It's Jack, Mate.

When I was fifteen I was the life of the party. Parents going away for three days? Say no more, pass me the phone - I'll make the calls to all the coolest kids in school.

But first, let me perfect my accent so that they don't know it's me.

Ah yes. Teenage dreams are all they'll be for the girl who was too afraid to talk to boys... unless she was pretending to be one. On that note, let me take you back to 2011, the year in which I was able to share a conversation with my high-school crush for the first and only time.

My parents were going away for three days, so my best friend - Danni -came over to keep me company. We had all that two teenage girls could need to prepare for a wild weekend. Stocked up on chips and candy? Yep. Bed-fort built and stable? You betcha. Only one thing was missing...

Prank calls.

We procured the phone book.

We call it 'The Yellow Pages' in Australia - It's where you can find a list of everyone's family name accompanied by their region and phone number - and we scoured the pages for our first target. We had two criteria;

1. It had to be one of the popular boys, and
2. It had to be someone with an uncommon name (thus, making him easier to find)

For the sake of clarity, the targets of my prank calls will be referred to not by name, but by the number in which they were called; One, Two, and Three.

After only a few minutes we found the home phone of a popular boy from school. Only three other families shared his name, so there would be a thirty-three percent chance that our first call would go directly to him. It took longer than a few minutes to gather the courage to call, but we weren't going to let this night be a bust. After almost an hour of arguing back and forth, Danni agreed to be the one to dial, as long as I did the talking.

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and Danni pressed call.

The phone rang

The receiver picked up, "Hello?" The voice of a friendly Mother resounded down the line.

Danni perked, "Hi, I was just wondering if One was home?" she said sweetly.

"Of course, let me go get him," answered the warm voice. Danni squeaked, and thrust the phone to my chest. I held it to my ear and waited.

Danni and I had decided that your run-of-the-mill telemarketer prank simply wouldn't do, nor were we basic enough to settle for a classic one-liner. We'd spent enough time in Drama class to be comfortable with theatrics, and I had a reputation (among friends) for possessing a very convincing Aussie Bloke accent. It sounded something like this;

Conveniently, amongst the popular boys resided the blokeiest of all blokes known to Australia kind. His name was Jack. I decided I would be him.

I closed my eyes and let the persona wash over me.

One's voice broke the silence, "Hello?"

"Yeah hey Mate, how ya doin'?" I asked, voice drawling deep and slow.

One was silent on the other end, clearly confused. He cleared his throat, and asked "umm... who's this?"

I feigned at being aghast, "Whaddya mean who's this? It's Jack, mate."

Danni held her hands to her mouth, holding back a giggle.

"Jack?" One paused, "Nah it's not you mate, who is it?"

"... Don't even know ya friend when 'e's talking to ya." I shook my head in disgust.

"This isn't Jack!" One almost shouted from the other end.

"Whaddya talking about mate, I think I'd know if I wasn't me, mate."

The conversation continued like this for thirteen minutes. We argued back and forth about my true identity, but I refused to budge or to break character. Eventually, One hang up in a fit of rage, causing Danni and I to burst out laughing.

Keen for more, we scoured the pages for our next target. Bingo. Popular boy with an uncommon name; Target number Two. We called him, hell-bent on the same story we'd told his friend, and managed to keep him on the line for five minutes before he slammed the phone down in frustration. Neither he nor the other boy had any clue who was on the other end, so Danni and I went to bed giddy with the power that comes from anonymity.

When I went to school the next day I resumed life as a regular shy and quiet girl. I chat with my friends by the bag racks and watched as Jack sauntered 'round the corner. My conversation was cut short when a single sentence broke through the chatter and froze me in place.

"Hey Jack... did you call me last night?" It was Target Number One.

Jack frowned, "Called you? Whaddya mean?"

Two paused his conversation as well, and shared a glance with One, "Yeah I got a call too," he added, eyeing Jack with curiosity.

"-Yeah man," One intercepted, "they said they were you."

I covered my face, unable to hide the smile creeping onto my lips.

"I swear when I find out who it is" One continued, "I'll bash him."

