Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend (4 page)

I read over the letter and think about adding a couple of spelling mistakes for authenticity. Maybe an
untill
or a
loose
instead of
lose
? But I just can't bring myself to do it. My boyfriend would know how to spell.

All of this lying has made me hungry. Why hasn't Mum called me for dinner yet? I open my bedroom door. No cooking smells. Odd. It's nearly seven-thirty.

Downstairs, Dad's sitting on the couch watching
Temptation
. Mum's so going to scorch him for watching commercial TV.

‘Where's Mum?' I say.

Dad shrugs. ‘Working late.'

He's engrossed by Livinia Nixon. I clear my throat.

‘Was there something else?' says Dad.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘The troops are restless. The mess is closed.'

Dad looks up at me. ‘What?'

‘Dinner. It's seven-thirty. Feed me.'

‘Oh,' says Dad, looking vague. ‘Sorry. I had a late lunch. Do you want me to fix you some two-minute noodles?'

Two-minute noodles? Oh dear. I'll be in the cupboard under the stairs next, and I'll have to walk to school in the snow with no shoes or socks (we may have to move somewhere where it snows first), and then Family Services will come. And then they'll take me to an orphanage and some plucky freckled redhead will take me under her wing . . .

‘There had better be chicken flavour,' I grumble. ‘I'm not eating prawn again.'

I stay up half the night finishing Ben's letter. By the time I get to school the next morning, I look (and feel) like Steve Buscemi. Tahni hugs me sympathetically.

‘You're pining,' she says.

She gushes over the letter and I feel quite proud. I'd even faked the whole email header thing with a To and From and Subject.

‘He sounds perfect,' sighs Tahni. ‘Romantic, but not
too
romantic.'

‘That's what I was going for,' I say.

Oops. She raises her eyebrows.

‘In a boyfriend,' I say, feeling my cheeks go pink. ‘That's what I was looking for in a boyfriend. Romantic, but not too romantic.'

For a moment I think I'm going to get busted.

‘It's good to have goals,' says Tahni.

Phew.

In English, Mr Mehmet tells us about our Big Assignment. We're supposed to do a project in pairs. I'm not really listening; I'm too busy trying to think of how to get out of this whole Ben mess. I can't break up with him yet – it's too soon. I need to string Tahni along for at least a fortnight. Then I can say that the whole long-distance thing is too much, and we decided to be just friends. But a whole fortnight? That's a lot of fake emails.

Someone is saying my name. I look up. Mr Mehmet is frowning down at me.

‘When you've quite finished daydreaming, Imogen, perhaps you would like to choose a partner.'

I am
this close
to saying something about my boyfriend in England, but snap out of it and realise that everyone else has organised themselves into pairs. Everyone except for me. And the New Guy.

Oh, crap. I have to spend a whole lesson with Mr Socks Pulled Up Dragon Pictures. Bleck.

I collect my books, shuffle down to the front row and sit next to New Guy. He smiles and then ducks his head in a nervous kind of way. He still smells like biscuits.

‘You and your partner must select a topic, and write a proposal by next week,' says Mr Mehmet.

Uh oh.

‘You will then have the rest of the term to work on your project. Remember, it must contain an online component, as well as a written report, and a final analysis detailing how you came to your conclusion. You will present your projects to the entire year level at the end of term.'

This isn't just a one-off class project. I'm going to be lumped with New Guy for the rest of my life.

‘All right,' says Mr Mehmet. ‘You have the rest of the class to discuss your projects.'

New Guy turns to me. He has very long eyelashes. He also has a bit of white gunk in the corner of his left eye. Gross.

‘Imogen, right?' he says. ‘I'm George.'

‘It's Midge,' I say. The biscuity smell is making me hungry.

I fiddle with my pen, popping the cap off and snapping it back on again. George straightens his exercise book against the edge of the table.

‘So,' says George. ‘What will we do for our project?'

I shrug. I'm quite busy enough with my imaginary-boyfriend project. I have no time to think about anything else.

‘Dunno,' I say. ‘Do you have any ideas?'

‘It should be relevant to young people today,' he says. ‘Something about the pressure placed on teenagers in modern society.'

This is all Ben's fault. If I hadn't been thinking about him I could have picked a better partner. Stupid imaginary boyfriend.

At lunchtime, I tell Tahni about being saddled with the New Guy.

‘O.M.G.,' she says. ‘You're doing your English project with
him
?'

I nod.

‘But haven't you heard?'

‘Heard what?'

Tahni leans in close. ‘Why he left his old school. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but it was bad. Kate Martin says it was because he attacked another kid. They say the kid was in hospital for a month.'

I think about that for a moment. I think about New Guy, and his soft brown eyes and pulled-up socks.

‘I doubt that,' I say.

‘That's not all,' says Tahni. ‘James O'Keefe told me that when he got suspended, they found all this stuff in his locker – all these pictures of swords and armour and stuff. Like he was planning something.'

I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah, right,' I say. ‘Underneath those long, dark lashes, New Guy has the cold hard instincts of a killer.'

The bell rings. Tahni grabs my arm and hisses dramatically into my ear.

‘Just be careful,' she says. ‘Remember Camembert.'

As I wander back to my locker, I rack my brains. Camembert? Was there an incident where someone was suffocated with soft cheese? Is she telling me to think of Ben, and our picnic with the squishy cheese and the daisy garland?

I'm half an hour into Maths before I realise she meant Columbine.

4
er·satz

–noun; an artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute.

– A Wordsmith's Dictionary of Hard-to-spell Words

I'm in my bedroom, staring at my computer. I should be writing my essay on the pros and cons of the Australian system of government, but instead I'm trying to figure out whether my imaginary boyfriend is a Facebook kind of imaginary boyfriend, or a MySpace kind of imaginary boyfriend.

