Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(34)

Sophie turned and marched up the street toward her house.

“There she goes, Miss Lonelyhearts!” Oskar laughed.

“Miss Lonelyhearts!” Klara repeated.

Sophie glanced back at Hanna, who looked away, her haughty mouth set in a firm told-you-so line. And that hurt more than anything else.

Down the street, there was sudden commotion. People were running out of their houses calling to each other—“Have you heard?”—and Sophie was terrified that everyone knew of her mortification. But she followed the crowd to the radio shop anyway, where Herr Ohlsen had the crystal set turned up. Everyone hovered near. An announcer’s excited voice burbled from the radio talking about the greatness of Germany.

“What is it? What’s happened?” someone asked.

One of the men turned around, his face ruddy with excitement. “Germany’s invaded Poland! Finally, we are at war!”





WEST BERLIN.


SUMMER 1980

When Jenny left her apartment most days, she told her mother the same story: that after German class, she was going sightseeing with some classmates. Her mother didn’t ask too many questions. She was happy that Jenny was “making new friends.” As long as Jenny was home in time for dinner with an informed-sounding anecdote—“Did you know that the Charlottenburg Palace is an example of the baroque and rococo styles?”—her parents would listen with polite disinterest and Jenny’s secret life in Kreuzberg stayed safe.

Every day, Jenny was learning more about punk, politics, Berlin, and best of all, Lena: Her favorite color was red. She wanted to visit Beverly Hills someday, “even though I hate the rich.” Her knuckles were often ink stained from the leaky ballpoint she used to pen lyrics on paper napkins swiped from cafés. She held her cigarettes between her thumb and forefinger and not between the second and third fingers the way most people did, and when she exhaled, two thin streams of smoke pushed from her nostrils. It made her look like the world’s smallest dragon. For so big a presence, she was improbably small, five-foot-two—five-foot-two-and-a-half if you counted to the top of her spiked hair. Her favorite band was either Sham 69, the Sex Pistols, or the Slits depending on which day you asked her. She loved the first five minutes after midnight—“because that is when everything feels like possibility.”

There were some things she didn’t discuss—how she’d come to live with her cousins. (“My mother died. I don’t talk about it.”) Or why she left London. (“We didn’t get along. There is nothing more to say.”) Or the picture of the boy on her nightstand. (“It came with the frame and I liked it. Who cares?”)

As they walked the streets of Berlin together, Lena tested Jenny’s German by pointing out various signs:

“Zeitschriften!” Lena called.

“Magazines?” Jenny answered.

“Sehr gut! Zeitungen?”

“Newspapers?”

“Ja. Bucher?”

“Books.”

Lena taught Jenny German swear words, too, grinning when Jenny said them right. In return, Jenny taught Lena American slang.

“Fer sure!” Jenny said with a Valley girl accent.

“Fer sure,” Lena echoed. “This is sarcasm?”

“Sometimes. Like, if you disagree with something, you can say it like, ‘Oh, fer sure,’” Jenny said, with an eye roll for punctuation. “But you can also say it when you agree: ‘Oh, punk is the best, fer sure!’”

“No. This is too confusing.”

“Okay. How about ‘Eat my shorts’?”

“I don’t understand: Why would I want to eat your shorts?”

“It’s like saying ‘kiss my ass,’” Jenny explained.

“Ohhhh. I like it. Hey! Eat my shorts!” Lena shouted, startling a flock of pigeons into flight.

There was always something happening at the squat. Back home, party invitations were cruelly doled out and withheld according to popularity. But here, parties, protests, and gigs seemed to spring up like tulips and everybody was welcome, even strangers met in a club or café or on a crowded train. It all had the feel of a wild circus. Jenny officially met A-Blitz, the boxer-boy who’d gotten so mad at her the first day outside the U-Bahn station. “He’d rather fight than eat sometimes, especially if he’s been drinking,” Lena said. “But mostly, he’s okay.” There was Rat, an artist, who was A-Blitz’s polar opposite, X-ray thin with doll-like hazel eyes, a soft voice, and close-cropped hair dyed the colors of a summer snow cone. He carried a black rat on his shoulder that he’d named Sid Vicious and he spent much of his time feeding the inquisitive pink-nosed creature bits of cheese. Rat made huge mosaics from slivers of fractured glass. Up close, the pattern wasn’t apparent. It was only when you stood back and viewed them from a distance that the images—a sunflower bursting from a businessman’s mouth, a woman with a bird’s head crying into a garden—would come into focus.

“What does it mean?” Jenny asked. She didn’t understand a lot of art.

Rat shrugged. “It means whatever you think it means. I just like to make something beautiful from what is broken.”

Jenny pointed to a leftover pile of glass. “What about those pieces?”

“What you leave behind is art, too.” Rat grinned and stood proudly in front of his mosaic, Sid Vicious on his shoulder. “Take my picture. Make me famous, eh? Then I will go to New York City and meet the Ramones.”