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

"Where is it?!" thought Laura to herself as she dug through her bag furiously, throwing bits and pieces of clothing over her shoulder. 


"I know I packed it-or did I? Ugh!" Suddenly, a cough from behind her drew her attention.


Standing there was Matt, who just got back from the bathroom. One of her shirts that she haphazardly threw seemed to have landed on his head. He removed the shirt from his face and threw it on the floor, where the rest of her clothes laid.


"Just what are you doing?" he asked, his face lacking any emotion.


"I'm looking for my sleeping shirt. Have you seen it anywhere?"


"No. I don't even know what shirt you sleep in," he said as he laid down on his bed and grabbed his notebook.


"You know! I had it with me when we went to Vienna last year!"


"Well, can you give a description of it?"


"Ooh, big shocker there," she picked up her bottle of shampoo and flung it at his head. 


Chapter 31