After All Fool’s day, the candidates were given more freedom. We were allowed to wake up at our leisure on certain days, and we had fewer exercise sessions. That last part may be because the heat of summer made the gaming fields too unpleasant even for the chargers. Overall, we had proved ourselves as promising candidate soldiers and were, for the most part, considered trustworthy.
Roth and his bunkmates were the exceptions. They became the special targets of Charger Denz for several months, until the charger admitted that the glitter catapult had, in fact, been rather ingenious. I think he realized that the four broad-shouldered dolts could not have come up with it themselves, and so he took pity on them as his fellow glitter-soaked victims. They still failed inspection, frequently, for
