Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(12)
Hanna leaned back on her elbows. Her smile was coy. “I might have.”
Sophie put down her pencil. “What? You never told me!” The betrayal was like the sudden prick of a thorn. “Who?”
“You can’t tell anyone. Swear it.”
“I swear on my honor as a priestess of the Norn.” She was trying to pretend this was a normal conversation.
“Honestly, Sophie.”
“Fine. I swear as myself.”
“Oskar,” Hanna said at last.
Sophie let out a screech. “No, Hanna, no! Not Oskar!” Of all the boys in Kleinwald, he was her least favorite. She couldn’t imagine his lips on Hanna’s.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you!”
“I’m sorry. It’s just … Oskar Gerber?”
“I felt sorry for him.”
Hanna never felt sorry for anyone. Sophie’s mother called her The Barbarian: What did you and The Barbarian get up to today? That one’s a bit feral. Don’t let her lead you into any trouble, Sophie.
“I told him it was just once and that it would never happen again, so he needn’t bother asking. But he still looks at me sometimes like a lost puppy hoping for a soup bone. It’s very irritating.” There was The Barbarian.
“Where was it?”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “On my mouth, of course.”
“I do know how kissing works,” Sophie said, though, in truth, she knew nothing beyond that part. She didn’t know if you were supposed to shut your eyes or press with your lips or simply stand there and wait for them to be met by another’s. “I meant where where?”
“Oh. Down by the river. The reedy spot near the rowboats. We were walking and he suddenly asked if he could kiss me and I couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t.”
“When was this?”
“When the weather turned. The first week of May.”
Three months. A lifetime ago. “Why didn’t you tell me then?” Sophie said quietly.
“A woman is allowed her secrets. When you’re fifteen, you’ll understand.”
“But I’m your best friend.” Sophie didn’t want to sound hurt but it was too hard to hide.
“This is the sort of thing I’m talking about!” Hanna groaned. “It’s immature, Sophie.”
Sophie regretted teaching Hanna that word.
“Look, Klara may be a pill but she isn’t wrong. We can’t spend so much time in the forest playing games like children or writing silly letters to a tree. Now that we have moved up from the Jungm?delbund to the Bund Deutscher M?del with all the older girls, we have to act like the older girls. We’re … well, we’re women now, Sophie.”
It was easy for Hanna to say. Her athleticism made her a model German, prized by the Reich. She was headstrong and pretty. Or perhaps she was headstrong because she was pretty. It seemed as if the world allowed pretty girls to do and say things for which they punished ordinary girls. Sophie was an ordinary girl—quiet and bookish, with hair the dull brown of a sparrow. She had not yet grown into her eyes, which were the largest part of her heart-shaped face. They made her look like a startled doe. Hanna would have no trouble finding a boy—any boy—to love her. Meanwhile, the Bridegroom’s Oak felt like Sophie’s only hope at romance.
“Still. It would be rude not to respond to the brothers’ letter,” Sophie said pointedly. I am no Barbarian. She signed her name, then offered the pencil to Hanna, who refused it. Sophie forged Hanna’s signature. Her own act of defiance. “Bless it with the seidr wand,” she said, offering up the scraggly oak branch.
“Honestly, Sophie,” Hanna said, and pushed it away.
Sophie shut her eyes and waved the branch over the sealed letter. Sophie handed the letter to Hanna.
“You should learn to climb,” Hanna said. She clutched the letter in her teeth and scampered up the ladder. When she got to the top, her hair was aglow in a burst of sun so that Sophie had to cup her hand over her eyes to see her friend. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Hanna was climbing not just up but also away from her.
* * *
“When do you think we’ll get a response?” Sophie shouted to Hanna above the soft whine of an afternoon wind as they rode their bicycles back to the village past cow-dotted farms and gray potbellied windmills. Sometimes, the Hitler Youth practiced military drills out there in the flat green field, but all was quiet today.
“It depends!” Hanna said, pedaling forward and back again, waiting for Sophie to catch up.
“On what?” Sophie panted.
“The war.”
“Do you really think there will be a war?”
“Everyone seems to believe so. Karl says it will be over quickly. Nobody is a match for our Wehrmacht.” Hanna glanced over her shoulder. “Sophie, keep up! You need to build up your strength!”
Sophie tried to pedal faster even though she knew it was pointless; Hanna would always be faster and stronger. She pressed into the wind and a sudden gust blew the flower crown from her head. It hopped along the road like a colorful wheel. Sophie dropped her bicycle into the grass and raced after it.
The wind carried the rumble of an unseen automobile approaching from the other side of the hill.