Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(35)

Behind the camera, Jenny felt braver, as if what she saw through her lens were the real her. She felt a kinship with the people and things she captured in a split second of unguarded living—joy, anger, sadness, defeat, hope.

She wished she could capture the ferocity of sound when Sophie Scholl performed. Offstage, they fought a lot. Jenny wondered if fighting was just part of being in a punk band the way practicing scales was part of playing in orchestra.

“Nice of you to show up!” Lena growled when Mia strolled in an hour late to practice one day.

“I was with Lukas. His scooter ran out of gas,” Mia answered with a shrug.

“You need a more reliable scooter. Or a more reliable boyfriend,” Anke said.

Behind the kit, Zehra snorted but stayed out of it. She seemed to be the Switzerland of the band.

“Be on time or you are out,” Lena said.

“Stasi,” Mia mumbled.

Anke’s eyes widened. “Oh Scheisse.”

Lena hurled the mic stand. It narrowly missed Mia’s head before it clattered to a stop.

“Lena! Not the equipment!” Zehra complained.

“Are you crazy?” A wild-eyed Mia shoved Lena. Lena gritted her teeth and shoved Mia even harder. They were in each other’s faces, shouting in heated German while Anke and Zehra tried to get them to stop. Jenny watched in horrified fascination. In her family, no one yelled or shoved. Her mother would be “disappointed” and act the martyr. Her father would scowl and sequester himself in his library, where he’d drink and listen to his jazz records. There would be long, draining silences. This was electric and honest.

Zehra banged the cymbals to get everyone’s attention. “Mia! Du weisst es besser.” You know better.

Mia put up her hands. “Ja. Okay. Okay. Sorry, Lena.”

Jenny had the sense that something meaningful had just happened, but she didn’t know what. She raised her camera and caught Lena, angry and hurt, and Mia, chagrined but aloof.

“Can we please play some music now?” Anke pleaded.

Somehow, despite the bickering and sniping, the music survived, and by the end of rehearsal, they were sprawled on the floor of the old factory, passing around a bottle of wine and making plans to become the biggest punk band in West Germany. Maybe even the world.

Lena drained the last of the bottle. “I have to go to work,” she announced, reaching for her jacket.

“Now?” Zehra said.

“Yes, now. I’m late.” She glared at Mia for good measure.

“Bring us some Milchbr?tchen for once, ja?” Anke said.

“If they have it.”

“How could they not have it? It’s a bakery!” Anke called after Lena.

Jenny gathered her things, knowing she wasn’t quite welcome without Lena, and leaned close to Mia. “Why did Lena get so upset earlier?” She wondered if she had missed something, a nuance lost in translation.

“She hates the GDR,” Mia said with a shrug. “More than most.”

“Why?”

“She has her reasons.”



* * *



On a Thursday afternoon three weeks after she’d first met Lena, Jenny banged on the door of the squat and waited for the key to drop from the window. When no key came, she tried the door and found that it was open. She let herself in, nearly stepping on a feral cat who hissed its displeasure before slinking off under a salvaged table to sleep. The place smelled of last night’s cigarettes and stale beer. It was uncharacteristically empty.

“Hallo? Ist jemand zuhause? Anybody home? It’s Dallas.”

Jenny bounded up the painted stairs and parted the clothesline-clipped rugs to find Zehra lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, an unlit cigarette poking up from her mouth like a snorkel. Anke was slumped over the keyboard pressing a G minor at random intervals. Lena sat on an overturned milk crate. Last night’s eye makeup had mostly been slept away, leaving smeary black tails. She didn’t even say hello.

“What’s the matter?” Jenny asked.

“Mia ran off to Stuttgart with her scooter-riding boyfriend,” Zehra said from the floor.

“Who runs away to Stuttgart?” Anke said.

“That stupid cow!” Lena leaped up, kicking the milk crate behind her.

“I’m sure you’ll find a new guitarist,” Jenny said, offering up the sort of greeting-card bromide her mother often used. She realized now that it was a flimsy emotional Band-Aid meant not to protect the wound but to hide it.

Lena kicked the amp. “We’re playing our first party here next weekend. No guitarist, no gig. No band.”

“Don’t take it out on the equipment, Lena! It’s hard enough to get!” Anke said. An argument erupted between the two of them like a punk duet while the corpse-like Zehra calmly smoked her cigarette.

Jenny knew how hard the band had worked these past few weeks. She knew it was tough for a girls’ punk band to be taken as seriously as the boys. It didn’t seem fair to have come this far to have to scrap a gig over a flaky guitarist.

“Hey. Hey!” Jenny shouted over their noise. “I could play!”

“Shhh! Shhh!” Lena put up a hand to Anke. “Dallas, you play guitar?”

“No,” Jenny said, suddenly less sure of herself. “But I play violin.”