alice klomp

A solid kick to Viktor’s balls brought him to the ground, but Noah wouldn’t let him go that easily. Several hard stomps pulverized the man’s legs, and then he seized his broken right arm and continued snapping the bones, along with his fingers. One might think the audience, having cheered through gruesome violence for fight after fight, would be overjoyed by this display of brutality, but it was the opposite. They were dead silent, feeling their earlier excitement wither with every pained howl, and when Noah twisted Viktor’s left arm until his broken bones tore through his flesh, many turned away, unable to watch anymore.

Chuckling and spitting up blood, Abner slowly got to his feet. “You’ll think you’ll win this just because you’re strong? You don’t know what real strength is, the strength of having friends at your side, cheering for you! As long as I have them and hope in my heart, I can never die!”

Towards the middle of the semester, Mrs. B. devised an assignment where we had to act out a soliloquy from any Shakespeare play. I chose Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from Julius Caesar. As we had to be in costume for extra credit, I brought a flat sheet to school to fashion into a toga of sorts. There was a supply closet in the front of the room where people could change. Boys would pretend to peek in the closet when girls were changing. There wasn’t much to see for the most part, as girls might throw a long night gown over their clothes to play Juliet. The door locked on the outside when closed completely, so the few kids with major changes could do so with some privacy.