You Were Made For Me

by Jenna Guillaume

  ‘How would you feel if I got a job?’ Guy’s words pulled me out of my thoughts. I blinked and looked up from the book in my hand.

  ‘Huh?’

  Guy was chewing on his lip. ‘I’ve been thinking, you know. It’d be nice to work.’

  ‘Oh?’ I was surprised by this sudden interest. ‘Are you . . . bored or something?’

  He cocked his head. ‘I don’t know that bored is the right word for it. I love spending time with you. With Theo and Alex and Libby. Max. Even Sophia and Lena.’ He paused. ‘But when you’re all away, at school or at work, it does get . . . what’s the word for it?’ He took a deep breath. ‘Lonely, I suppose.’

  I swallowed. ‘I had no idea you felt this way.’

  ‘That’s why I’m telling you.’ He gave my hand a squeeze. ‘I did think perhaps I could go to school, but when I mentioned it to Theo, he said it would be too hard. He thought a job might be better. Also, it would mean I would have my own money. Because that seems important.’ He smiled. ‘Then I could be the one buying you gifts. What do you think?’

  I glanced down at the book. ‘You know you don’t have to buy me gifts, right?’

  ‘I know. But I want to. Also, wouldn’t work be fun?’

  He had so much hope and optimism in his eyes. I didn’t want to tell him that work was just about the complete opposite of fun.

  ‘What kind of job do you want?’

  He bounced a little on the spot. ‘I could get one with Theo! He said the supermarket is looking for someone to push trolleys. Doesn’t that sound awesome? And Theo said if I worked there, we’d hopefully get shifts at the same time and he could “help me adjust”. And also it’s all cash in hand – I’m not quite sure what that means, but Theo seemed to think it was good. Off the books, he said, so there would be no questions about my origins.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘You guys have already figured this all out, huh?’ I felt weird that something in Guy’s life had been decided without me. But then, he was his own person, after all.

  Wasn’t he?

  ‘We were just talking about it last night,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘If it’s what you really want . . .’

  Guy let out a gleeful cry and hug-tackled me into the beanbag. ‘Yes, thank you!’ He pulled away a little to look into my face, his body still pressed against me. His eyes danced as he leaned back down and brought his lips to mine.

  The fifth time we kissed –

  Seriously? We’re doing this AGAIN?

  Last time, I swear.

  (For now.)

  Hmph.

  It’s because I wanted to talk about the formal . . .

  ‘Formal?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Yeah, it’s like a prom,’ I said.

  ‘Ugh, it shouldn’t be like a prom,’ Libby said. We were in Theo’s backyard, playing handball on the concrete slab near his room. We hadn’t done this in years. I felt eight years old all over again.

  ‘I mean, how else would you describe it?’ I bounced the ball in her direction. She dove for it but missed.

  ‘I don’t know, I mean, I guess it’s like a prom,’ she said, jogging across the yard to retrieve the ball. ‘But it’s ridiculous how American they’re trying to make it.’

  Theo snorted. ‘Just spike the punch with goon, it’ll feel Australian in no time.’

  ‘So it’s an occasion where you dress up and dance with your partner?’ Guy said, expertly hitting the ball in Theo’s direction.

  ‘Oh no,’ Libby said. The ball came her way again and this time she didn’t even try to dive for it. She looked at me in horror. ‘You’re going to go with him, aren’t you?’

  This was something that had been playing on my mind. Months ago Libby and I – and the rest of the girls – had agreed to go together as a group. No dates. I mean, Libby was the only one of us who was in a relationship anyway, so really it was her agreeing to go sans Michael. Which I thought was very generous of her.

  ‘We’ll have more fun this way, anyway,’ she’d said.

  I had felt really good about the whole thing, but there was a small part of me – okay, a not-so-small part – that yearned for the proper prom (sorry, I mean formal) experience. That wanted to be special enough to be asked out and danced with and even given a corsage. I knew it would never happen, so I was grateful to Libby for pushing the whole ‘friend formal’ thing.

