Your name is Salvatore Amato. You’re olive-skinned and soccer-fit. We called you Bubble-Butt.

You stole my heart with a Nutella sandwich.

We are in grade four and we sit at the same table, in the same uncomfortable wooden chairs, the ones that leave splinters in backsides, the ones with metal legs that scrape painfully against the glazed, hardwood floor during lunch in the big gymnasium on the ground floor at St Vincent’s Catholic School. I look in my school bag and my stomach tightens: my mother has forgotten to pack me lunch again. You ask me, where’s your lunch, and I say I left it on the bench at home and you offer me some of yours. I tell you I’m not hungry but my stomach lets out a tiny roar, a rumble, a low hum. My face is hot, my palms sweaty. You show me your sandwich and say it’s chocolate. I say chocolate sandwiches aren’t real. I live a life of baloney and butter, mayonnaise from a jar and wilting lettuce. No, chocolate sandwiches can’t exist. You lift up one piece of the bread and I stick my finger in, bring it back to my mouth and suck. You rip the sandwich in half and give me the bigger piece. I take it, embarrassed, starving, trying to eat slowly, failing. When my mom gets home later that night I tell her that she’s forgotten my lunch again. She doesn’t say sorry. I ask for chocolate sandwiches and she says no. I ask where’s dad, I’ll ask dad and she goes into her bedroom and closes the door.