The boy nodded, looked back down at the paper, the side folded just the way the newspaper on Charlie’s lap was. That he had reproduced any part of himself seemed to Charlie a mistake of almost biblical proportions. That this reproduction should present itself in such big-eared, pale-skinned innocence brought a searing pain to Charlie’s troubled stomach. For years he had taught at the Academy, and he viewed the variety of his students’ awkwardness from behind a safe shield of indifference; they had the benefit, after all, of not being his. He closed his eyes, and an image came to mind: walking
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