  And then . . . Guy happened. And I didn’t know how to bring it up with her, because I felt shitty about the fact that I wanted to cancel on her plans when she was the one who was sacrificing a night with her boyfriend to start with.

  But feeling shitty about it didn’t stop me from wanting it.

  I dodged the ball as it bounced too high, narrowly missing my head, before answering her. ‘No. We’re all going as friends, right?’

  Theo laughed. ‘Come off it, KC, I know you have a whole formal fantasy sequence already playing out in your head.’

  I retrieved the ball and whacked it towards him. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We already talked about this.’

  ‘But I’d love to take you,’ Guy broke in. My heart skipped a beat. I caught the ball when it came my way again and held on to it.

  ‘What if you invited Michael?’ I said to Libby. ‘We could finally actually do the double-date thing!’ I may have sounded a bit too excited at the prospect.

  You definitely did.

  Libby’s reaction was decidedly less excited. The look on her face was the same one you get when you tread in dog poo. Twice.

  Yeah. That’s about how I felt.

  ‘What about the other girls?’ she said.

  ‘They won’t mind,’ I said. ‘And we’ll all still hang out as a group. Come on, it’ll be fun!’

  ‘I’d love to meet Michael,’ Guy said.

  ‘Are we playing or what?’ Theo complained.

  I ignored him, clutching the ball beneath my chin as I gave Libby my best persuasive puppy-dog look. ‘What do you think?’

  It’s not that persuasive, by the way. Your puppy-dog look.

  It managed to persuade you! (She said yes, obviously.)

  I didn’t, though, did I? What I actually said was –

  ‘Ugh, fine, whatever. Go with golden boy.’

  See?

  It’s true, there was a definite grumblage happening. But in that moment, it was enough for me. I dropped the ball and bounced right over to Guy myself.

  ‘Looks like we’re going to the formal together,’ I said with a grin. Guy picked me up, swung me around, and planted a sweet, soft kiss on my lips.

  ‘Looks like the game’s over,’ Theo said.

  Let me save you some time before you start trying to get into the sixth and seventh and twentieth and fiftieth times you kissed.

  We’ll just say that from here on out you guys were practically glued at the lips.

  Even when there were other people around.

  It was like you were addicted.

  Think of it this way. You know when you hear a song you really love for the first time, and it’s like a tiny revelation? It makes you feel alive and all you want to do is keep listening to it? So you put it on repeat and listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again because you just can’t get enough of it?

  Okay. I do know that feeling. It usually ends with me getting so sick of the song I can never listen to it again.

  Well, this was the stage where it was still at the top of my playlist.

  (And by ‘it’ I’m talking about kissing Guy, obviously.)

  Obviously.

  Fifteen

  I’d just like to go on the record and say I wasn’t kissing Guy all the time.

  Sometimes, I was at school.

  Miss Lui was excited about my idea for the mural. I showed her a rough sketch I had done and she declared it was ‘marvellous!!!’ (The three exclamation points were invisible, but no less present in her speech.) I felt a bit of excitement bubble up amongst all the nerves
.

  Mikayla Fitzsimmons, meanwhile, sat in the corner of the art room with Emily, snorting and mumbling something about being too old for imaginary boyfriends.

  It was annoying, but not unexpected from her. I could handle it.

  I was naïve to think it wouldn’t get any worse.

  It was my own fault really.

  That’s blaming the victim and we don’t do that here.

  Okay, true. The thing is, what I did made things worse. Or, at least, it painted a bigger target on my back.

  Mmmm, still very victim-blamey.

  Look, to be clear, IT WASN’T MY FAULT. But. What happened was I posted this photo on Instagram. Of me and Guy.

  I basically never post on my Instagram. Especially not photos of myself. Like I said before, I’d started it for my art but the actual account only had four posts. They were all photos of Max, except for one, which was a shot of my pencils (oh so original and artistic).