I settle on MySpace, because it's more public. And more artsy. Ben is definitely artsy.

I wonder what kind of background my imaginary boyfriend would have on his MySpace page. Nothing too cheesy. Maybe a classy black-and-white photo of a lake or a tree or something. I do a half-hearted search on Google Images, but then decide against it. If he did have a photo, it would be one he took himself, with some kind of compelling story that went with it, like he saved a three-year-old child from drowning in that lake just seconds after he took the photo. And given Ben doesn't exist, it'll be pretty hard to find a photo he took.

Plain white is too simple. Ben pays a lot of attention to detail. I'll have to go with a solid colour. Black's too emo. I try a mossy green (too earth-mothery) and a classic brown (too Poncy English Tweed Tally-ho Old Chaps), before settling on a nice, muted blue.

Right. Interests.

General:   
Photography, black-and-white movies, reading,
lacrosse
.

This is good. It shows he is the kind of boy who can talk about Hitchcock without sniggering, but is also athletic. Lacrosse is such a thinking-man's sport.

I think about adding ‘writing poetry', but perhaps that's pushing it a bit. There is such a thing as Going Too Far.

Music:     
This Broken Tree
,
The Beatles
,
Bob Dylan
,
Leonard Cohen

I don't really know much about music. I only know This Broken Tree because someone mentioned them in that TV show where ridiculously beautiful teenagers discover dead bodies in their swimming pools. All the others are from Dad's record collection. They seem like the kind of indie vintage music that Intellectual Boys might listen to. The phone rings downstairs. I let Dad pick it up. It's probably Mum, who is working late again. More two-minute noodles for dinner. I'll have to talk to Dad about expanding our culinary repertoire, at least to include soup-in-a-can and maybe some instant mac-and-cheese.

Movies:     
Rear Window
,
Psycho
, The Maltese Falcon, Gilda,
Finding Nemo
, The Muppets Take Manhattan.

I almost put
Casablanca
in, but even I've seen it, so I reckon it's too much of a cliché.
Finding Nemo
and
The Muppets Take
Manhattan
are there so he doesn't look too much like a wanker.

‘Midge!' Dad is knocking on my door. ‘Phone for you.'

He opens the door with the cordless in his hand. I quickly minimise the MySpace project and tap away at my Politics essay.

‘It's a
boy
,' says Dad, a delighted look on his face. Aren't Dads supposed to be all ‘don't touch my daughter' protective? What happened to the Man-to-Man talk about how My Daughter is a Special and Precious Flower and If You Touch Her Breasts I'll Remove Your Kneecaps? Parents these days, I tell you.

I grab the phone off him, push him out the door and slam it shut, just as he starts singing that ‘Ring Ring' song by Abba.

The stupid thing? I have no idea who might be on the phone. What boy? A boy has never called me. It's probably a telemarketer trying to sell me a dodgy phone plan. But the thing is, I have this funny, tickly, bubbly nervous feeling inside. Because even though it's not possible, I'm kinda hoping it's Ben, calling long-distance just to hear my voice.

I've never Talked To a Boy on the Phone before. What if I don't do it right? What if he loses interest because I don't know how to say the right things? What if he wants to . . . you know. Have
phone sex
? I am briefly consoled by the fact that Ben doesn't actually exist, but then the bubbles come up again because I really
want
it to be him.

Yeah, I'm crazy. I put the phone to my ear. ‘Hello?'

It isn't Ben.

‘Hi, it's George.'

For a moment, I think,
Who's George?
I don't know a George. Then I realise it's New Guy. Wizard-drawing, socks-pulled-up, biscuit-scented, long-eyelashes, Columbine-camembert New Guy.

‘Oh,' I say, trying not to be too disappointed that my First Ever Phone Call From a Boy is not from my imaginary boyfriend, but instead from the daggy, possibly psychotic new kid who I have to do some lame project with in English. ‘Hi.'

What if Tahni is right? What if he really is a killer? What if he's decided to fall in love with me and he's going to stalk me and take off my skin and then eat me alive?

‘So I was thinking about our project,' he says.

‘How did you get this number?' I interrupt. Maybe he's some sort of freakishly intelligent, evil hacker who's installed a miniature surveillance camera inside my toothbrush so he can watch me pee.

There is a slight pause. ‘White Pages dot com,' he says. ‘How else?'

I'm sure that's what all the serial killers say.

‘So . . .' he says. ‘The project?'

I wonder if Ben has seen
Silence of the Lambs
.

‘I was thinking that we could do something about secrets,' he says.

I stiffen. What kind of secrets? His secret about the skinless women in his dungeon? Or does he know my secrets from watching via my toothbrush-cam? Does he know? He couldn't possibly.

‘Secrets?' I say. My voice goes squeaky, and I cough to disguise it.

‘You know,' he says. (I don't.) ‘Like how even though we're living in an entirely connected world, where communication has never been so open and accessible, people still have just as many secrets as ever. If not more.'

I stare at Ben's MySpace page. New Guy doesn't know how right he is. At least I hope he doesn't know.

‘Midge?' he says. ‘Are you still there?'

I jerk back to the real world. ‘Yep,' I say. ‘Still here. Secrets. Fantastic.'

‘So you think it's a good idea?'

‘Sure,' I say. I hear it's a good idea to humour potential killers. ‘But what would we actually do?'

‘I don't know yet,' New Guy says. ‘I did a bit of googling, and found a couple of quotes. Benjamin Franklin said, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”'

OMG. Did he just make a threat? Is he saying he's going to kill me? Who is Benjamin Franklin, anyway? Some dead American, I think.