Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(46)
Miles goes back to the original clipping about the missing teenagers, stopping at the mention of “recent disturbances.” He combs through three months’ worth of articles until he finds a small news blotter item.
DISSIDENTS ATTACK KLEINWALD
Police are actively searching for traitors who distributed seditious materials denouncing the Reich and our Führer. The pamphlets were left at the base of the Baron Wilhelm Alexander statue. Obergruppenführer Rudolf Jaeger has vowed to help the local authorities investigate all leads. “We will leave no stone unturned. We have eyes and ears everywhere. The saboteurs will be found and punished to the full extent of the law.”
Miles makes notes on his page.
Resistance in Kleinwald?
Seditious pamphlets
Rudolf Jaeger
That man’s name keeps popping up. Back in the Kleinwald links, Miles hunts for information and finds that as the town’s Obergruppenführer, a lieutenant general of the SS, Jaeger was in charge of the soldiers who’d been garrisoned at the Wilhelm Schloss for training. There’s a formal, posed picture and several of him with his soldiers. In each of them, he is unsmiling but poised. Alert. But it’s his eyes that disturb Miles. They are penetrating, like two focused searchlights. Miles can’t imagine that Rudolf Jaeger missed much with that gaze. Miles hunts for any other mention of the SS officer and finds an obituary. It’s dated January 22, 1942. SS-Obergruppenführer Rudolf Jaeger, aged 32 … from injuries sustained in the line of duty on December 22 … December 22. The winter solstice. Same day as the disappearance of Hanna, Sophie, and Oskar, Jaeger’s star pupil. It feels too coincidental to be nothing, but whatever missing piece might connect the two events, Miles can’t see it. He sends another email to Matthias asking for any information he can find on one Rudolf Jaeger. At the bottom of the email, Miles attaches a photo of himself with the Moms Squared at last year’s Pride parade. “Von meiner Familie zu deiner,” he writes. From my family to yours.
* * *
Miles is down to his last box of cereal and half a cup of milk. He goes online to order a grocery delivery. Slots are booked out for at least four weeks. He checks a few more places but it’s the same scenario. He doesn’t know what to do—the grocery store closest to him has shut down. The subway doesn’t feel safe. He wishes his moms were here to help but he’s going to have to figure this one out on his own. He decides he can ride his bike to Danny’s parents’ deli just off Canal Street, across the Brooklyn Bridge. He knows they follow all the Covid protocols at least. Miles cruises through the streets of Brooklyn, past the funky row houses becoming more uniform with each new wave of gentrification. The sky is a creamy blue; the air cool but sweet. Even through his mask, he can smell honeysuckle. It’s all so achingly beautiful, all so fragile. Cherry trees have bloomed seemingly overnight. The riot of pink flowers reminds him of the swim caps the old Russian ladies wear to Coney Island to protect their beauty-salon hair. He pictures the wonders of Coney—the clackety roar of the wooden coaster and the screams of the kids riding it, the amusement game hustlers working their angles, the crack of the bat at a Cyclones game and the cheers from the bleachers, the salty-sweet smell of caramel corn and roasting peanuts, the pungent gray of the churning Atlantic mixed with coconut suntan lotion and hot, overfilled garbage cans. He imagines those same rides, dark. The beaches, empty. The aquarium devoid of annoying kindergarten campers on day visits. A lump presses against his throat. Things will turn around by summer, won’t they?
Danny’s parents have posted a new sign on the deli door: NO MASK, NO ENTRY. Danny’s sister, Amy, home from law school, wiggles her elbow at Miles from behind the register. Her eyes crinkle at him above her mask.
“Hey, stranger! Did you get taller?”
“Yeah, it’s all the Frosted Flakes,” Miles says. He’s always liked Amy. She’s the calm to Danny’s storm. “You doing okay?”
She shrugs. “You know,” she says. The new normal of greetings.
Miles steps through the aisles filling his bag with essentials as quickly as he can. He’s been diligent about only leaving the house to walk Dodger. For some reason, he convinced himself he’d feel safer here in this deli where he knows them and they know him. But now, he’s not so sure it was a good idea. He worries not just that he’ll be exposed to Covid but that he could have it and not know it and give it to somebody else like Amy, who could give it to Danny or their parents. His breathing is shallow, as if he’s afraid to let out too much air. His palms sweat beneath his plastic gloves. He’s grabbing a bag of pretzels when he hears the yelling. At the counter, a man in an expensive-looking leather jacket is shouting at Amy, who’s pointing to the sign and offering him a mask from a box by the register.
“I’m not wearing a face diaper!” the man yells. Miles imagines the viral load spewing out of his mouth with each word. Amy is New York tough but the man is bigger than she is and scary angry. The electricity of potential violence fills the small store. Miles is afraid. He wishes he weren’t here but he is, and he can’t let Amy face him alone.
“Hey. Come on, man. We’re all doing our best,” Miles says.
The man whirls around, his mouth set in a tight line. “What’s it to you? I’m the customer here.”