Anton Roscoe is another teenager at Central Hardin. He loves internet memes, hummus, and his dogs. He boxes and plays baseball. He carefully prays over each protein box at lunch, thankful for another day of safety. 

What one might not know is that his life has been fraught with the horror America has only seen on a TV screen. 

Black smoke whirled across the sky. The ground shook. Windows broke. 

As Roscoe and his mother Lana Bielovorova rushed into a bomb shelter, an official informed the Ukrainian military that terrorists were in there. They were wrong. Ukrainian troops shot at the metal door, hitting his mom in the back and leg. 

She was rushed to the hospital while the rest of the city descended into chaos. While she was staying there, bombs came back in the night. The medical staff hurried down to the basement. They left Bielovorova on a higher floor. 

The family lived in a church for a few days, and Roscoe’s German shepherd stayed there. When they left, his dog barked incessantly, as if it knew that he was leaving forever. 

He boarded a train to Warsaw with over 100 people. Passengers slept on the floor and crowded into the small quarters. The ride was 20 hours long.

One might expect him to have a negative opinion of the school he was so quickly thrust into because of the war. However, Roscoe only had positive things to say. 

According to Roscoe, the school food is amazing and the classes are uncomplicated, even for someone who’s new to the English language. 

“Ukraine is hard;” he said. “This is easy.”