Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(107)

Anke drums her fingers nervously against the top of the scarred table. “The Stasi will be all over that show, Lena.”

“The Stasi could be anywhere, Anke. For all I know, you’re an IM.”

“Beiss meinen Arsch, Lena!”

“Komm schon. K?mpfe nicht,” Zehre says, hands out like a peacekeeper.

“Do you want to play safe music, is that it, Anke? Are you a real punk or just a tourist?”

Lena’s words have done their work. Anke stares at her feet, cowed.

“They don’t let punks into the DDR. How do we get across looking like this?” Zehra wants to know.

“We don’t go looking like this. We look like boring, ordinary, bourgeois West German girls. And once we get to the show, we look like ourselves,” Lena says with the same charismatic enthusiasm that gets them free stuff all the time, as if saying no is an absolutely futile gesture in the face of her bulldozer brand of Lena logic and charm.

“What if they stop us at the border? They could hold us ten minutes or three hours,” Anke says. “We could end up missing the gig.”

“We won’t miss it,” Lena insists.

“What about going home? They’ll know we played the gig. They’ll detain us. Maybe all night.” Anke has lit a cigarette, which she smokes with ferocity.

“We’re from West Berlin. They have to let us go eventually. And Dallas will threaten to call the embassy,” Lena says, as if that settles it.

Jenny gets a funny tickle in her stomach. She’s being drafted into an unknown cause. And she’s still grounded. She might still be grounded by Saturday if she can’t work her mother. How will she even get loose for this gig?

“Look, if we play this show, we can tell everyone that we played with the best bands in the DDR where it actually matters, where punk is a real political movement. After that, we walk into any of the clubs here like we are someone!”

“I don’t know, Lena,” Zehra says. “It’s risky.”

“Too risky,” Anke says, putting out her smoke with the same murderous intent.

Lena’s lips tighten into a crooked line; her eyes narrow with tears. “You say you believe but you’re just phonies! In another few years, you’ll be dropping babies and shopping at KaDeWe!”

“Küss meinen Arsch, Lena!” Anke spits back, and they’re fighting again.

But the comment has burrowed under Jenny’s skin. This is the future that will happen to her if she continues hiding parts of who she is in order to make other people comfortable. The good little girl.

She won’t do it, can’t do it any longer. She wants to be completely herself, whatever that is, wherever it leads. She wants to be a punk song full of truth and fury and ragged glory.

“I say we go,” she says firmly.

The argument comes to an abrupt halt. Anke and Zehra look at Jenny as if seeing her for the first time.

“I mean, yeah. Let’s do this! All we have is now, right?”

Lena puts her arm around Jenny, and this is all Jenny has wanted, all she wants, period. “You see? Dallas wants to go. She’s braver than both of you.”

“Because she doesn’t know,” Anke says.

“So, what happens? Do we drive over?” Jenny asks.

Anke snorts. “We don’t do anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re American. You need to go through at Checkpoint Charlie.”

It’s dawning on Jenny. “Wait. By myself?”

“You’ll be okay,” Lena promises.

“What about her hair?” Zehra says. “It won’t match her passport picture.”

“Simple,” Lena says. “Dallas will just say she has cancer.”

“That’s dark even for you, Lena,” Anke says.

“Those bastards don’t deserve anything from us.”

“I have to lie to border guards?” Jenny says. Authority makes her nervous. Once, she’d gone into a liquor store with Marcy and Heather, who both had fake IDs. For the ten minutes they’d been in the store, Jenny had been so nervous that Marcy had whispered, “Wait for us outside. You’re gonna get us caught.”

But that was a roadside liquor store. This is East Germany.

Lena rubs Jenny’s back. “You can do it, Dallas.”

Jenny wants to believe in her bulletproof smile.

“We need to enter separately. Make sure you don’t have anything Western on you—not a cassette tape or any clothes with a label…” Lena is explaining so many rules about the border crossing that Jenny can barely keep up. She bites at her already ragged cuticle.

“Every Stasi informant will be at the church watching. It could be any of the punks there,” Zehra says, tapping her foot nervously.

“Why would the punks inform on other punks?” Jenny asks.

“The Stasi can make your life a misery. They can take you to prison for nothing. Keep you awake for hours. Torture you. Threaten your family. Unless you agree to cooperate. Unless you agree to spy on your friends, even your family.”

“Just don’t talk to anyone,” Lena says. “We go. We play. We leave. That’s it. And after this gig, we have the right to call ourselves Sophie Scholl.”

They practice for two hours. Something magical happens. Maybe because of the new sense of danger. Lena works vergib mir into a wail over Anke’s droning keys, Zehra’s manic drumming, and Jenny’s discordant, hostile violin. Lena’s growl rises higher, louder, a transcendent howl of pain that Jenny can feel deep in her belly. She’s played all sorts of pieces in orchestra back home but nothing has ever moved her like this moment unfolding among them now. By the time it’s over, Lena is on her knees, her T-shirt ripped open to expose her black bra. Jenny wipes sweat from her face. There’s a sheen on Zehra and Anke. They can all feel it. They’ve crossed a border of their own, from ragtag misfit collective to a real band with something to say.