James Moloney's young adult fiction ‘Touch Me’, captures the essences of growing up as well as the issues and hardships faced along the way. Xavier Mclachlan’s romance with the feisty Nuala Magee has caused him and his once close yet stereotypical friends to drift apart; so much so that he no longer cares about their opinion. This creates a lot of tension between them until they eventually fall out at the formal; ‘ It’s mates when it’s football, always mates when there’s some kind of enemy, but where were my mates at the formal? I needed you that night but you walked away.’ (pg. 305). Some of the fundamental components that led to this event include the lack of respect between Xavier and his mates as they did not accept each other's choices,
