“Anyway I was in the school nurse’s office now recovering from my slit wrists. Snap and Loopin and HAHRID were there too. They were going to St. Mango’s after they recovered cause they were pedofiles and you can’t have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot gurlz. Dumbledore had constipated the cideo camera they took of me naked. I put up my middle finger at them.”

“In my opinion, this school and its contemporaries were nothing more than cheap merchants of social status, selling an inflated sense of self-worth to middle-class boys of no particular merit.I will, however, grant them something. Without the first school, I would not have ended up at the second. Without the second, I would not have attended St Oswald's. Without St Oswald's, I would not have met Finn.Without Finn, there would be no story.”

“Let me guess: you were one of those kids who had a chair dedicated to you in detention in school.""Was not. They retired my chair after it sort of accidentally caught on fire. There's a plaque there now.”

“I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.”

“Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?""What? No.""It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible.""Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say."Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-""Oh,no. Public school."He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back.""But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush.St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps."I laugh."So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America.”

“The longest I have ever gone without sex is sixteen years. But to my credit, elementary and middle school were rough dating years.”