Chapter Text
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Eighth grade passes in much the same way as the previous two years. Oliver and Tommy manage to cause more trouble than they should (but not enough to get kicked out of school). Laurel gets good grades, joins clubs and one day wakes up to the realisation that she might just be the most popular girl in school. She wonders if she should be a bitch or maybe that she is a bitch and just doesn’t realise it but she’s happy so she just carries on in the centre of her large group of friends.
At the spring dance she ditches her date to hang out with Oliver and Tommy in an empty maths classroom tucked behind the teacher’s desk. The only illumination is a security light set outside the window. Tommy is actually under the desk while Laurel and Oliver sit leaning against the wall, legs outstretched, touching slightly at the ankle.
Oliver has snuck in some beer stolen from his dad. It’s her first real experience with alcohol and it tastes bitter, unpleasant; she makes a face but keeps drinking when the boys laugh at her. The boys have both apparently had it before so they have no trouble finishing theirs and splitting the final can. Laurel manages two thirds before she gives up in disgust, surrendering it over to them to finish off.
She enjoys the light-headedness and the way she feels warm and languid so she slumps down at an angle that has her unintentionally leaning against Oliver as she giggles at their tall tales. A natural shifting of his weight presses him closer to her side and she can feel the tingling heat of his body through her dress and his shirt and trousers. Without any thought or planning her head drops to his shoulder and when he takes her hand she curls her fingers around his automatically.
Across from them Tommy pauses mid sentence, eyebrows going up, but he recovers quickly, picking up his story about accidentally setting his bedspread on fire while playing with a lighter he’d filched from one of his dad’s associates. According to him, his dad had ‘hardly been mad at all’ only rolling his eyes and taking the lighter off Tommy commenting on the stupidity of lighting fires in his bedroom. Oliver laughs and Laurel giggles but Tommy’s smile is closer to a grimace.
Story mostly finished, Tommy’s voice trails off and the three of them let the silence stretch between them for what seems like forever until a stray few bars of music reach them. Laurel panics when she realises there’s less than ten minutes until the end of the dance and the three of them hurry through the quiet halls avoiding detection until they are back among their fellow students.
None of the teachers manage to pick up that they’ve been gone, let alone that they were drinking, but Laurel is lucky it isn’t her dad collecting her afterwards. Because her mom notices straight away and it’s only some fast talking that means Dinah doesn’t stomp back into the school – or pass it on to Laurel’s father. But it doesn’t take long before Laurel has even made her mother laugh at some of the antics Tommy and Oliver described to her.
By the time they arrive back to the family’s apartment she’s clearheaded again and she smiles brightly at her father but doesn’t get too close when he asks if she had a good time. Without being able to smell the alcohol he seems unaware of anything untoward that she got up to at the dance. She doesn’t kiss him goodnight as she heads for the room she shares with her sister.
This late she tiptoes into the bedroom because Sarah’s asleep, or meant to be (having been grounded for lying about a detention and so unable attend the dance herself). However as soon as the door is shut Sarah flicks on her bedside light catching Laurel mid way between the two beds – one with a cream and blue comforter the other in red and pink.
“So did you dance with Oliver Queen?” Younger sisters are completely bewildering because that came out of nowehere – and how does Sarah know she how she spent the evening?
“What?” says Laurel. “Why?” They did end up dancing the last dance of the night together, the music ending a heartbeat before the lights came on leaving them blinking at the brightness, his arms around her waist, hers resting on his shoulders.
Sarah huffs dramatically. “Everyone knows Oliver wanted to go to the dance with you, but Luke asked first. Someone always asks first.” Implied, but not stated is the ‘you are so stupid’ which Sarah’s in sixth grade how does she know this?
“No I didn’t dance with Oliver Queen. We hung out that’s all.” If she mentions the beer then she gives Sarah ammunition if she ever needs to get around Dad. And Laurel’s already talked Mom out of telling him.
“You do know half the boys in school are in love with you, right? They’re always coming to up to me all like ‘oh, Sarah can you ask Laurel out for me?’” she simpers. “I tell them they can ask you out themselves.”
Half way out of her dress, Laurel turns to her sister with wide eyes. “Oh, good,” she says faintly, her mouth dry. It’s true some of them have come up to her and asked her to go to the movies with them or to some other event – depending on how much their families are worth. She’s so far turned them down because she doesn’t even want to think about her dad and his ‘no dating until you’re sixteen rule’. It’s been hard enough to convince him to let her go to the dances with a partner let alone go somewhere unsupervised.
Sarah rolls her eyes. “Eugh. Figures. You are so blind.” She snaps off her bedside light leaving Laurel to fumble around in the dark.
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Laurel spends most of the rest of the year studying. Both Lance girls are at private school now and even with Dad’s promotion and Mom’s pay rise it’s still a pinch. Next year when Laurel’s at prep school it will be worse; but if she can get a scholarship – even a partial one – that’ll put less strain on her family. Her friends complain about how she’s always busy and Laurel drops several clubs so she can spend more time in the library. The grief she is given is worth it when her good grades become better.
