Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(15)
Rows of timbered houses with pitched, tiled roofs flanked winding cobblestone streets. The houses boasted cheerful shutters, which neighbors threw open each day with bright spirits. Busy shops lined Kleinwald’s main street, including its lone bookshop, owned by Sophie’s parents.
Down a long, grassy slope of the town proper lay the small, brown-brick railroad station and a ribbon of tracks that carried people to Hamburg or Munich or Berlin, though Sophie had never been to any of those places. Beyond the relative bustle of town was the clear calm of the lake where, under warm summer skies, the older boys raced one another in rowboats, cutting the water into power amid shouts of “Schneller!”
For Sophie and Hanna, Kleinwald was all that they had ever known. They had been born here—Sophie so quietly the midwife needed to pinch her to make sure she was breathing, Hanna entering the world with a shriek of outrage at being rousted from her warm uterine bed. There had never been a time the girls had not been in each other’s lives; their houses even faced each other. From Sophie’s bedroom window, she could look out across the street and see the foot of Hanna’s iron-frame bed and the blue-and-white quilt tucked neatly at its corners. Many a warm summer night, they had opened their bedroom windows and talked across the open street until one or both of their mothers had called up that the neighbors did not need to hear their gibber-gabber.
“Sophie! Psst, Sophie!” Hanna called from her bedroom now. She half climbed onto the sill, letting her legs dangle precariously over the edge. “What were you reading?”
“Who said I was reading?”
“You’re always reading.”
“A new novel that came in to the shop today.”
“Any kissing?”
That word made Sophie shift uncomfortably. “Don’t know yet. It’s English so probably not. How was the cake?” She had tried to sound casual, as if she didn’t care that she’d been snubbed earlier.
“A bit dry.”
“Klara doesn’t like me.”
Hanna said nothing, which meant it was true. And now Sophie knew.
“Should we go back to the tree tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Hanna reminded her. The Girls League meeting. A day of exercises followed by a brutal hike into the muggy woods. “Besides, there won’t be an answer yet.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Above the girls, the sky was slipping toward night. Sophie was seized by a sudden foreboding that sat inside her like storm clouds pulling together into an ugly bruise upon the horizon. “Hanna!”
“What?”
“Promise you’ll never keep secrets from me again.”
“I promise, darling. You are my best friend in all of the world. Nothing will ever change that. Don’t stay up too late with that book. Fr?ulein Volker is going to march us into pudding tomorrow.”
Hanna climbed back inside and shut her curtains. Sophie remained at the window, gazing up at the first stars imprinting themselves into the pale ink of night. On the street below, Karl stood staring up at those same stars. From her safe perch, Sophie studied him—the strong angle of his jaw, the brooding line of his eyebrows, those eyes so like Hanna’s but softer somehow, his full mouth. She imagined the two of them walking the same reedy path by the rowboats. She let her mind wander, imagining his mouth moving closer to hers.
Karl coughed. Sophie slipped out of her romantic reverie and caught his eye. He’d seen her watching him. Mortified, Sophie ducked out of sight. When she dared to poke her head up again, Karl was gone.
WEST BERLIN.
SUMMER 1980
Jenny left the Friedrichstrasse station in Kreuzberg and followed the funny little map that Lena had drawn. She passed a Turkish takeout place; a narrow tobacco store presided over by an old man smoking a brown cigarette, a cat circling his legs; and several fields of rubble where quiet bulldozers faced off against crumbling buildings until she came at last to the street Lena had starred. The mostly empty street was flanked by decaying, soot-stained buildings. It all felt grimy and unloved and more than a little dangerous, and Jenny wondered what she was doing following a strange girl’s instructions to a place like this. The number on the paper scrap matched up with a dilapidated factory building plastered with graffiti and constellations of bullet holes. A bright orange banner hung from a pair of fourth-floor windows like a defiant tongue in a dirty mouth. BESETZT had been painted in the middle. Jenny looked up the word in her pocket German translation book. Besetzt: Occupied. She pressed the confusing array of buzzers. They made no sound.
Two punk girls approached on the opposite side of the street.
“Excuse me,” Jenny called in German. “I’m looking for Lena?”
She pointed to the building in case her German had failed her.
The girls shouted at an open second-floor window. “Lena! Hey, Lena! Wach auf! Sie haben einen Besucher!”
The window juddered up another few inches. Lena angled her messy head out of the opening. Her black bra band showed through the stretched armholes of her sleeveless T-shirt. Jenny found herself mesmerized by the sight of Lena’s dark blond underarm hair, and she wasn’t sure if she was more surprised by the realization that Lena didn’t shave or by the fact that she was a natural blond.
Lena waved to the two girls. “Hallo, Hilde! Eva! Heute Abend gibt es eine Party!” A party. Tonight.