Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(74)
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The band is getting better. It’s like they can finish each other’s musical sentences. Sometimes, when they are walking through the neighborhood, other punks recognize them. “Sophie Scholl!” they call out, and Jenny feels excited but also a little like an impostor. Lena, though? She just smiles like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like she’s always been a rock star and people are finally beginning to take notice. And when Lena believes something, it’s hard not to be a believer in it, too.
The only sore spot is Anke. Ever since Jenny and Lena started dating, Anke’s cutting sarcasm has taken on a sharper edge. Snotty asides disguised as teasing crop up during practice—Are you going to wear that tragic shirt at our next gig? Can we burn it onstage? You’ll probably forget about us once school starts and you can be with the new rich friends you will meet at the American school here. Sometimes, they’re more than asides. When Jenny says she’s trying to get the fingering right on a song, Anke snorts. “Oh, your fingering. Ja, I’ll bet it’s good.”
Jenny knows this kind of comment. She lived in fear of it. She has lived in fear. But now she’s in love and she won’t live in that place anymore. She marches up to Anke and slams her hand on the keys in a show of electronic dissonance.
“What’s your problem, Anke?”
“Well, your hand is on my keyboard for one.”
“I’ll say it again more slowly: What. Is. Your. Problem?”
“I have no problems.” They stare each other down for a few seconds. Anke exhales dramatically. “Can we get back to work?”
Jenny walks away. Behind her, Anke grumbles low under her breath. “It’s you who will have the problems, friend.”
But that’s only sometimes. Mostly, it’s good. Better than good. It’s everything Jenny didn’t know she was missing. They laugh. Smoke. Drink beer when they can get it. They tape songs off the radio.
“Zehra! The recorder—quick!” Lena commands. She scrambles to shove in a cassette.
“Lena! Check the tape! That could be important!” Zehra says.
“Not anymore.” Lena presses play and record at the same time.
They dance around the flat in their underwear, singing “No Future” at the top of their lungs. Jenny laughs. No future. Is that a thing to dance to? Well, why not? Her friends aren’t being hopeless; they’re rejecting the future that has been set into place for them, one that’s been formed and decided on by a small group of powerful people who have shaped that future to keep certain other people from having the same power. People like her parents and their friends. And what has traveling that careful path done for them? Given them a membership to the country club and the keys to this year’s Mercedes? Granted them access to social-climbing parties filled with other social-climbing people who agree with everything you say so that no one ever has to be uncomfortable? But it couldn’t protect them from everything, could it? A wild card could come along—cancer, a tornado, war, going broke—and then everything you’d planned for, all the ways you’d numbed yourself to the misfortune that only happened to “other people,” could crumble away like the dying facade on a soot-stained building in Kreuzberg. And then what? Then you had a choice: You could either keep up the facade, or you could look at where you were. You could decide to build something new. Something kinder and more honest.
Lena stops the recording. “The Sex Pistols! Scheisse! That…” Lena trails off. Whatever it is she wants to express is beyond words. But it doesn’t matter. No words are needed. They all get it.
“Time for work,” Lena says. She gathers her things. Jenny waits for an invitation. Now that they are a couple, surely Lena will take her there. But Lena only says “Tschüs!” as usual.
Jenny follows her down the stairs. “Hey! Mind if I tag along? I want to take some pictures.”
Lena bites at a cuticle. “I need to write some lyrics. On the bus is my only time to think.” At the door, Lena doubles back and kisses Jenny. “More later, ja?”
Jenny knows she shouldn’t follow Lena but she can’t seem to talk herself out of it. She keeps a safe distance, watching as Lena crosses one street and then another, ducking into shadowed doorways when Lena pauses to look in a shop window or say hello to a trio of kids blasting each other with water. Lena reaches the bus stop and keeps going. Jenny is confused. Curious, she follows Lena through several more streets to a run-down building where Lena presses the buzzer and waits. Moments later, a girl with long blond braids comes out. Not a punk. And she’s older, maybe in her early twenties. She and Lena hug and give a European kiss on each cheek. They set off together, not talking, just walking side by side like they do this all the time. An icy dread pricks at Jenny’s stomach. She follows them all the way to Bernauer Strasse. The wall is on her right, shockingly close. The watchtower looming above. Lena stops like she’s going to double back. Quickly, Jenny leaps into a shadowed doorway, her heart beating. What will she say if caught? She waits for a count of ten, and when she looks down the street again, Lena is gone. Jenny walks to the end of the street, stopping in front of the building where she’d seen the dark-eyed man the day she and Lena had gone sightseeing, the man from the party. Above the door, faded gold-leaf lettering read “B?ckerei.” Bakery. But it looks to have been closed for some time. Newspapers, yellowed with age, cover the front windows.