Him

I hid behind the bag racks and let my laughter wash over me. They had legitimately believed that I was a man. Not only that, but somehow the call had been so convincing that they had to ask Jack, personally, if it was him who had called.

It was decided. I passed the information on to Danni, and the calls would continue that night.

She came over again after school, and we broadened our horizons to the boys with more common names. We called everyone in the area that shared the same last name until we finally managed to reach our Third Target. And what a target he was. Wizened to the prank calls, he knew to expect us. He held us on the line for almost an hour, which was very much to my liking, considering the giant crush I had on him at the time.

He kept me on the line by asking that I prove to him that I was indeed who I said I was. An easy task, for a wallflower. As all wallflowers know, you don't need to do any legitimate stalking to find out all there is to know about a person; you only have to listen. So I answered all of Three's questions (about himself and Jack) with flawless ease.

Unfortunately, Three's parents didn't see this depository of wisdom about their son and his friends as harmless fun, and they called back immediately after the call had ended.

Their rage turned to warmth when they heard my delicate female voice on the other end - they were clearly expecting a young man - so they calmly requested that I cease the prank calls, and alert their son of my true identity.

Reluctantly, I did, and in return, he agreed to keep my secret and one other thing... He passed along the home phone of the one and only, Jack.

The next day at school Three played his part.

"I got a call from Jack," he alerted the group. A bustle of chatter followed,

"Do you know who it is?" "Did you get his name?" "What did he say?"

Three shook his head and turned to Jack, "Just said he was you, man" He avoided meeting my gaze, and I could see the mischief behind his blue eyes. He liked being in on the secret, and he knew as well as I what was coming later that night.

I got home from school and I dialled the number Three had given me. The receiver picked up, and Jack's voice rang through the other end, "hello?" He was already tentative.

"Hey mate, how's it goin'?" I casually dropped.

"Who is this?" He said, already anticipating the answer.

I paused for dramatic effect, "It's Jack, mate."

Jack let out an exasperated sigh, "Nah mate, I'm Jack." He insisted.

"Naaah mate," I dragged it out. "...I'm Jack."

Funny, how a conversation about who the real Jack is can last for over an hour, especially when you're talking to the real Jack. And it did. We talked about everything under the sun, always circling back to questions about who I really was, to which I would politely remind him,

"I'm Jack, mate."

and he would sigh in exasperation. Nearing an hour and a half we ran out of things to discuss, but I didn't let my persona drop at any point. We concluded that conversation, both persisting that we were the real 'Jack'.

Oh, the things you argue about when you're fifteen and have nothing better to do.

I ended the call streak the day after and continued my life in the shadows, occasionally listening in on chatter about, "that Jack fella". One Friday afternoon - about two weeks after the calls ended - I decided to casually put the mystery to an end. I was in IT class with One, and he was reiterating his plans to *bash* whoever it was that pretending to be his friend. I casually cut in on his conversation, and simply said, "I'm Jack."

One froze.

"Are you going to bash me?" I continued, casually.

He blushed, "Nah nah nah" he said scratching the back of his head. He frowned, clearly struggling to place my face to the voice he'd heard over the phone, but he brushed it off after a moment, seemingly uncomfortable that his plans now seemed to involve getting into a punch-up with a girl. He apologised, and turned back to friends, changing the topic as if he'd never received a call in the first place.

I was satisfied with the response, and I knew One and Three would pass on the information to the other boys, but I wanted to be the person to tell Jack to his face. At the end of the day, I waited by the busway that I knew Jack walked past on his way home. I leaned casually against the wall, chatting with my friend as Jack walked by, not sparing me a second glance. When he was a relative distance away I called out - in my best Bloke-ish accent,

"It's Jack, mate!"

He spun around, searching the area for the suspect. With no men in sight, his eyes eventually landed on me. I smiled and he cracked a grin the size of Cheshire's. With a congratulatory shake of his head, he turned away from me and continued his walk home, casually concluding my prank-call career for good, and securing a low-key friendship that would last the remainder of our high-school days.

We didn't talk often, but when we did the conversations were absurd and filled with laughter. I look back on that short friendship fondly and still have a chuckle over the memes we used to share.