Felicity fumbled with her tie for five minutes before Sara took pity on her. "Let me," she said, shooing Felicity's hands out of the way. She deftly looped one end of the tie over the other and tugged it through the hole they made. "There," she said, stepping back to admire her handiwork. "Congratulations." She grinned. "Now you look as pretentious as the rest of us."

Felicity stared at her reflection in the mirror over her bureau. The Pembroke uniform consisted of a white button down, a gold and green striped tie, knee high socks, and a green skirt. With her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, Felicity could almost pass for one of the girls in the school catalog. She hardly recognized herself.

"Didn't you ever help you dad with his tie when you were growing up?" Sara asked, watching her with an amused expression.

Felicity shook her head. "My dad left us when I was little so…" She carefully avoided catching Sara's eye. There was nothing worse than the flash of pity when people realized she'd been abandoned.

"God, who has the social skills of a doorknob now, Sara?" Nyssa lay on her back atop her bed weaving small braids into her long hair. "I'm sorry your dad's a douche, Felicity."

Sara shot Nyssa a glare before looking back to Felicity. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Felicity waved away her apology. "It's okay. It's been a long time. And my mom's great so I don't really have anything to complain about. Anyway," she said, trying to keep her tone bright. "I'm starving. Breakfast?"

"Ugh, yes please," Nyssa said, rolling off her bed. "You guys take forever to get ready. I'm dying over here."

Nyssa had the most low maintenance morning routine Felicity had ever seen. She didn't own an ounce of makeup and rarely brushed her hair. It fell down her back in perfect beachy waves entirely of its own volition. Felicity would have been lying if she said she wasn't tab envious.

"We can't all wake up looking like runway models, Nyssa" Sara said, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, my stomach shouldn't have to suffer just cause I happened to get a winning ticket in the genetic lottery," Nyssa replied. "Now come on before I eat you for breakfast."

Despite Felicity's declaration of hunger, talking about her father had thoroughly quashed her appetite. She picked at a plate of eggs while Sara and Nyssa chatted about homework and plans for the weekend.

If her father found out what she'd done— if anyone found out- what was the prison sentence for cyber theft? Maybe they'd let her off easy because she was a minor. Felicity stabbed a hash brown with her fork and mushed it around her eggs. She didn't think she'd do well in prison. For one, she seriously doubted they had L'Oreal Ash Blond LB01. Though brown roots would be the least of her problems—

"Felicity?"

"Hm?"

Sara and Nyssa were staring at her with matching sets of raised eyebrows.

"Are you ok?" Sara asked. "You were muttering something about there not being Doritos in prison."

Felicity flushed. Damn you, brain to mouth filter. "Oh, yeah. I had a dream about being in prison last night. Weird, huh?" She laughed nervously and tugged at the end of her ponytail.

"I had a dream I was in prison once," Nyssa said, casually spearing a sausage with her knife. "I ran that joint, let me tell you."

A bell rang overhead and the room filled with the sound of benches scrapping against the floor and the clatter of plates and silverware as the students stood up to head for class.
"What do you have first?" Sara asked, glancing at Felicity as she swung her leg over the bench.

"Tutoring."

"Lucky," Nyssa said, as they wove their way to the doors. "I have fencing. My dad's forcing me to take it. As if I need more ways to make men squirm."

They parted ways in the entrance hall and Felicity took the large curving staircase up to the second floor. The tutoring center was a bright, white walled room with large windows that looked out onto the quad below. Eight workstations filled the room, each with its own sleek desktop computer.

Mrs. Lusky, the petite, severe looking woman who ran the tutoring center, showed Felicity to a desk in the back of the room. "I have you down for Computer Science, biology, physics, and math up to Calculus I," she said, glancing down at her clipboard. "So if anyone comes in for those things I'll send them back. You can work on your own assignments until then."

