The Ersatz Boy
Jeremy Copper stared into his lunch box. His ham sandwich- due to lack of cling film- had welded itself to the side of the plastic container, in a not-quite spherical mush. He had asked his mother seventeen times to use cling film when making his lunch. “Please use cling film, Mom” he’d said, and she would always nod and stare out the window and say “sorry Jeremy”, but he knew she’d forget again.
Jeremy did not want to touch the thing that had once been his ham sandwich. He carefully recovered a spoon from the schmutz, scraped off a few moist crumbs, and removed the lid from a dishevelled apricot yoghurt, which had somehow avoided the worst of the carnage. Midway through the yoghurt, he noticed a soggy note stuck to the bottom of the box. He glanced over the familiar, neatly-formed words:
“My special boy, I love you so much.”
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