If I started by saying: it all began right before my seventeenth birthday (fade to image of me walking along the road at age almost seventeen, in a half massacred school uniform) anyway if I were to start with that, how hard would you hit me? I’m just curious! All right…all right…an alternative start…how about…

It all started with a boy…no? Still too ‘bad teen romance’? Fair enough…I’d probably hit me too…Ok I feel that this encapsulates me slightly better and is probably more your speed…

Leather jacket, dark hair and cigarette smoke.

Carlos Barât liked that he was pretty near summed up by these words. Made him feel cool…like playing guitar wasn’t merely something he did shut up in his bedroom but something people ooed and ahed at and paid money to come and see.

Walking along the road, cigarette hung between pursed lips, he felt that rock-stardom was not completely beyond the realms of possibility.

Dreams of a future as 1995’s answer to Jimi Hendrix however, were fairly brilliantly flattened by the tinny clang of the school bell signalling that Carl was late. Again.

Now for some people ‘again’ might imply the second or third time this week…for Carl, he was fairly certain it meant the nine hundred and thirty eighth time…quite a feat considering it was only two weeks into the start of term.

He dropped his fag distractedly on the concrete of the ‘playground’, slipped in through the side door and prayed to whatever deity - who happened to be paying attention to a dilatory closet-homosexual almost-seventeen year old lad from a stupidly dull town outside London - that the head of year had stopped lurking in the corridor and had gone peaceably and helpfully back to the confines of her office. Carl was sure that if he was a deity he could find far more interesting things to pay attention to than him...many far more interesting things…

The gods were, apparently, on his side for once, as the corridor was empty of everyone, including the head of year, who’d have dragged him into her office by his ear in a heartbeat if she caught him trying to get to registration ten minutes late.

His form teacher, thankfully for everyone involved, was a German teacher with a thick accent and spectacles to match, who seemed to spend most of his time telling stories that started with the words ‘when I was a boy…in Munich, my mother always said to me…’ it was then that he’d go off on a tangent about whatever it was his mother had always told him and promptly forget his students existence. It was therefore, almost laughably easy for him to slip into the classroom and into his seat without being noticed and dragged to the year heads office by his ear.

There was a fundamental flaw in his plan today however. The slipping into the classroom bit went as he had intended, but when he got to his seat he found he could not slip into it as phase two of the plan dictated, because it was already occupied.

So fixed, had Carl’s attention been on Mr. Vilhelm, that he had completely failed to notice the boy sitting in his seat until he was practically sitting on him.

"Bloody hell! Who are you?" Carl blurted before the brain-mouth link had recovered from the shock of finding this stranger in a place where he was not expected.

The boy’s eyes widened as his mouth formed a smirk, twisting his face into an odd mixture of deer-in-headlights and wry amusement.

"Peter Doherty." He said holding out a long thin hand.

Carl blinked at him, and took his offered hand before his brain had registered what he was doing.

"You’re in my seat." He said dumbly

"Am I?" Peter Doherty asked in what appeared to be genuine interest

"Yes." Carl replied shortly realising with a jolt that he had still been mechanically shaking the boy’s hand.

"Oh." Peter said. He let Carl’s hand go, picked up the notebook that had lay in front of him, on the desk and slid slowly and deliberately over a seat.

Carl sat down.

Peter Doherty promptly turned back to his notebook and seemed to become instantly absorbed in whatever it was he was scribbling. Carl turned his attention away from this strange new apparition and back to the front where Mr. Vilhelm was rambling on about…something or other. Carl heard the words "…and in discussion with the PTA it has been decided…" and promptly decided that he couldn’t sum up the energy to care.

During the course of the next half and hour Carl got the sneaking suspicion that Peter had been stealing looks at him when he thought Carl wouldn’t notice.

Carl was mildly shocked when a small slip of paper found its way to his desk. He unfolded it slowly, almost as if it would disappear in a wisp of smoke if he stared at it too long.

‘Dear boy with the mysterious name and eyes to match,
I just feel that you ought to know, that I think I would find it very very easy to fall in love with you.Yours sincerely,
Peter Doherty’

Carl turned to look at the boy beside him who was still scribbling away showing absolutely no indication that he had sent anything at all to Carl, let alone something like this.

"Wha’…?" was the only thing that managed to find its way out of his mouth.

This was going to be a very odd day…he could just tell.