Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(106)

“I understand.”

Her mother closes the cold cream jar. “That’s very nice of you, Jennifer. Very mature,” she says, and the word feels like something Jenny wants to scrape off her shoe and hurl in her mother’s face.

Jenny hasn’t spoken to Frau Hermann since their fight. But she has a phone and Jenny needs to call Lena and let her know what’s going on. She wonders if Frau Hermann will know that she’s using her. If she will care. If this makes Jenny a bad person, or at least not the person she’s always thought she was. But when she knocks at Frau Hermann’s door, there’s no answer.

Across the hall, Martina opens her front door wearing the Hardy Boys T-shirt. “She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

Martina shrugs. “She left with her suitcase this morning. Probably she cast a spell on the wrong person and they died and now she has to escape before the police arrive. I’ll bet there’s a dead body in her apartment. We will know soon by the smell.”

Martina says all of this without a shred of a smile.

“Okay. Thanks. Martina, could I just use your phone really quick, please?”

Martina folds her arms across the Hardy Boobs. “You got me in trouble with my mother. For lying.”

“Sorry.”

“She says you can’t come over anymore.”

“Sorry,” Jenny says, though she doubts it’s a hardship for either of them.

“I heard you cut all your hair off.”

“Yeah.” Jenny removes the scarf. Martina can’t hold back her scowl.

“Why?”

This is impossible to sum up. “I felt like it.”

“You’re really weird.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.”

Martina twirls a lock of her own thick hair. “So can I have your curling iron? I mean, you don’t need it, right?”

Jenny peers over the banister at the door to the street. “Martina, are you the only one who saw Frau Hermann leave?”

Martina shrugs. “I suppose.”

Jenny has an idea. “Thanks. You can have the curling iron. Just don’t tell anybody you saw me, okay?”

Martina shakes her head. “Are all Americans as strange as you?”



* * *



On the train ride to Kreuzberg, a group of middle-aged women stare at Jenny. Instinctively, she touches her bristly scalp. She’s never been looked at so much. She doesn’t like it. She tells herself that this is the new her. But is it? Lena would stare back until those women looked away. Jenny isn’t Lena. She takes her mother’s scarf from around her neck and wraps her head in it.

She walks quickly from the station, desperate to explain everything to Lena, to kiss her, to do more of what they did last time. When Jenny arrives at the squat, the girls are at the scarred wooden table. Lena blows an angry plume of smoke from a half-gone cigarette. “Where the hell have you been?”

“My parents were pissed off about my hair,” Jenny says, trying to strike a balance between contrite and defensive. “They totally grounded me.”

“And what, you couldn’t let me know?”

“They wouldn’t let me use the phone, Lena. What was I supposed to do?”

“Why are you so afraid of your parents? They aren’t the Stasi!” Lena sneers.

Jenny starts to cry. She hates herself for it. It’s embarrassing, especially in front of Zehra and Anke. “I don’t get to live like you, Lena. My world has rules.”

“Always the good little girl. Do you want to be one of us or not?”

“Lena, sei nicht so gemein,” Anke says. Don’t be mean, Lena.

Lena lets out a shuddering breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just … I don’t like not knowing where people are. I don’t like it when people just leave me like that.”

“I wouldn’t have left you,” Jenny says. “Never.”

Lena runs over and pulls Jenny into her arms and Jenny forgets everything except how much she loves Lena.

“Do this later,” Anke says. “What is your news, Lena?”

Jenny realizes she’s walked in on something.

Lena grins like it’s Christmas. “I got us a gig. Not a squat party—a real punk gig. Every band worth hearing will be there. And us. We are playing.”

“When?” Zehra asks.

“Saturday.”

“Is it SO36?” Anke asks.

“Better,” Lena answers.

“What could be better than SO36?” Zehra asks.

“A church,” Lena says. “In Treptow.”

Anke looks to Zehra and back to Lena. “You’re joking.”

“Listen: Everyone who matters will be there. Wutanfall. Planlos. Namenlos. And us. Sophie Scholl.”

“Lena…” Anke trails off into a head shake.

“What’s Treptow?” Jenny asks.

But now the girls are arguing very fast in German. It’s heated. Jenny only catches some of the words—Crazy. Suicidal. No.

“What’s Treptow?” Jenny shouts above the din. “Don’t make me whistle!”

“It’s a neighborhood in East Berlin,” Zehra says, her face serious.

East Berlin. Across the wall.