Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(63)

“Yeah. Yes.” Jenny’s voice sounded strange to her, an underwater creature surfacing.

Lena removed her hand. Jenny blinked into the sudden light. It fuzzed around the sharp edges of Lena’s spiked hair and brought her face, so close now, into sharp focus. The soft peachy down of Lena’s upper lip was illuminated as her mouth moved closer.

“Are you?” she whispered.



* * *



Here is how it happens: Their lips touch. The touch becomes a kiss. Lightning strikes ground inside Jenny. She is here. She is home. She is. Lena’s mouth is a warm thing, perhaps the warmest part of Berlin. Jenny can’t say how long they kiss. Time is no longer measured in the same predictable way. She only knows that however long it is, it’s not enough. She wants more—of Lena, of this life, and of herself in it all.

At last, Lena pulls away, grinning. “Welcome to the present tense.”

They are together for a while. All their motions lead into each other until finally, Lena laces Jenny’s fingers with hers, parts the curtains, and guides her downstairs toward the bright lights. It doesn’t feel like the same party to Jenny. How could it be?

“Lena! Oi! Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you!” A-Blitz says when the girls return to the pulsing, steamy mayhem.

“Well, you found me.” Lena slings her arm across Jenny’s shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No one notices. Or cares. Only Anke looks from Lena to Jenny, her expression somewhere between a scowl and something unreadable. Fine. Let her disapprove, Jenny thinks. I don’t care anymore. I’m home at last.

“I want you to hear something,” A-Blitz shouts over the noise. The music stops suddenly and the room erupts: “Was zum Teufel? Wo ist die Musik? A-Blitz!” A-Blitz pops an unmarked cassette into the boom box. “H?r dir das an!” Listen to this.

An assault of snarled lyrics and howitzer guitar punches its way out of the boom box. It’s more than music; it’s a manifesto. Everyone gathers around, drawn by the raw sound.

“Who is this?” Lena asks.

“Regimewechsel. They are from Pankow,” A-Blitz says proudly.

“How did they get it out of the GDR?” Zehra asks.

“How did they even record it?” Rat says.

“They’re probably all in prison now for this.” Sergeant.

“Yeah. Prison.” Ari.

“Turn it up,” Lena commands. She looks like she wants to run, dance, scream, all of it, all at once. She looks like she wants to set fire to the night. “This is real! It’s the most real music I’ve ever heard! This is what we need to be!”

As if a starter’s gun has sounded, a riot of dancing breaks out all at once. Everyone is pogoing like the Jiffy Pop popcorn Jenny used to make for slumber parties on their stove back home. Punks slam their bodies against each other. Generating heat. Giving birth to something desperate to be born—the impending, undeniable future, whatever it may be. The floor of the squat rumbles and creaks as if it might give way. A flailing forearm catches Jenny on the side of the head but she laughs it off. Lena hands her a beer. “Glückwunsch!” Jenny thinks that means congratulations. She laughs harder and downs several gulps of the beer. She and Lena throw themselves into each other again and again. Lena rests her forearms on Jenny’s shoulders as they shake up and down, all of their atoms colliding. The whole noisy squat falls away. It’s just Jenny and Lena. Dancing. Laughing. Here. Now.

On the best night of her entire life.



* * *



The music is still raging in the squat as Lena and Jenny climb onto the roof. They lie on its pebbled, war-torn surface, their own urban moon, and stare up at the sky.

“I like it up here. So open. Sometimes during a party it can feel too crowded, too…” Lena mimes choking.

“Klaustrophobisch?” Jenny says.

“Ja.”

“What time is it?” Jenny asks. She doesn’t really care.

“A good time,” Lena answers, and it seems right. She points to the brightest light in the sky. “That’s Venus. She’s always the strongest light before dawn.”

“She?”

“Venus is the Goddess of Love. Right?”

“Right.”

“So, then—she.”

It’s very late or very early, depending. Jenny has never stayed up all night before. She wants to see the sun rise on this new day. But she made the mistake of lying down and now her eyelids are so heavy. She can’t fight it. She snuggles up close to Lena and drapes an arm across the curve of her hip and they lie facing each other.

“Sorry,” Jenny says. “Just gonna shut my eyes for a few minutes.”

Lena kisses the top of her head. “Okay.”

“See you tomorrow,” Jenny whispers sleepily.

“Unless there’s a revolution first.”

There has already been a revolution.

It took place inside of Jenny the moment Lena kissed her.

The wall has fallen and she is free.





BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.


SPRING 2020

Miles gets an email notification from student council about a Zoom Prom. Somebody has made a wonky flyer of 1960s movie stars dancing the Twist under the headline “Quarantine Can’t Quash the Class of 2020!” It’s so bad it’s almost art. He prints it out and pins it to his wall, then texts a screenshot to Danny: You see this?