Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(65)
“Nothing yet on Sophie and Hanna. We’ve got the rally picture of Oskar, the good shot, and the dude who gave him the medal—”
“Please don’t call a Nazi officer ‘the dude.’”
“Sorry. The genocidal maniac who gave him the medal…”
“Better.”
“And who was in charge of the army there. So now you’ve got a town full of soldiers. Some kind of resistance presence, which might be—”
“Die Eichel…,” Chloe finishes.
“Got a Nazi officer who has sworn to take down that resistance. A Hitler Youth who can shoot really well. Two girls who could be spies or resistance or possibly the mole that brought down Die Eichel—one of whom was also the model for a mystery artist with the initials EW.” Miles pushes out a hard breath. “This is messy.”
Chloe squints at something over Miles’s shoulder. “Excuse me. What is that?”
Miles follows her gaze to the flyer. “My high school is doing a Zoom Prom.”
“Oh my god! Like, in what universe is that a good idea?”
“Right?” Miles says with a laugh. But he deflates a bit, too. It’s all so messed up. The senior year that wasn’t. “Like, we could all stand in our Zoom squares awkwardly not talking to each other instead of doing the same thing in the gym.”
“Should we crash it? Spike the virtual punch?”
“I’m in.”
Chloe clears her throat. “So. Who were you thinking of asking to prom, like, back when that was an option?”
She tosses the question out casually, but it feels like a repeat of last Halloween. Unlike in class, Miles can’t sink below Chloe’s radar.
“Hey. Miles-y. Hellooo?”
“Danny. Obviously. You should see that man dance. It stirs my loins.”
“Heroes” comes on Spotify. Miles turns it up, grateful for a way out of awkward conversational territory. “Oh man, I love this song!”
“Great song!” Chloe says.
“Right? Mama D said that when the wall came down in ’89, people blasted ‘Heroes’ from their boom boxes and sang along. Kinda cool to think that a song could have that much power.”
“Yeah. But, like, Bowie was just the match; the people were the fire. You know?”
No one else says things like this. It’s why he loves her. He takes in a big breath. His heart is beating very fast. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something…”
Chloe’s bedroom door flies open and The Terrors rush in wearing pirate costumes and screaming full tilt. They’re brandishing lightsabers. Josh—or it might be Jake; Miles is never sure—takes a swipe and knocks Chloe’s pencil holder off her desk. The pencils fall like pickup sticks. The mug shatters.
“Oh my god! Out of my room! Out!”
One of The Terrors grabs Chloe’s phone. The scenery is now the bouncing interior of the brownstone. Miles can hear the twins laughing and Chloe yelling, “Josh, give me my phone! I am going to freaking murder you!” followed by the boys’ screams of “Mom! Mom!” before the phone disconnects and he is enveloped in the soft hum of the fan and the silent house. He tells himself he’s grateful for the quiet even though he knows it’s a lie.
* * *
Miles is too restless to sleep. He dives back into the mystery. It’s become both his mission and his salvation, a way out of his isolation loop. He wants to know about Germans who made the choice to actively resist the Nazis. He dives into the sinew of history, reading about the Edelweiss Pirates, who poured sugar in Nazi officers’ gas tanks and slashed their tires, aided deserters, and supplied explosives. Brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, whose White Rose movement of students distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazis and urging fellow citizens to wake up to what was happening around them. Sophie, who wrote Freedom on the back of her indictment, was beheaded four days after her arrest. He reads about Dutch saboteurs and assassins, Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, two sisters who blew up railway lines and shot Nazis to protect Jews in hiding. Freddie was only fourteen. All of these resisters started when they were only teenagers. Not a single one older than Miles and his friends. It’s mind-blowing. Miles wonders if he would’ve been brave enough to fight back. He remembers Amy’s flyers down in the depths of his backpack, the ones he promised to post but never did. People like to think they’d rise to the occasion and be heroes. It’s all theoretical. Until it isn’t. There’s a chalked sign outside the boxing gym near the subway: Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth—Mike Tyson.
Unsettled, Miles goes back to Die Zeitung, though he’s not sure what he’s looking for. He’s just about to log off when he’s drawn to a small block of text, a society column.
NEW TO KLEINWALD
Egon Wagner, a university student from Berlin, whose apartment building was bombed by radical elements, will spend the summer in Kleinwald, a guest of Leon Nowak. A talented artist, Herr Wagner has been commissioned by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment.
He will be opening a studio for the teaching of art.
Egon Wagner. EW.
Miles looks up the Ministry of Public Enlightenment. It was Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry. They hired artists and filmmakers to spread their message. Egon Wagner was an artist for the Reich. And he suddenly shows up in Kleinwald out of nowhere months before Hanna Schmidt, a girl he drew often, went missing.