  But after nearly a week of Mikayla whispering behind my back at school, I wanted to prove her wrong.

  And why not show off my totally hot boyfriend?

  I posted a photo. It was a close-up of Guy and me, our faces pressed together, both of us smiling. To be honest, looking at myself next to Guy was not exactly a thrilling experience. I spent three hours editing the photo.

  After I’d gotten close enough to the aesthetic I wanted (nothing ever matched up to the picture I had in my head), I deliberated on a caption before finally settling on one that I thought was cute and a good in-joke for the three people who would get it: You were made for me .

  I hit post.

  I refreshed the page.

  Refreshed it again.

  I got two likes. One from Alex and one from Theo.

  Another like. Amina. And a comment. Omg, you guys are so cute!

  Jordan posted a comment. GET IT.

  Nat posted three fire emojis.

  They’d all been shocked when I’d told them earlier in the week that yes, I really had a boyfriend, and yes, he really was hot. It felt a bit insulting, really.

  At least they were being supportive now.

  I put my phone down. Three minutes later, I picked it up again. And nearly dropped it immediately.

  There was a like from Declan Bell Jones.

  Did he even follow me?!

  I checked my notifications again. He was following me now.

  We hadn’t really spoken much since the visit to the optometrist, although he’d been smiling and nodding my way in Geography, and occasionally in the quad, if Mikayla Fitzsimmons wasn’t looking.

  Mikayla Fitzsimmons. She would see that he’d liked this, right? She would see it. And she’d shut up about the whole thing, wouldn’t she?

  Surely.

  Surely.

  I put my phone down, feeling a weird mixture of smugness and nerves.

  We were in the library for Geography the next day, supposedly to work on an assignment. Everyone was quiet, but there was this kind of buzz in the air, a restlessness where you just know nothing is getting done. Mr Green, our teacher, was busy flirting with the librarian Mr Moretti anyway, so it wasn’t likely he cared.

  I was staring into space, thinking about Guy, when I got an invitation to join a Google doc.

  It was from Declan Bell Jones.

  I looked around the room and saw him hunched down, staring at his screen.

  I accepted the invite and entered the blank doc.

  Hey Harry, he typed.

  Hey! I was pulsing with curiosity, but tried to keep my cool. Maybe the exclamation point was too much? Too late now. He’d already seen it.

  So.

  I waited for him to keep typing.

  That guy you posted a photo with.

  My breath hitched.

  Is he your boyfriend?

  Whew.

  Yes, I typed. After a second, I added a smiley face.

  I waited for his response. And waited. I looked his way, and saw him staring at his screen, his brow furrowed. I watched as he typed something, and turned back to see what it was.

  You’re full of surprises.

  I know. Everyone is shocked I have a boyfriend. I cringed and added a lol. It made me cringe even more.

  I just . . . he typed. Seconds that felt like minutes passed before he finished his sentence. Thought you liked someone else. He added a winky face.

  What. The. Hell.

  What did that mean?

  Did . . . did Declan Bell Jones know I liked him?

  And . . . did he like that?

  How did I respond to that?

  Haha. Well I have a lot of ‘like’ in my heart.

  I typed the words before I thought too much about them and instantly regretted it.

  I looked over at Declan Bell Jones and quickly snapped my head away.

  Because he had been looking at me.

  And he had been smiling.

  ‘What the hell, Katie?’ Libby exclaimed. We were on our way home and I’d just told her and Alex about the Geography incident. Theo had stayed back at school to work on something for his Textiles and Design class, so Alex was walking with us, wheeling his bike.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’re seriously still into Declan Bell Jones when you’ve got Guy?’ I was surprised at the level of anger in her voice. ‘I mean, Guy is all you can think about or talk about. You ignore everything else. But Declan Bell Jones says jump and suddenly it’s “Guy who”?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. I turned to Alex. ‘Is it?’

  He cocked his head. ‘You have been pretty into Guy. Not that I blame you.’

