Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(105)

They curl up like a pair of shells.

“I love you,” he whispers.

She falls asleep to the gentle reassurance of his breathing.

Sophie dreams of a dragon in the forest. After a long sleep, it has come awake, hungry and ready to strike. It opens its mouth. “Sophie…” Fists of dark-gray smoke punch from its flared nostrils, turning the forest into a world of fog. Everywhere she tries to run, the dragon’s tail slithers across the path.

“Sophie…”

The tail wraps around her. Tightens. She can’t breathe.

“Sophie! Get up!”

Someone is shaking her by the shoulders.

“Sophie, quickly! The shop is on fire!”

Sophie sits up as if she’s been slammed into waking. Her lungs are tight. Oily black smoke curls under the door crack. The air is thick. Hurriedly, she dresses, her fingers fumbling with buttons and shoelaces, her head fuzzy from lack of oxygen and fear. The paint has begun to bubble and peel. Karl covers them both with the blanket. He pushes Sophie behind him. “Stay back,” he says. When he opens the door, a powerful heat punches into the small room. It takes what little breath Sophie has been saving. She coughs. Her lungs fill with smoke and panic. The shop is in flames.

“Sophie,” Karl says. “Just stay close.”

The smoke is an ocean. Wave after wave of it billowing toward them. There is no time to save anything. Together, they run past the tinderbox of burning tables and scorched books. Karl singes his hand on the doorknob. He pulls it back with a gasp and, using the blanket, twists it open, and then they are outside, where Sophie coughs out smoke, pulls in great lungfuls of clean fall air. Neighbors scurry out of houses and down the street. The volunteer fire brigade arrives with a truck and hoses. Someone has gone for Sophie’s father. He hurries around the corner still in his dressing robe, slowing with each step, the anguish in his eyes. Everything he’s built is on fire. And Sophie knows it was deliberately set. Maybe by the police. Or one of the neighbors gawking now. Maybe Herr Binder, who had said, “The whole shop should burn.” This is her home. Was her home. And these, her people. And one of them, maybe more than one, has done this. It’s more than she can bear. She turns and runs, the blanket flying out behind her like a cape, passing Hanna in the street along the way.

“Sophie!” Hanna yells. She chases after her, calling her name, all the way down the slope to the lake. “Sophie!” she begs. “Please stop running from me!”

Sophie wanders into the brittling reeds. There’s nowhere left to go. She falls to her knees and howls. Hanna sinks down into the forgiving mud and wraps her arms around Sophie. She holds her tight.

“Maybe there is no saving the world, Hanna,” Sophie says through sobs. “Maybe we should just let it rot.”

“Oh, please, Sophie. Don’t you say that or I’ll believe there is no good left. Aren’t you the one who believes in happily ever after?”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“Then let me help you. Once upon a time,” Hanna begins. “There were two friends. The best of friends. Close as sisters.”

“You hate your sisters,” Sophie sniffles.

Hanna offers her sleeve. “Close as sisters without any of the annoying bits.”

Sophie manages a smile. She dries her eyes with the back of her hand. Clears her throat. “What else?”

“They lived in a magical forest. Real magic. The sort that you only read about in books.”

Hanna and Sophie sit facing the shore, listening to the persistence of water.

“Go on,” Sophie prompts.

“That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

“Well. It’s not a bad start.”

Hanna leans Sophie’s head against her shoulder.

They sit this way for a long, long time.





WEST BERLIN.


SUMMER 1980

Being grounded is torture. No TV. No phone. No going out. But worst of all, Jenny has been separated from Lena. She is forbidden to use the phone, which her parents keep locked in her father’s office now. She has no way of letting Lena know what has happened. Does Lena wonder? Will she show up under Jenny’s window shouting her name like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, a movie Richard made Jenny watch? Is she as sick with missing Jenny as Jenny is for her?

On the third day of her grounding, Jenny knocks on her mother’s bedroom door with her violin case in hand. She has wrapped her buzzed head in the Hermès scarf. She thinks it makes her look like she’s auditioning for a dinner theater version of Fiddler on the Roof but she knows it will make her mother feel vindicated, so: scarf.

“Could I go play for Frau Hermann?” she asks.

Her mother is at her vanity, rubbing cold cream on her elbows from a fat jar. She holds Jenny’s gaze in her mirror. “You’re grounded, Jennifer. Remember?”

“I know. But it’s just downstairs.” Jenny searches for the emotional key needed to unlock her mother’s resolve. “Mom, she doesn’t have anybody else. I think she’s lonely.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that.” Her mother sighs a tiny puff of fog onto the mirror. “I suppose that would be all right. I have to take Alison to the dentist and then we are going shopping for the afternoon. But I will expect you to come right back here after your visit with Frau Hermann. Is that understood?”