Aljoša Rodinger, pen name AL Rodinger, is a 21-year-old writer and amateur boxer currently studying history and English literature at the University of Maribor. He was born on 1.7.1999 in Maribor, Slovenia and attended the Rada Robič Elementary School in Limbuš. He began to take interest in the English language from a very early age and by the beginning of his 6th grade was already a fluent speaker of the language. After finishing his elementary school education, he attended the First Grammar School in Maribor as a student of the classics, where he was exposed to a lot of in-depth history, as well as both Latin and ancient Greek. It is there where he began and later on finished writing his book, Killjoys. It is also around this time where he began practicing boxing. After graduating, he enrolled in the University of Maribor as a student of both history and English literature. Currently, he is also employed at the Marbior Slovene National Theatre as an usher. 

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son.”

These are the words that start our tale of four friends, their deep and personal friendship and their own coming of ages, where they finally come to terms with their own flaws and manage to find perfection in being imperfect and broken. It is a story about accepting yourself with all of your strengths and weakness, living life with all of its ups and downs, experiencing pain and joy, confronting both your inner demons as well as the people closest to you. 

Our character’s lives are entwined with discrimination, hatred, addiction and death, yet it always seems that there is some resemblance of light, of contempt at the end of the dark and long tunnel before us. We just simply have to find a way to get to it and make our own path.

Killjoys

Maria snapped her eyes open, as she awoke from her dream. The setting sun coloured the room in a bright orange colour where Angelica was leaning on the bed.


"Finally, you have been asleep for like fifteen years," commented Angelica. 


"Listen, I have to go, but I'll come back tomorrow. We did a lot of work today," Angelica grabbed her green bag and started heading out the door, Maria quickly following behind. 


They walked out on the front porch and found Arnaldo and Laura sitting outside and enjoying some Ice tea. 


"And where might you two be going?" asked Arnaldo.


"I have to get going, I have fencing practice."


"School champion! Next month, she's gonna try her hand at the nationals! Though, knowing her, she's already got this one beat," proclaimed Maria as Angelica looked bashful and uncomfortable. 


"Sound interesting. We'll be sure to come and support you!" proclaimed Arnaldo.


"But fencing is so boring!" whined Laura, which elicited a groan of annoyance from Arnaldo.


"Ok, fine. Maria and I will go. You can stay here and bore yourself to death then," Laura huffed, folded her arms across her chest and slumped back on her patio chair.


Shortly after, a white limo pulled up to the house. The driver door opened and out stepped an old man, with a grey beard and black eyebrows, dressed in a pure white limo driver suit with white gloves and a dark blue accent. On his suit was a small pin of a deer with a crown. He opened the back seat door.


"Straecht tae haem, Miss Deforest?" he asked with a thick Scottish accent. 


"Oui. Merci, Aifric." sighed Angelica as she stepped into the limo. Aifric turned to the rest of them and lifted the tip of his hat a little with a warm smile before stepping inside the limo and driving away, while Maria waved after them.


"So, how did it go?" asked Arnaldo as Maria sighed and stared sadly into the distance.


"Maria, we've been over this; you can't keep these feelings pent up forever. You have to tell her sooner or later. I think that she deserv-"


"It doesn't even matter!" screamed Maria. "Even if she was a lesbian, she would never want to date me! she is the last remaining heir to a French noble house and I'm what?! A nobody! With nothing to my name!" she continued to shout as tears rolled down her cheek like waterfalls and dripped down from her chin onto the wooden patio. 


"She's a princess, but I'm not her knight. I'm a nobody, who can only dream of dating her-" she whispered to the ground. 


Laura quickly stood up and squeezed her little sister tightly and Maria buried herself in her chest and cried, her sobs raking her body, her nose running and her tears falling uncontrollably.


"Shh, Shh-It's okay-just let it out-big sis is here for you-" cooed Laura as she stroked the Italian girl's hair.


"I know Maria-" Laura let out a long sigh. 


They stood like that in an embrace. For how long, no one knew.


Chapter 15