Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(61)

There was no point in knocking, so Jenny pushed in, ducking as a beer bottle sailed past and smashed against the far wall, scattering brown shards across the floor. Someone laughed as Rat quietly swept up the pieces for his art collection. The squat was crowded with what seemed like every punk in West Berlin. The air was soupy with smoke. Adrenalized music pumped through the packed squat courtesy of a new boom box placed on a table away from flailing arms. A-Blitz stood guarding it like a nervous new parent: “Vorsicht, Idiot!”

There were rapid-fire conversations in German but also in French and what sounded to Jenny like Russian or Polish; she couldn’t be sure.

“But can’t you change the system from within?”

“How? If that system is corrupt? It will do anything to protect itself—deny, oppress, steal, torture. Even murder.”

“Exactly! To participate in the current system is to be complicit, immoral. There is only one answer: disruption…”

“When is the band going on? Are they any good?”

“I don’t know. It’s Lena. You never know what to expect with Lena. It could all be a joke…”

“Or a political statement…”

“Now Lena is a true chaos agent!”

“You want another beer?”

“Why not?”

Jenny gripped her violin case. All of these people would be watching. Judging. They were cooler than she could ever dream of being. What had she been thinking? How had she allowed herself to get so wrapped up in this embarrassing fantasy? Punk priestess? She’d never even heard of the Sex Pistols until two weeks ago. Her eyes darted around the squat, taking in every bit of winged eyeliner, every buzz cut and cockatoo spike, the leather and cuffs and scuffed combat boots and A-Blitz letting off a wolf howl just because he felt like it. She couldn’t do this. She would sneak out right now and head back to the station. She’d think of something to tell Lena—a stomach virus, a family emergency.

“Dallas! My American friend!” Lena waved wildly from across the room, jumping up to be seen over the whipping sea of spiny heads. She elbowed her way into the crowd—“Coming through, lady with a baby!” “Lena! You’re crazy! Whose is it?” “Yours! That’s how I already know it’s ugly!” She shimmied under a pair of legs, nearly upending a woman in a white vinyl trench coat—“Ack! Lena! Watch it!”—and rushed Jenny, wrapping her up in a fierce bear hug. Lena was tipsy and possibly on some kind of upper. Her pupils were enormous. “Dallas! Are you ready?”

“Um, so, I was thinking…”

Lena put a finger to Jenny’s lips. “No. Don’t think. Just … be!”

Zehra bumped up next to them and raised a bottle of mystery liquor in greeting. “Hallooo, Dallas!”

Anke gave a curt nod. “When do we do this?”

“Dallas is nervous. We have to help her.” Lena snapped her fingers. “Medicine!”

Zehra reached over the epauletted shoulder of a Scottish punk and grabbed two tiny glasses. She pulled the cork from the mystery bottle with her front teeth and poured out two shots of a dark brown liquor with a smell so strong Jenny’s nose hair tingled. Zehra pressed the glass into Jenny’s hand. “Prost.”

Jenny sniffed it and recoiled.

“It’ll give you tits,” Lena giggled into her ear.

Jenny took a sip and coughed as if her lungs were on fire. “God. What is that, turpentine?”

“J?germeister. You’re supposed to drink it all at once like so.” Anke grabbed the shot glass and tipped it back into her own mouth without even wincing, then refilled it.

Jenny put up a hand. “No thanks. I’m good.”

“Who said it was for you?” Anke said, and downed the shot.

“Don’t worry! We are going to be super!” Lena shouted over the din. “We are set up over there.”

She pointed to the far corner of the squat now glowing under a string of red bulbs. It was occupied by the drums, keys, mic, and two small, scruffy amps that looked as if they’d recently fallen off a truck. A homemade life-sized gig poster had been taped to the wall—a bloody tampon, the string plugged into an amplifier, beneath SOPHIE SCHOLL scrawled in thick black marker.

“Rat made it for us!” Lena said. “It is super!”

Jenny nodded at the amps. “Where’d those come from?”

“A-Blitz got them,” Zehra yelled back.

“Did he … steal them?”

Zehra shrugged. “Nobody really owns anything.”

Anke frowned at Jenny’s outfit. “This is tragic.”

“It was the best I could do,” Jenny said. She was too nervous for fighting.

“It just needs a little sparkle.” Lena unbuckled her silver-spiked dog collar and secured it around Jenny’s neck. “There. You are no longer Jenny. You are Dallas … Doberman.”

Another bottle broke and A-Blitz was getting punchy about somebody touching the boom box. “Already?” Zehra sighed.

“Hold on. I’ll fix it.” Lena bopped her way back through the smoking, sweaty, reeking mosh pit.

Zehra and Anke drifted into a conversation started by a girl with a shoe-polish black pixie whom everyone called Sergeant.

“I found it in a bin! A shower curtain!” she yelled. Jenny assumed she meant her plastic dress, which was patterned with rubber ducks and held together with duct tape and safety pins. “These people waste so much! It was a perfectly good shower curtain!” Sergeant clinked bottles with another girl called Ari, whose dress was also held together with tape and safety pins. “Conformist, capitalist piggies.”