cal for a month that summer none of it would happen if she failed math. Still, she hadn't known Barry Allen would be the tutor.

She glared at him and his smile faded.

"Iris, Barry your parents will be here to pick you up at four-fifteen. I'll be doing my own work, but if you have any questions just ask. Why don't the two of you start with yesterday's homework."

Iris sighed and pulled out a paper filled with glaring red X's.

Iris sighed and pulled out a paper marked with glaring red X's. Barry looked over her paper appraising it and Iris squirmed in her seat waiting.

"Barry, Iris." They both looked up at Mrs. Graham. "I'm gonna step out into the hall for a moment. I'll be right outside." Cell phone to her ear Mrs. Graham went into the hall.

"You're really smart."

Iris frowned, "I'm failing math."

"And you're doing great in everything else. The story you read in English class was really funny, you had the best history project, and I marked off your science quiz, a hundred percent. You're really smart."

Iris felt herself smiling a bit.

"Mrs. Graham just teaches it too fast."

"You don't have a problem with it."

"And we're gonna make it so you don't have a problem with it either," Barry said sitting up really straight and giving her an encouraging smile, green eyes warm. "You're really smart, this will be easy. You'll see."

Mrs. Graham came back into the classroom then.

"Let's get to work."

The hour went faster than expected and Barry didn't do anything too weird or even annoying. His eyes lit up when he talked about math, and he explained it better than she'd expected, better than the teacher. He had fun studying tips. He liked to use colorful pens, stickers, make little doodles in his notes, stars, rainbows that sort of thing. It was kind of fun.

He was still weird, but maybe if he weren't such an annoying show-off, she wouldn't hate him quite so much. Their moms seemed to get along just fine. The two women stood chatting far too long for Iris who was ready to be at home to watch tv or play or read.

When they did finally leave, and her mom asked her how it went, she replied it was fine. Francine West merely chuckled.

She stayed after twice a week for a few weeks, and Iris felt her hatred of Barry Allen starting to melt. Besides her math grades steadily improving it turned out he wasn't quite as weird as he seemed when you actually talked to him.

When Nora asked Francine if she minded watching Barry, one evening tutoring moved to the Wests house and not long after tutoring became study sessions.

She started to notice things. Like Barry didn't mean to be an annoying show-off. When he said math was easy, he meant it to be encouraging, not that he found it easy. He didn't like it when Mrs. Graham compared him to the other kids. It made them dislike and bully him even more.

She also started to notice the way his green eyes lit up with excitement when he talked about science and that sometimes when he smiled; Iris found herself unable to resist smiling back at him.

He wasn't doing so very well at history something Iris found confusing. History was like one big, long story some parts of it were more interesting than others, but it wasn't hard. So she helped him with history, and he helped her with math. Study sessions were at her house or his, and that sometimes meant staying for dinner.

Somehow they started playing together after school, biking around the neighborhood on warm spring weekends with Wally in tow. Iris decided that she liked some of his nerdy interests. She told him one day that she wanted to be a writer when she grew-up and let him read a story she'd written about a girl who was a cowboy. When Barry presented her with an illustration of her cowgirl on horseback wielding a lasso -with her same complexion and curly hair- that he'd drawn and colored himself Iris realized that Barry had somehow become her best friend.

What she didn't realize about the ache in her heart at leaving Central City and him for a month that summer, about the unsettled queasy feeling in her stomach and her fervent secret, wish that he would come with them to California, was that she loved Barry Allen.

Hope you guys enjoyed that little flash into the past of E5 Iris and Barry and how they came to be friends. Chapter 3 will be up soon. It takes place in the present and we learn a bit about what really happened the fire. Don't forget to leave me a reivew and if you like this fic take a moment to subscribe so you don't miss an update.

A/N- cross multiplication of fractions is in fifth grade in US schools.