Oddly enough she ends up seeing more of Oliver as he is once again in danger of failing so spends some of his time at the library studying next to Laurel with bad attitude. But he’s the one who convinces her to stop after an hour and half each afternoon so they can roam the streets until she has to go home for dinner.
He buys her ice cream or hot chocolate and sometimes they try to trick liquor sellers into letting them buy alcohol – which Laurel only goes along with because she knows there is no way in hell it’s going to work (especially as she stands behind him shaking her head to the sales assistants who Ollie is trying to convince it’s really for his ill mother). In a move that surprises her younger self, but won’t in years to come, all of this leads to most of the school assuming that they are in fact dating.
Laurel tries to correct this notion but no one believes her (years later it’ll be Tommy who tells her it’s because Oliver was telling them different). On the plus side, this means that Oliver is the only one to ask her to the graduation dance, shifting from foot to foot as they both sip their hot chocolate sitting a picnic table in the park. She accepts with a graveness that matches his own but can’t help the happiness that bubbles up at his smile.
Unfortunately their plans come a screeching halt when one at night at dinner Sarah is arguing for an allowance raise so she can buy a dress she’s fallen in love with at an upmarket boutique. When neither the dress nor the increase in allowance are approved Sarah sulkily announces, “Yeah, well, Laurel’s dating Oliver Queen.”
A moment of silence settles over the table – the only movement is their mother’s which part in surprise.
“What?” says their father, ice coating every letter.
“I am not!” snaps Laurel.
“What happens at the library?” sneers Sarah.
“We study.” Which they do, because Laurel is serious about that scholarship.
“And afterwards?” Sarah is enjoying herself now. Their father’s face is turning purple and their mother’s grip on her fork is an awkward movement somewhere between picking it up and putting it down. It’s not often Laurel slips up enough to get into trouble.
“We get ice cream.” And attempt to engage in underage drinking – sometimes with Tommy or some of Laurel’s friends. She turns to her dad. “We’re just friends.”
“They’re going to the dance together next week.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate, Laurel,” says her father.
“What?” she says. “Why not?” But there’s a sick swooping in her stomach. She knows what’s coming next.
The argument escalates from there as her parents are worried about her spending so much time with a boy she’s spent nearly three years describing the mayhem he causes. It’s not like that...Oliver’s not like that...but she lacks the words to tell her parents exactly what she means. In the end she pushes her chair back from the table and runs to her room before the tears that are burning in her eyes start to fall.
She cries lying face down on her bed for an indeterminable length of time, but when the flood begins to slow she turns on her side, curling in on herself and staring blankly across the room – her side as neat as ever, Sarah’s the usual tip. Before long she hears her parents outside her door. They’re arguing about something but she can’t make out about what. A pause lengthens and then someone knocks.
Her mother would enter without waiting for an answer; Sarah wouldn’t bother with knocking. “Go away!” she shouts at her dad.
“Can I come in?” he asks through the door.
She wants to say no, wants to shout and rage and yell, but she can’t. She slides off the bed and stands on the other side of the door. “Are you going to shout at me some more?” she asks.
“Are you going to shout at me?” he counters.
Laurel thinks about that for a moment. Sighing softly she opens the door. “No, I’m not going to shout.”
Turning sharply she goes and sits, back against the wall, on her bed. Her dad sits on the foot of her bed and just looks at her for a long moment. “You can go to the dance with Oliver,” he says.
She nods but doesn’t say thank you. “Why are you spending so much time at the library, Laurel? That’s not something you used to do, or not nearly as much.”
She hasn’t told her parents what she’s trying to do because...well she’s not sure why – she just hasn’t been able to find the right time to say it. “I want to get a scholarship,” she tells him now, staring down at her hands twisting the hem of her t-shirt.
“What?” says her father. This time, though, he’s surprised, not angry.
She chances a look up to find him looking at her patiently. “You and mom are always talking about how much it costs to send me and Sarah to school. Next year it’s going to cost even more. I thought it would help.”
“You don’t have to do that, Laurel.”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “But it’ll help, right?”
He looks at her for a long time before giving a long sigh. “It’ll help,” he says. “But you really don’t need to do this.”
“It’s okay,” she says, leaning over and hugging him. “I don’t mind.” If it means her parents will fight less, she’s all for it.
“What’s Oliver Queen doing there?” he asks. “You can’t tell me he wants a scholarship.”
She blinks. “He’s trying not to fail. I told him that he should have been studying from the start not with a month left.”
“And afterwards?”
She shrugs. “There’s a few of us.” Which is stretching the truth just a little given that Tommy sometimes tags along with them; but it’s a lie that’ll make her dad happy so she doesn’t explain.
He nods and stands up. “Your mom can reheat your dinner if you’re hungry.” At the door her pauses and turns back. “Laurel, if I find out you and your friends are getting into trouble – at any point – we will be having this conversation again. Got it?”
Laurel flinches slightly as his words hit home. “Yes, Dad.”
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Things never to tell her dad: Oliver kisses her at the dance.
Also she kisses Oliver.
(and then the history teacher comes by and makes them stand a foot away from each other)
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