Not knowing what to expect from Amandla after she caught him red-handed trying to look at her chest; Francis let go of her hand out of fear that the idea of crushing it might come to her, and backed away from her at a not so 'safe' distance of a few steps...
All means were good to show that he regretted what he had done; so he closed his eyes, even though it was a little late for that, and apologized... excessively, "Sorry! I'm really sorry! I'm really, really sorry!" He screamed pathetically with his hands in front of his face to protect it in case Amandla was going to hit him there.
Amandla's expression became cold, but not for a reason that Francis might have expected.
When he introduced himself as a friend of Lazar she believed him and didn't judge the book by its cover for the simple reason that he knew that Lazar's name wasn't Logan, but with what she was seeing right now, she could no longer believe his version, 'Someone like him can't be his friend.'
She was disappointed, but she preferred to use the forces she had regained to try to get up on her own instead of wasting them by externalizing her frustration.
In this sense, she took several deep breaths before leaving her crouching position in order to lean on her right leg, then on both legs using at every step progressive movements to spare her muscles which had suffered a lot because of the energy drain.
Now standing on her two wobbly legs, Amandla decided to ignore Francis completely...
If she had to make a choice between trying to calm down an almost grown-up man who was for no valuable reason acting like a frightened 5-year-old kid and taking interest in what was going on on Lazar's side, then there was no real need to think about it...
...
'No, I'll take care of that later.' Lazar resigned himself before he stopped staring at a young blond man who seemed particularly nervous after noticing that he had caught his eye.
Lazar then shifted back his attention to the entire crowd to continue the negotiations he had begun earlier, "As I said before, I don't have a lot of time, so I would like to proceed with the evacuation of the people whose informations are in this file right away..." He said in a more pressing tone while shaking again the said file that was in his left hand above his head.
The woman who had made the remark that he didn't seem to mind taking care of this mission moved forward until she reached an equal distance between him and the rest of the crowd.
'Oh... Now I understand why she talked to me like that.' Now that she was that close, Lazar recognized her. Despite her tousled curly hair; her scrawny physique, caramel-colored skin and coarse face formed an easily recognizable whole.
He never forgot people who gave him an unpleasant impression and this person was undoubtedly one of them.
To make long story short, at the beginning of his senior year in high school, Lazar and Lana had a conversation about his future...
Lazar expressed one more time his desire to join the Navy and Lana didn't oppose it under one condition; Apply to the universities he would have applied to if his choice wasn't definitive and visit the ones that will give a positive answer.
Lazar wasn't stupid, he understood that this was a desperate attempt by Lana to make him prefer the life of a college student instead of a soldier by showing him how 'cool' the campuses he will be visiting are, but he nevertheless accepted this condition knowing that he wouldn't change his mind.
In the end, when the admission period came around, all the universities to which Lazar applied sent him an acceptance email and the first one he visited was the closest; the M.I.T.
He had been there without any expectations and his planning was simple; go in, wandering around the campus during the afternoon to make Lana happy then go out.
It was simple and yet it didn't go as planned.
During his visit, he was accosted several times by professors who tried to convince him to study here after high school.
It was done quite subtly, so at first, Lazar just thought they were interested in his profile and that maybe it would be the same at any other university he would visit... but he realized that this wasn't the right explanation when he met the woman who was now in front of him.
Unlike the professors he had met, this one didn't give him the spiel that it was an extremely inspiring environment in which he could have the chance to study, blah blah blah...
Instead, she started insulting him histerically out of nowhere just after she laid her eyes on him.
Normally he would have told her to shut the fuck up right away, but the informations she was giving him between every 'spoiled brat' and 'little jerk' she threw at him were interesting.
Before he got tired of listening to her and finally told her to shut up, he had realized that the reason the professors courted him was because Andrew had asked them to.
She hadn't told him why Andrew had asked for this, but he already knew; it was so that he and Katelyn would be in the same university.
Lately, every time he came across her, she would block his path, remind him that she had been admitted to the M.I.T in Social Sciences and ask him if he had already made a choice about which university he would attend.
Indeed... her obsession with him didn't subside with time. It had even become quite disturbing.
For instance, every time he reached a distance of less than 15 meters from her and whether or not he was in her field of vision, he could feel her depraved gaze landing on him almost instantly... as if she could recognize his scent as soon as he approached her.
And the worst was that this statement was well-founded.
He experimented by changing shower gel and starting to use perfume to change his smell and before she got used to it, Lazar was blessed with a few days of pure happiness during which if she didn't have him directly in her field of vision, she couldn't notice him.