NAME: Andy Herrera.
AGE: then, 9.
LIKES: fireworks (watches them with earplugs in). dinosaurs. cherry pie.
DISLIKES: loud noises. being called shy. condescension. animal cruelty.
Back then, Lara had known him as the little boy who brought his stuffed stegosaurus, Macy, everywhere. Everything about him had been inexplicable (and fascinating, like a puzzle with no solution); like why was his stuffed animal named Macy when she was clearly a Mindy? Why did he have a very obviously homemade shirt that said the oddest phrases? Lara didn’t realize it until her father explained to her that Andy has Autism, but that wasn’t the source of her interest either. No, there was just something about Andy that was just… curious.
He was the white rabbit where she was Alice.
Now older, Lara realizes it was likely because he was one of two fellow children she’d met while accompanying her father on one of his journeys. She’d met Andy first though, in Greece, where they’d stayed for one week together in a little hotel high in the mountains. They’d had to ride down in a jeep that had to be started three times over to work. The noise had always aggravated him, so Lara lent him the earmuffs she’d accidentally packed, and never got them back. Now he still has them. They didn’t cross paths many times during childhood, though Lara did hear from his father a few times, as he’d been relatively good friends with her father.
But he remembers her. She remembers him. That had been enough.
Now, as an adult, Andy is a museum worker at the Museum of Natural History, where his enthusiasm and unparalleled knowledge of dinosaurs makes him a huge asset. However, when Lara goes to work there for the short while she does, they meet up and catch up a fair bit. It brings Lara back down to Earth a bit to remember bits of her past and reminisce with him. It does her good; more than Andy can ever know.
NPC MEME. / accepting.