Andrew Larson

Andrew Larson is TifAni FaNelli’s former teacher and one of the few adults who responds to her with both practical care and emotional attentiveness. At twenty-four, he finds her after an assault and helps her get somewhere safe; at school, he reveals that Dean Barton has physically assaulted another student before. Years later, Andrew admits that he engineered a dinner to see TifAni again. His part in her life is marked by this mixture of protection, candor, and attraction, though their connection never becomes a settled relationship.

Identity and Background

Andrew taught TifAni at The Bradley School when she was fourteen. He was twenty-four, an age that seems far less distant to her in retrospect than it did at the time. She later learns that he had only recently left college: two years earlier, he had been at Cornell, skinny-dipping with fraternity brothers and dating a beautiful freshman. That background gives the adult who calmly handles her crisis an unexpected youth. He is not a seasoned authority figure so much as a young man placed in a position of responsibility, a contrast TifAni recognizes only after she has grown older.

The narrative first brings him into a social setting years later, at dinner with TifAni, her fiancé Luke Harrison, and Whitney. Andrew corrects Luke about his family’s connection to Martha’s Vineyard, then asks whether Luke’s family is from Nantucket. Whitney’s response turns the question into a distinction about who does and does not belong to the island’s affluent social world. TifAni’s reflection on that exchange links Andrew’s presence to her own changing view of the class identity she has worked to perform. The dinner is not simply an accidental reunion: Andrew later explains that he already knew Luke was engaged to a Bradley alumna and had pushed for the meeting so he could see TifAni.

Teacher and Disclosure

After the assault, Andrew finds TifAni at a Wawa. He guides her out, clears the takeout bags from the passenger seat, and urges her into his car. At his apartment, he gives her a blanket, water, and an ice pack. He considers taking her to the hospital, but when she becomes hysterical at the suggestion, he agrees to bring her to his apartment instead. His response is practical and steady: he gets her away from the immediate situation and helps her calm down and sober up. TifAni later understands that his composure came from experience as an adult, while also recognizing how young he was himself.

Once they are at his apartment, Andrew raises the question of next steps. He tells her that Dean has caused problems before and that this is not the first time Dean has physically assaulted another student. The disclosure changes the meaning of TifAni’s experience: what has happened to her is not, in Andrew’s account, an isolated incident. His admission also carries risk, since he says he probably should not be telling her. The information gives TifAni context, but it does not immediately overcome her fear of what speaking up could cost her.

Andrew then goes to Headmaster Mah’s office, as planned, to report another issue involving Dean and the new student Liam Ross. TifAni is called in before homeroom. Andrew stands in the corner, leaving the only seat open for her; she avoids looking at him and keeps her attention on her rain-marked shoes while denying that anything happened. She senses his expectation that she will accept his encouragement, but she does not make a report. Headmaster Mah responds with relief rather than concern. Andrew has brought the matter to the school, yet TifAni’s denial and the institution’s response leave the information without the consequence she needs. His intervention is meaningful, but it cannot make her ready to speak or compel the school to act.

Reconnection and Deliberate Contact

Years later, while TifAni is in the area for documentary filming, she calls Andrew’s family home after finding the number in a phone book. She knows the address because Andrew had once pointed out his parents’ house on Grays Lane in Haverford. When his father answers, she identifies herself as one of Andrew’s former students. After a pause, Andrew comes to the phone, recognizes her, and she tells him plainly that the day has been difficult and that she is alone.

Andrew has not brought Whitney with him for the weekend. TifAni hopes he might suggest a drink, but he agrees to meet at Peace A Pizza, a place he has not visited in years, and says he can be there in forty minutes. TifAni had proposed the restaurant herself. The ordinary choice of pizza, rather than the more intimate possibility she imagines, leaves her relieved and disappointed at once. Their meeting is therefore shaped as much by what is not proposed as by the fact that Andrew comes to see her.

During a later conversation, Andrew explains that the earlier dinner with Luke was arranged deliberately. A coworker had told him that Luke was engaged to a Bradley alumna; Luke had mentioned TifAni’s name, and Andrew could not place her among his former students. He searched for Luke on Facebook, found TifAni in the photographs, and urged Luke to arrange the dinner. This confession confirms that Andrew’s renewed interest is not merely nostalgia or chance. He sought her out because he wanted to see her, although he does not present that desire as a promise or a plan for a relationship.

Care, Attraction, and Boundaries

Andrew’s later tenderness is particularly visible when TifAni speaks about her engagement. He reaches for her hand, and her surprise makes her stiffen before he manages to hold it. He presses his thumb against the evidence of her engagement ring and turns the stone slightly. The gesture brings her attention to the life represented by the ring, even as she tells him that she wants someone to understand her. Andrew answers by placing her hand carefully on the bar and telling her that being understood also requires allowing herself to be understood. He does not urge her to leave Luke or offer himself as a substitute. Instead, he identifies a difficulty in TifAni’s wish for intimacy: she wants recognition, but must also permit another person to reach her.

The scene leaves their attraction present but unresolved. TifAni reads the intensity between them as real, and Andrew’s admission that he engineered their first dinner supports the sense that his interest is more than politeness. Yet he also says that Luke obviously loves her, and his handling of her hand is careful rather than possessive. Andrew offers attention and directness without turning them into a claim on her future.

Narrative Role

Andrew’s significance lies partly in the contrast between his response and the school’s. He recognizes Dean’s behavior as part of a prior pattern, brings the concern to Headmaster Mah, and offers TifAni immediate care after the assault. But he cannot make her disclose what happened, and the school’s relief at her denial exposes the limits of his intervention. His presence does not erase the institutional failure; it makes the failure more legible by showing that an adult knew there had been earlier trouble and still could not secure an effective response.

In TifAni’s later life, Andrew becomes a rare interlocutor who neither dismisses her distress nor pretends that wanting help is enough. Their contact is threaded through small, concrete gestures: a phone call to his parents’ house, a pizza meeting, a hand briefly held, and an engagement ring turned beneath his thumb. These moments keep the relationship open-ended. Andrew offers care and recognition, but the narrative does not make him a solution to TifAni’s past or a replacement for the decisions she must make about her future.