Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(37)
They were really getting into it now. Zehra was a speed beast on the mismatched kit. Anke’s keys screeched like sirens while Lena blasted out a wail about a war between squatters and police, about oppression. What did Jenny know about any of that? She wished she’d never volunteered to help the band. Maybe she could just slip out down the stairs and go eat pastry with Frau Hermann.
A-Blitz punched the air with a fist and shouted, “Tod den Faschisten!”
Anke looked at Jenny: Are you playing or what?
Jenny tiptoed in with a bit of a Mahler piece she’d learned from orchestra, trying to remember the notations she’d been taught, the proper fingering, the scripted crescendos. It was all wrong. As if she were playing a completely different gig, which she was.
Lena waved her arms overhead. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Zehra stilled a cymbal with her fingers.
“I told you,” Anke muttered, giving the eulogy for Jenny’s career in punk, which had lasted for less time than it took to play a Ramones song.
Lena fixed her kohl-lined gaze on Jenny. “What are you afraid of, Dallas?”
“Excuse me?”
“You play so carefully. Like … like you have one foot in the past. Like you are not really here.”
Jenny’s cheeks warmed. “What the hell does that mean?” she snorted, trying out the curse word to hide the sting.
“Punk is present tense. It’s happening now! No waiting. No past, no future, just this moment,” Lena said. “You know?”
Jenny started to pack up her violin. “I’m just trying to help. If you don’t want me in the band, just say so.”
“I don’t want you in the band,” Anke muttered in a not-quite- stage-whisper.
“Anke,” Lena warned. She beckoned Jenny with a finger. “Dallas. Come here.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Jenny stepped closer and Lena cupped her hand across Jenny’s eyes.
Jenny pulled away. “What are you doing?”
“Helping you find the now. Okay? You trust me?”
Lena unknotted the bandanna at her neck and tied it around Jenny’s eyes. It smelled like Lena, like cigarettes, sweat, and something indefinable but so undeniably Lena that Jenny could follow the smell back to her like a bloodhound.
“It’s okay?” Lena asked. “Not too tight?”
“No,” Jenny managed. “But why … I don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“You need to lose yourself so that you can find the sound. Here.”
Jenny felt the violin being placed against her clavicle. Lena guided her hand to the strings and placed the bow in her other hand.
Jenny laughed derisively. “Uh, I can’t play without seeing my instrument.”
“Why not? Stevie Wonder does.” Lena’s breath whispered against Jenny’s ear. “You can do this. I know it.”
“This is pointless, Lena,” Anke said.
“Anke? Halt deine Fresse.”
A-Blitz laughed and Anke sniped at him. “Sich verpissen, Arschloch!”
“H?r auf damit, ihr zwei!” Lena commanded. Her voice echoed through the mic. “Okay! We do this again. We are Sophie Scholl and This! Is! ‘Youth Revolt’!”
The music started up again. Jenny’s fear was a wave threatening to take her under. She needed to swim against it. She started with a little Mozart.
“What the hell? Not again,” Anke yelled.
“Just keep going. Let her find it,” Lena shot back.
They were arguing between the bars of the song. Jenny heard A-Blitz cackling. “Deine Band ist Scheisse!” Your band is shit. “Ihr solltet euch Sophie Shit nennen!” You should call yourself Sophie Shit. The moment was threatening to come apart at the seams. If she didn’t jump in and play, it would. Jenny sliced her bow across the strings, making a high-pitched screech.
“What the hell? It’s like a sick cat!” Anke complained.
“Sick cat! Sick cat,” Lena sang into the reverb of the microphone. “This government treats us like a sick cat, sick cat!”
Anke’s keys searched for chords. Zehra tapped the hi-hat, making a sound like the click of a gun ready to explode. Lena screamed “Sick cat!” again and again until it became inescapable. Let go, Jenny thought. She cut into the song, attacking with the bow, sawing out a drone, giving the music a backbone of nervous energy. She could imagine Lena with both hands wrapped around the mic, snarling out lyrics, then grunts, screams, and moans when words weren’t enough. And in the next second, something clicked. It wasn’t something Jenny could hear so much as something she felt. They were coming together into a beautifully ragged sonic force.
“Revolution!” Lena screamed over and over until her voice broke.
The trash can drums stumbled and stilled; the keys hummed into nothing. Jenny lifted her blindfold. At the mic, Lena panted, sweaty. The song had ended but the music had not. It was still coiled inside each of them.
Lena broke out in a grinning whoop. “That. Was. SUPER!”
“Scheisse,” Zehra said in amazement. “We might become a real band after all.”
* * *
Anke brought up some beers from the barely working icebox. The beer was warm but Jenny gamely sipped at it.