Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(113)

* * *



The week feels like the longest the girls have ever known. Finally, it is Saturday. Leon and Egon will be home on the afternoon train. It’s as if there’s a clock counting down the seconds inside of Sophie’s head. When the afternoon train arrives, Leon and Egon are not among the passengers. Three days pass with no word.

“They’ll be back,” Sophie promises.

A full week after Leon and Egon should have been home, Hanna and Sophie are hard at work in the attic. They have a backlog of papers to do before Egon and Leon return and put on the finishing touches. Hanna vomits into a bucket in the corner. She has been so sick with worry she can barely sew.

Karl gives the secret knock and slips into the room. He removes his cap. His face is ashen.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Sophie asks.

Karl looks briefly at his sister. “You were right, Hanna.”

Hanna grips the edge of the table. She looks as if she might fall down inside herself and not get back up.

“Leon and Egon went with Eagle to meet with the British spy. To show her our operation. It was a setup. The spy was actually a mole—German intelligence. All three of them were arrested and put on a truck.”

“Where were they taking them?” Sophie asks.

“Sachsenhausen,” Karl says, looking away.

“Oh no. No.” Sophie’s stomach clenches at the thought of the camp. She looks to Hanna, but it is as if her friend is not there. She only stares at the empty easel.



* * *



“Hanna, we will find him,” Sophie promises. It’s just the two of them. They’re lying on Sophie’s bed watching searchlights break across the ceiling. Hanna curls into Sophie. They are nose to nose like when they were children.

“No. He’s not coming back. I can feel it.”

“That’s what we thought about Karl once.”

“No. No.”

Hanna goes quiet. Even her tears, which Sophie can see in the strafe of the Klieg lights, are silent. “Sophie,” she whispers. “I’m in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

Hanna squeezes Sophie’s hands, bites her lip.

“Oh. Oh, Hanna, Hanna!” Sophie says at last. She pulls Hanna into her arms. “How far gone?”

“Far enough.”

Sophie brushes Hanna’s hair from her face. “I won’t ever let anything bad happen to you. I swear it on the Norn. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know.” Hanna nods.

“What do you want to do?”

Hanna turns her back to Sophie, who flings a protective arm across Hanna’s belly.

“Whatever I have to do.”

Sophie wakes early to find her bed empty. Frantic, she throws on her robe and searches the house. When she can’t find Hanna, she goes out into the street. A fog has come up overnight. It turns the roads and houses into unfamiliar shapes. Sophie weaves toward the lake in time to see Hanna stumbling back up the hill. Through the fog, Sophie can make out Oskar buttoning his trousers down by the reeds.

Sophie reaches out and takes Hanna’s cold hands. “Hanna?”

“It’s done,” Hanna says.



* * *



For weeks, they keep up appearances as they wait anxiously for any word of Leon’s and Egon’s fates. Karl continues to work at the barracks. The girls attend school and BDM meetings. When Oskar comes to court Hanna, she gives him a bright smile that Sophie can tell is nothing more than acting on Hanna’s part.

The winter solstice is approaching. The longest night of the year. There will be a tree and cookies and celebrations.

Three days before the solstice, the air turns bitter with the threat of snow. The garret is freezing. Sophie and Karl have been trying to copy Egon’s work but they haven’t his artistic skill and their fingers are too cold besides. Sophie grieves to think of the people who cannot escape now.

Hanna rushes into the garret, pale and nearly out of breath.

“What is it?” Sophie says, coming out from behind the desk. “What has happened?”

“I have gossip from Oskar. He overheard Herr Jaeger say that the SS are close to breaking Leon. They believe he will confess very soon.”

“Then they’ll know about us,” Karl says.

Hanna stokes the stove and tosses in the ink blocks. “I’ve already gotten word to Hawk that we need papers right away.”

“For what?” Sophie says. Her mind jumps, unable to land anywhere.

Hanna turns to Sophie and Karl. “It’s no longer safe here. We have to leave Kleinwald.”

“When?” Sophie says.

“The night of the solstice.”





EAST BERLIN, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.


SUMMER 1980

At 6:00 p.m., Jenny approaches the sandbagged border crossing at Checkpoint Charlie. Two hours earlier, Otto and Jenny made the reverse trip through Berlin’s streets to Tegel Airport, where Jenny checked her mostly empty bag through to Dallas and waved goodbye to Otto. Then she’d left the airport, taking a series of trains and buses to the squat. If everything is going according to plan, Anke and Zehra are now driving across at Sonnenallee with Anke’s keyboards and Jenny’s violin. Lena is taking the train at Friedrichstrasse. Jenny’s purse holds a packet of tissues, a dark-wine lipstick, her passport, and thirty deutsche marks—twenty-five of which she will need to exchange, plus five to purchase a day visa. Beneath her pink button-down shirt, she’s wearing a men’s white undershirt with Sophie Scholl scrawled across the front, which she’s turned inside out. Around her head is her mother’s Hermès scarf.