Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(93)
“We should do a song that’s just your farts after you eat kielbasa,” Anke shoots back.
Zehra spits up her beer and cackles. On cue, Lena aims her butt at the girls and lets one rip and they can’t stop laughing. They howl and cackle like witches in a rock and roll coven and not even the constant vigilance of the armed guards in their watchtower so close across the wall can dampen their joy.
When the girls return to the party, there’s a strange hum. A crowd is gathered watching something they can’t yet see over the undulating wave of heads.
“What’s going on?” Lena asks a tall boy in a ripped T-shirt at the back.
“Haircuts,” he says.
The girls push their way to the front. In the clearing, a boy sits on a stool, a pile of shorn hair at his feet. Behind him, a girl with short, spiky platinum hair brandishes an electric razor. “Wer will noch eine Rasur?” Who else wants a shave?
Jenny raises her hand. “Mir!”
“Heilige Scheisse!” Anke mutters.
Lena’s mouth falls open in delight. “Dallas? Are you fer sure?”
Jenny is tired of careful. Of half measures. She is all in, with Lena, present tense. “Yeah. I am.”
The crowd whoops and whistles their approval. It feels like a huge, warm hug of acceptance. The girl with the electric razor gestures to the empty stool in the puddle of hair. Jenny walks through the cheering crowd and takes a seat. She runs a hand through her long mane. It’s always been her security blanket. Something to hide behind. But it’s too late now. She’s said it. She can’t disappoint them. She can’t disappoint Lena.
Lena hands Jenny a shot of clear liquor. “For courage.” She grins as if they are the only two people in the room, maybe in the world. The punks chant her new name: Dallas, Dallas, Dallas … Jenny downs the drink and accepts the sudden fire of it in her lungs.
“Mach es jetzt,” she croaks out. Do it now.
The razor hums across the top of Jenny’s scalp, tickling it like an electric tongue. Thick slices of hair litter the scuffed floor like discarded memories. In under a minute, it is done. Jenny runs her palm across the prickly stubble. Her head feels light. Reborn. The room explodes with raucous approval.
Rat gets in close to examine the buzz cut. Sid Vicious’s curious whiskers brush her newly naked ear. Rat breaks into a huge smile.
“Bitchin’!” he says.
* * *
Laughing and slightly tipsy, Lena and Jenny bound up the stairs and burst through the curtains of Lena’s bedroom. The hour is late but Jenny never wants this night to end. Lena slides a hand across Jenny’s liberated scalp. “I can’t believe you did it.”
“Yeah. Me, either.”
“So sexy.” Lena pulls Jenny to the messy bed and kisses her.
I am kissing the girl I love, thinks Jenny, and it makes her so dizzy with happiness she has to break away to pant some air back into her lungs. “Sorry. Forgot to breathe.”
Lena laughs. “Can’t have that. We have more kissing to do. Go ahead. Fill your lungs. See if you can float.”
Following Lena’s lead, Jenny inhales deeply until she feels expansive inside, like she’s eaten a handful of stars.
“Good?”
Jenny nods.
A floor below, a bottle shatters. It’s followed by screams, shouts, the unmistakable crack of a punch landing on bone. “Sich Raufen!” somebody shouts. Fight. A-Blitz yells, “Komm mal runter!” Calm down.
“Hey. Stay here. With me.” Lena’s mouth moves closer, an orbiting satellite intent on connecting Jenny to only her. They kiss again. Lena’s fingers stroke Jenny’s right breast. Jenny has been felt up only once, by Robby Michaels in ninth grade at an orchestra party when someone locked the two of them in a closet during Truth or Dare. They stood there in the heavy dark of Marcy Morrison’s linen closet, the smell of mothballs and Juicy Fruit close and cloying. Jenny had felt both anxious and impatient.
“Just do it fast,” she’d said to him. Five seconds later, they emerged—Robby grinning and triumphant, Jenny humiliated and deflated.
She’s never had this; she’s never been touched by someone she desperately wanted to have touch her. Since she doesn’t know what to do, she lets it happen, buying time till she can figure it out. She’s still nervous about touching Lena, scared that her lack of experience shows. She hopes she doesn’t kiss too wide open, the way immature boys spelunk their dates’ mouths in the back row of the movies on a Friday night.
When Lena’s hand slips down into Jenny’s pants, over the wide, pillowy wave of her stomach, Jenny flinches.
Lena stops. “What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”
Jenny had been floating out in space with Lena. She’d been borderless. But now, she’s been brought back to earth, into her body, with a hard crash into the deep sea of her self-loathing: Not skinny enough. Not sexy enough. Not Phoebe Cates in Seventeen magazine enough. I am too much of not enough.
“Hey. Hey, Dallas,” Lena says. She cups Jenny’s face. Her fingers smell of tobacco. And other things. “It’s okay. Just relax.” Lena looks into Jenny’s eyes and smiles her crooked smile. “Okay?”
Jenny nods, smiling back. She is in love with Lena, and she can’t be in two places at once; she cannot occupy both Shame and Love. So she chooses Love. She pulls Lena’s hand back to her stomach. The hand unbuttons her jeans. It slips inside. Soon, the two of them are breathing heavily, moving together in a frantic rhythm. Jenny’s eyelids flicker. The lights above the mattress dance. Bowie sings from the boom box. Something about a Starman who’s waiting in the sky. And all at once, Jenny gets it. She gasps against the universe of Lena’s bright neck, spreading out around her, forever. Her body is a comet and her skin is full of stars and she is shining, shining, shining.