Felicity didn't have any homework yet but she took out the assigned book for her Roman history class, Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, and opened it to the introduction. Her attention soon drifted to the three boys playing with a frisbee on the emerald lawn below. Felicity's eyes followed the red disc's path without really seeing it. The frisbee had sparked a memory of her dad she hadn't realized she still had. She was sitting in his lap at a family picnic, tracing the lines across his palm with her pudgy little kid fingers, while two older girls whose faces escaped her cousins, maybe? family friends? tossed a frisbee in front of them. She had felt safe and warm and utterly content. A pang of regret stabbed Felicity's heart. So much had changed.

"Felicity Smoak?"

"Huh?" Felicity tore her gaze away from the window. The voice belonged to none other than Oliver Queen. He stood in front of her, his schoolbag slung casually over one shoulder, watching her with a half-smile. Sunlight streamed through the window, turning his sandy hair gold and illuminating the flecks of turquoise in his eyes. Felicity swallowed. He was a little too attractive, if she was quite honest. It was unnerving.

"Hi," he said. "I'm—"

"I know who you are," Felicity said, too quickly. "I mean, you're kind of famous around here. And just in general, actually. With the whole dying thing. And then the not dying thing. And I saw you in the bathroom yesterday. Although you had a lot less clothes on then." She sucked down a breath and tapped her pen anxiously on the desktop. "And I'm going to stop talking now. Can I help you with something?"

The corner of Oliver's mouth had slowly quirked as he listened to her babble. "I was told you were the one to see with computer trouble."

"Sure," Felicity said, thankful for something hands-on to do. "I like computers. What's the problem?"

Oliver held up a laptop riddled with— were those bullet holes? "My laptop had an accident."

Felicity let out a low whistle. "That seems like an understatement." She took the laptop from him and ran her hands over the puckered holes in the metal. "How did this even happen?"

Oliver folded his arms and lounged against the edge of her desk. "My friend Tommy likes to hunt."

Felicity glanced up from the laptop, one eyebrow raised. "For computers?"

"He has bad aim," Oliver said, in a tone that conveyed quite clearly that that was as much information as she was going to get. "So do you think there's any chance you could recover the files from it?"

"I don't know," Felicity said truthfully. She had never handled technology this damaged before. She hadn't lived in the best neighborhood in Vegas but it wasn't exactly raining bullets either. "If the hard drive isn't damaged too badly it might be possible."

"If you could try, I'd be really grateful." Oliver's tone was carefully pleasant. He knew his story was ridiculous. He was trusting her not to press him. Or maybe he just trusted himself to be charming enough that she didn't want to.

Felicity should have resented him for it. He was clearly withholding information from her. Yet she found herself wanting to help him instead and it wasn't about the fact that he was Oliver Queen or that he had one of the nicest jawlines she had ever seen on a human being. It was about herself. The laptop presented a challenge Felicity had never tackled before. She wanted to prove she could do what he was asking.

Felicity pushed her glasses up her nose. "I'll do my best," she said. "That's all I can promise."

"Great," Oliver said. He had a small pale scar just above his left eyebrow. Felicity had a sudden urge to brush her fingers against it. Do not do that,the rational part of her brain warned. She clasped her hands in her lap, just in case.

"So you'll let me know if you find anything?" Oliver asked.

Felicity nodded.

"Well, see you around." As he backed away he cracked a smile. "Maybe in the boy's showers again?"

Felicity flushed and opened her mouth to retort but he was already gone.

After Oliver, Mrs. Lusky sent Felicity a procession of kids looking for help with bio and calculus. One anxious first-year was on the verge of tears over the concept of cellular respiration. As Felicity attempted to explain how glucose and oxygen turned into carbon dioxide, water, and energy, her gaze kept wandering to the shot-up laptop sitting on the corner of her desk. Her fingers itched to take it apart and sum up the damage. And if she was being honest, she was intensely curious about what she would find if she managed to access the files. What could be so important that Oliver Queen, who by all normal standards had unlimited resources, didn't just go out and buy a replacement computer? If he were any other teenage boy, Felicity might have guessed it was his secret porn stash. Somehow she didn't think that was what Oliver was after.

She forced her eyes away from the laptop and back to the panicking first year. She was going to figure out a way to get to those files. Whatever was on Oliver's computer, she'd known soon enough.