Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(17)

“Mia goes through boyfriends like some people go through clothes,” Lena said to Jenny.

Mia shot back something guttural and animated to Lena, who answered, but it was all too fast for Jenny.

“Anyway,” Lena said with a roll of her eyes. “The squat is open to anybody who needs a place.”

According to Lena, every inhabitant of the squat had come for Reasons. Mia’s mother was a heroin addict. Zehra’s Turkish father didn’t approve of her look or her music. Anke’s strict, religious parents kicked her out at fourteen, and the squat was at least safer than the streets. But they were squatters. Jenny had heard the term before. People who occupied a building and claimed it for their own without paying rent.

“But isn’t squatting illegal?” Jenny asked.

Anke hit a stanky chord over and over, singing, “Eat the rich! Eat the rich! Eat eat eat eat the rich!”

“Anke! Halt die Klappe,” Lena said with a roll of her eyes.

Anke folded her arms and sulked.

“These buildings are ruins. No electricity, no heat. We have to steal the juice.” She nodded at the patchwork of electrical wires. “We are reclaiming these houses and making them into true collectives of outcasts.”

Jenny wondered if she would ever be able to live like this. Without a hot shower or a refrigerator full of ice-cold Dr Pepper. The squat didn’t even have a TV. And everything looked so dirty. She could practically hear her mother whispering in her ear, Put paper down on the toilet seat. You don’t want to catch anything.

“Okay,” Lena said, stepping up to the mic. “We’ll play you some songs and then I will show you Berlin. The real Berlin.”

“Can I take pictures while you play?” Jenny asked.

Lena broke into a huge grin. “I will be insulted if you don’t.”

Lena whispered, “Testen, Testen, eins, zwei, drei,” into the live mic. Anke gave the amplifier knobs a generous boost; the space filled with its anticipatory hiss. Jenny raised her camera. She felt a nervous excitement as if she, too, had been plugged into a socket and now thrummed with stolen electricity.

“Guten Abend, Berlin!” Lena shouted. “We are Sophie Scholl, so FUCK! YOU!”

The room exploded with chaotic sound. Mia attacked her three guitar chords. Zehra thrashed the cymbals as if drumming were a bar fight she meant to win. Anke’s keyboard bled out melody lines. And then there was Lena. She hopped up and down like a windup toy gone rogue. She prowled. Menaced. Punched the air. She held fast to the mic stand and jumped up with her legs in the splits all while singing in a raspy banshee wail. Jenny had never seen anyone who so completely commanded a stage. The music was a sonic assault. A garbage disposal grind of guitar, drums, snarls, yelps, and screams. Jenny didn’t know if she liked it. She didn’t even know if it was music. But one thing was for sure—it couldn’t be ignored. The song came to an abrupt stop. With the air still ringing, Lena wiped her sweaty brow and turned to Jenny, hands on her hips. “Well, what did you think?”

“Whoa” was all Jenny could manage.

A projectile beer can bounced off the loft railing. “Lena! Shut up! We are trying to sleep.”

Lena raced to the railing and spit over the edge. It landed on the arm of the punk boy on the mattress below. Lena cackled. “It’s after noon, Bruno! Don’t drink so much Jagermeister next time.”

The boy flipped her off and fell face-first back to the mattress. Lena turned to Jenny with a smile.

“Okay. Now I take you sightseeing.”



* * *



The noisy streets of Kreuzberg were a different Berlin from the quiet neighborhood where Jenny’s family had moved and a whole world away from Dallas with its manicured green lawns and pristine shopping malls. They passed an outdoor market, wooden crates jammed with vegetables, where a woman in a headscarf weighed purchases while her children played nearby. Artists painted the sides of bullet-riddled buildings with protest murals while students handed out political flyers. Music floated down from an open window and an elderly couple, dressed in their Sunday best, danced a slow waltz in the middle of the street. The punks were everywhere, dressed in leather, trench coats, and leopard print with rainbow-colored hair, like a dystopian circus town. It all felt new and exhilarating and daring.

“I’m hungry. You want to go for d?ner?” Lena asked.

“I don’t know. What’s d?ner?”

“Kebab! You’ve never had kebab before?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then we must. You have money? Of course you do. You’re American. Let’s go.”

D?ner kebab turned out to be spiced lamb. Jenny and Lena gobbled down the delicious skewered meat as they walked the sloping green of Hasenheide Park. Four Muslim men knelt on prayer rugs not far from where a group of boys played soccer, which Lena called football.

“We are in Neuk?lln now,” Lena said.

“New colon?” Jenny tried.

Lena laughed and exaggerated the pronunciation. “It’s Noyyy Cohnnne.”

She took hold of Jenny’s face to help her shape the vowels. The heady mixture of kebab and tobacco lingered on Lena’s fingertips. “Noyyy…”

“Noyyy…,” Jenny repeated between spurts of laughter.

“Cohnnnnne!”