Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(36)

Anke’s eye roll was withering. “Okay. If we do Tchaikovsky, we let you know.” She turned to Lena. “I’m telling A-Blitz to take us off the flyer.”

“Nein! We need this gig!” Lena said.

“We’ll do the next one.”

“No! It has to be now. There is no other time but now,” Lena insisted. “Look, forget Mia. We could do it as a three-piece.”

“But we rehearsed with Mia,” Anke said. They fell into loud arguing again.

Jenny stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled hard.

“Ow,” Anke said, touching her ear.

“Why do you have to have guitar?” Jenny asked.

Anke snorted. “Because we are a punk band?”

“Yeah. No duh,” Jenny snapped. “A violin can be just as good as a guitar.”

“Nobody plays violin in punk.” Zehra shrugged. “They just don’t.”

“Warte, warte…,” Lena said. A sly smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “What could be more punk than an instrument nobody’s expecting?”

“But Lena. Violin? My Opa plays violin,” Anke whined. “Sei ernst.”

Lena nodded her head slowly, the way she did when she was thinking something over. “Dallas, are you good? None of your polite bourgeois bullshit. The truth.”

Jenny raised her chin. “I’m very good.”

Lena’s crooked-tooth smile was on full display. “You hear that? She’s very good.”

Anke sighed. “Ach. Sei’s drum.”

“Bring it tomorrow. We start at noon,” Lena told Jenny. “Don’t be late.”

Zehra moaned and rolled her head toward the others at last. “So early?”

“We need the practice,” Lena said with authority. “After all, we are about to be the first all-girl punk band with violin.”

Across the hall, a ropey-muscled boy with hair sticking up like razor blades banged the edge of a fist against the toilet’s closed door. “A-Blitz! You taking the shit of the century?” he said in a British accent. “Come on, mate, I’m in a Bob Murray!”

“Fuck off and let me shit in peace!” A-Blitz called back in German from behind the door.

“There is no peace after A-Blitz shits,” Anke moaned. “We’re going to have to set fire to the squat.”

The door to the toilet opened with a bang and the putrid smell reached them like a punch.

“Ahhhh!” the girls said, pressing their hands quickly to their noses.

Lena gagged. “Gott in Himmel!”

“What? Es ist gesund!” A-Blitz challenged. It’s healthy! “Ach! Never mind your bollocks!” A-Blitz enunciated in English and stalked off. The razor blade–haired boy stole a clothespin from the curtain, clipped it on his nose, and took his turn in the john.

“Now you know why we call him A-Blitz,” Zehra said to Jenny.

And then they were all on the floor, laughing till their eyes were wet, and Jenny was convinced that anything, even a stinky toilet, could be made special in the squat.



* * *



When Jenny showed up to the squat the next day with her violin, the girls were drinking tea from mismatched cups and talking over songs. Rat sat on the rug, letting Sid Vicious’s little pink nose sniff at his fingers. A couple Jenny had never seen before lounged beside each other, sharing a smoke. A-Blitz squatted in a corner tapping his fingers on an overturned bucket and banging his head to some internal music until Anke called out in German, “A-Blitz! Could you not?”

He sank down, folded his arms, and sulked. “Spielen Sie dann etwas!” Play something, then.

“We’re not here for your entertainment. Either shut up or go somewhere else,” Lena said over her shoulder. She nodded at Jenny. “You ready, Dallas?”

Jenny hadn’t expected an audience. She was already nervous enough. “I should probably warm up a bit before we get started…”

“Why?” Lena said.

“Well. I just want to plan out what I’m going to play…”

“No. We figure it out along the way. Okay! Let’s go!”

“Yeah, but…,” Jenny protested, but Zehra was already maneuvering into the narrow space behind the drum kit and Anke plugged the keyboard into the jury-rigged electrical setup.

“‘Youth Revolt,’ ja?” Anke said.

Lena grabbed the mic. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen and all the freaks! We are Sophie Scholl. So … UP YOURS!”

The girls lurched into their first song. Without Mia’s acidic guitar, the tune was bloodless. Anke wasn’t following Zehra’s drumming and Lena just did whatever she wanted. Jenny stood to the side, waiting for the right moment to jump into the fray. In orchestra, there had been sheet music to follow. Arrangements. This was nothing like that. Jenny didn’t know when to come in; she didn’t even know how to come in.

“What should I play?” Jenny yelled.

“Play whatever you feel! Present tense! Be here now!” Lena shouted before barreling into a long punk scream that sounded like someone being fed to a set of gears.

“Ja!” A-Blitz leaped up and jumped around, a mosh pit of one.

What do I feel? Jenny thought, mind and heart racing. I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. Her nerves had always been a problem. Auditioning for first chair, she’d been so anxious that the notation on the sheet music seemed to run together into nonsensical black lines. She had lost her place and had needed to ask if she could start over, and after that, all she could hear in her head was You blew it. You weren’t perfect. You have to be perfect.