Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(62)

“Ja,” Ari agreed, and they drank their beers in perfect unison.

“Can I take your picture?” Jenny asked.

The girls posed in their shower-curtain dresses. Jenny imagined sending the picture to Richard with a note: Local birds flock together. She imagined sending one of A-Blitz mid-scream to Heather: You said you wanted a boyfriend. She imagined taking a photo of herself in the thick of the party under the rosy wash of the red bulbs so she’d always remember this moment. Jenny’s camera found Lena. She was in a corner under the shadowy stairs having a quietly intense conversation with two strangers. They didn’t look like punks. More like university students. One of them was the suspicious-looking man Jenny had seen on Bernauer Strasse.

Jenny tugged at Zehra’s sleeve. “Hey, Zehra. Who is that guy over there?”

Zehra craned her head above the gyrating crowd. “Don’t know. Anke, do you know that man?”

“Nein. Looks like police.”

Zehra scoffed. “Lena would never be nice to the police.”

“I’ve seen him before. He was watching us on Bernauer Strasse,” Jenny said. “I thought maybe he knew Lena.”

Anke shrugged. “Lena knows everybody.”

The boom box cut out suddenly. “Lena! Lena!” Rat called, Sid Vicious cupped in his hands. “Lena! Where are you? It’s time.”

Lena left the strangers under the stairs and dropped her cigarette into a beer bottle on her way to the stage. She looked over at Jenny. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Now?” Jenny squeaked.

“What other time is there?”

The girls clambered into the narrow space. Jenny stared out at a wall of faces all wearing the same expression: Entertain us.

“Ladies and gentlemen and everyone-in-between, whoever you are, you are here! Right here. Right now,” Lena purred into the mic.

“Play some fucking music!” A-Blitz shouted from the back.

“As you wish.” Lena bowed, then turned around and yanked down her pants, mooning him. The room erupted in cheers. Trousers up, she flipped him off. “They say girls can’t be punk rockers. But we say…”

In the brief pause, Jenny felt the change—Here we go, ready or not.

Lena screamed into the microphone: “… Eins, drei, zwei, FICH DICH!”

They launched into “Good Little Girls.” A-Blitz started a mosh pit of one, all boxing arms and thrashing head. The others weren’t giving it up for Sophie Scholl so easily. Jenny’s mind detoured in a dark wood: You can’t do this. You’re not good enough—you’re not even a real punk. They’re going to laugh at you.

“Dallas! Play something, for God’s sakes!” Anke yelled from the keys.

At the front of the crowd, Sergeant and Ari laughed. The sides of the room fuzzed black. The music narrowed as if squeezed into a tunnel. Jenny looked to Lena: Help me.

“We won’t be your good little girls!” Lena sang, and whipped off her bandanna. She came up behind Jenny and tied it across her eyes. “Dallas. Be here now,” she murmured into her ear. “WE WON’T BE YOUR GOOD LITTLE GIRLS!”

The sound fattened out again. There was only the music now. A refrain like a pulse: We won’t be your good little girls … Jenny raised her bow and sliced into the violin with meaty squawks and squeals and a sawing, metallic run as bitchin’ as any guitar-god solo. She could feel the floor vibrating with a mosh pit and she understood that the crowd had come around at last. But it hardly mattered. The band had become one living organism, and Jenny was a part of that organism, their cells breathing together in notes and screams and raw defiance.

Amped up on nerves, they played their five-song set in thirteen minutes and had to play it through again. “Come back next week! We are working on new songs,” Lena promised. They were wired and sweaty and goofy with success. Even Anke was smiling.

Later at the kitchen table, Anke brought out her penknife and they each took turns carving their initials into the pockmarked wood, a testament to their first night as a real band. Lena leaned in close to Jenny and whispered, “Come. I want to show you something.”

In the strange calm of Lena’s bedroom, they were alone. Lena reached beneath her pillow. “I got you something. I wanted to give it to you before the gig but…” She extended it to Jenny. It was the fedora from the first day at the market. “Bitte.”

“This was expensive.”

“You’re worth it.”

Jenny fitted the hat on her head. She didn’t have a mirror but Lena’s smile let her know it was pleasing. “You were right about the violin. Everybody loved it.”

The sounds of the party seemed miles away but all of Jenny’s electrons pogoed inside her. “There is a moment that comes. Where you decide to live. Present tense. Do you know what I mean?”

The air smelled charged, like the seconds before lightning. Jenny shook her head slowly. Lena cupped her hand over Jenny’s eyes once more, bringing her into an intimate dark. Jenny stared into the beautiful unknown formed by the press of Lena’s skin to hers. She could almost imagine stars winking into the nicotine flesh of that tiny, soft palm.

“Tell me, Dallas—where are you now?”

“I-I’m right here.”

“Are you? Are you present tense here?”