  ‘See,’ Libby said. ‘So you can’t go saying stuff like that to Declan.’

  Guilt rippled through me. ‘What do you think?’ I asked Alex. ‘Did I say the wrong thing?’

  He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. ‘On the one hand, I’d say a bit of flirting never hurt anyone.’

  ‘You think I was flirting?’

  ‘You definitely were,’ Libby said. ‘Even I can tell.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Alex continued, ‘I think a bit of flirting could hurt Guy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s so . . .’ Alex looked at the sky. ‘Golden. Pure. And you’re his whole world, Katie. Honestly, I think he’d be devastated if you liked someone else.’

  I kicked at the gravel on the road.

  Golden. That was the right word for Guy. He needed to be protected. And I wanted to protect him. I really cared about him. I liked spending time with him . . . and I really, really liked kissing him.

  Still, at the back of my brain, there was this small voice. A whisper. I couldn’t quite catch what it was saying. But it was there.

  A little seed of doubt.

  ‘So you do still like Declan Bell Jones?’ Alex interrupted my thoughts.

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know? I mean, I never really stopped liking him. I’ve liked him for so long. But then Guy came along out of nowhere and took over everything and – it’s not like I turned off my crush on Declan just because I turned one on for Guy.’

  Libby was shaking her head. ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you say that to Declan.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  She shot me a look. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Well, what should I do?’ I looked to Alex.

  ‘I think, just forget about it,’ he said. ‘Who knows what game Declan is playing, but you should just focus on Guy.’

  I nodded. But what was Declan doing messaging me like that?

  I didn’t have much time to dwell on it in the end. I was helping Dad make dinner when I got a DM from Jordan. You should see this, she said, with a link to an Instagram post. I clicked through and let out a small shriek.

  It was a new profile. The screen name said Liars Xposed 2528.

  There was only one post.

  It was the photo of me and Guy, with numbers drawn all over it. The caption read, Katie Camilleri and her fictional boyfriend. She’s even pho
toshopped some poor random into a photo! It then went on to point out all the ‘proof’ the photo was fake, such as the lighting supposedly being all wrong. The post also detailed how my ‘fake boyfriend’ had no social media and there was no proof of his existence.

  ‘What’s wrong? Did they cancel Cupid’s Bow?’ Dad joked. It was our fave show to watch together.

  ‘Huh?’ I looked up from my phone. ‘Um, no, just some homework I forgot about. Do you mind if I head to my room to, uh, do it?’

  ‘Katie Camilleri volunteering to do homework? Are you feeling alright?’

  I gave him a weak smile. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  In my room I started frantically messaging my friends. Jordan was the first to reply to the group chat.

  Jordan

  It’s got to be Mikayla right?

  Nat

  It has to be

  Amina

  Would she really do this though? x

  Jordan

  She absolutely would.

  Me

  Why does she even care?

  Libby

  She doesn’t. Not really. She just has nothing better to do.

  Me

  What should I do???

  Libby

  Report it, block it, forget it.

  Nat

  Def report it

  Jordan

  I wish we could find a way to take her down. In a totally non-violent way, of course.

  Amina

  Is there anything we can do, Katie? x

  I felt a little better after talking to my friends, although my guts were still churning. I was so sick of Mikayla Fitzsimmons and her demonic minions.

  ‘Whatcha doing?’ My brother appeared in my doorway.

  I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Looks like you’re brooding.’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain Instagram post, would it?’

  I sat up. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Someone sent it to Mara’s sister, who sent it to Mara, who sent it to me.’

  If I wasn’t already feeling sick before, I definitely was now. ‘Just how many people have seen it?’ I picked up my phone and stared at the post again. I’d reported it and so had my friends, but it was still there. I couldn’t see how many likes it had, but there were about twenty comments. A mix of emojis (laughing, the detective, the thinking face), some along the lines of knew it or nice catch or simply lmao. There was just one that said, This is mean. It was from Amina.