Do you think so? I don’t know. I just don’t want anything to go wrong.
Jameelah takes a big gulp of Tiger Milk, stares at the floor and continues to fidget with the container, the popping noise it makes puts me on edge.
Now that the time has come we’re no more savvy than we were before, she says looking at me with her big eyes, maybe we’d be better off doing it with somebody from Kurfürstenstrasse after all.
Bullshit, I say even though I’m not really sure, she might be right.
Suddenly the door to the girls’ bathroom opens. We drop the cigarette in the toilet and stand on the toilet so nobody can see our feet. The door in the next stall opens and then is shut and locked. Jameelah quietly climbs onto the toilet tank.
Salam sisters, she yells.
Laura screams.
Shit you scared me!
Kathi’s head appears above the wall of the stall.
How are your report cards, she asks, and do you have anything to drink?
The Müller container makes its way from one stall to the other.
Got an F in gym, says Laura, Herr Wittner’s nuts.
It’s because you always say you have your period, says Kathi passing the container back.
Wittner started a list so nobody could get out of gym more than once a month.
What do you mean, he writes down who has their period when, I ask.
That’s perverse, says Jameelah.
Yeah and he stares at the breasts of all the girls who sit in the front. Last week Anna-Lena wrote Hallo Herr Wittner across her cleavage and he turned bright red when he saw it.
Anna-Lena, says Jameelah, she’s frigid.
Yeah, I say, we call her Frieda Giga.
Or Fri-Gid for short, says Jameelah.
I like Wittner. I always help him push the electron gun into the physics lab and he never stares at my chest though I have to admit that with me there’s not too much to look at anyway.
You need to be home at eleven, says Mama sternly as I dial Jameelah and hold the phone away from her.
Okay, I say looking impatiently at the clock on the phone, at the latest.
Up until recently it was so easy, on the weekend Jameelah always said she was staying over at my place and I always said I was staying over at hers. Then something stupid happened. We fell asleep at the playground one morning at dawn, completely wasted. We only meant to lie down for five minutes until Noura went off to work at the clinic but then she discovered us there in the sandbox. Jameelah got smacked and wasn’t allowed out for ages and always had to go straight home from school.
Ever since then Mama always has to check in with Noura if Jameelah wants to stay at our place. But Noura doesn’t realize that Mama buries herself under the sofa blanket at eleven so that nobody can land on her island, Noura doesn’t know that Mama stuffs pillows under any part of her body that’s not resting evenly and doesn’t hear or see a thing until the next morning when Rainer comes home from working his overnight taxi shift and brings her a coffee.
Before I head out I call Amir but he doesn’t answer. I go and ring his doorbell but when nobody answers there either I take the bus to the planet. On the way I see that Nico has painted a new sad at the Yorckstrasse S-bahn station right where the homeless guys beg for tickets. I’m kind of excited. I know that it stings when I cut my thumb, that it throbs when I stub my toe and that it turns blue, I know that it burns when you fall down and skin your knee, but I don’t know what the pain is like when you sleep with somebody or even why it’s supposed to hurt. Maybe it’s not even true that it hurts and anyway it’s pretty unlikely that it will happen today.
Still I did put on my white knee-highs with the little black bows on the them and the underwear Jameelah gave me for my birthday last year, the checkered ones with hearts on them. For a second I feel like stupid Frau Struck in her stupid dress. She must have done it for the first time too, why doesn’t she just teach us about it. Actually I can’t picture Struck in bed with some guy. It was probably like one of Rainer’s pornos with pubic hair all over the place and red lingerie and crumpled sheets and right in the middle a big red stain.
Written in thick sharpie ink on the telephone booth at the planet it says Party and concert at Viovic’s rehearsal studio!
While I’m reading it I realize that the whole booth is shaking like it’s excited about the party and is trying to lift itself off its base so it can come along. I can’t see who is moving it around from the inside because it’s filled with smoke, but I can guess who it is. I crack the door open and a hand reaches out and grabs me and pulls me inside. I squeal but then Nico whispers close your eyes and shuts the door quickly behind me. It reeks of hash inside.
You could suffocate in here, I say, help.
Nico says that’s the way it’s supposed to be, I hear Jameelah say next to me.
Yeah that’s right, says Nico, this is our opium den, don’t worry just close your eyes and breathe deep, you’ll get used to it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale deeply. After a few breaths my legs start to feel like jelly, my head feels heavy, and the telephone booth starts to shake again like an old lift that doesn’t know which way to go, lurching up and down. Nico keeps blowing fresh puffs of smoke into the air and otherwise it’s silent, like we’re in a cave.
Somebody coughs.
Who is in here, I whisper.
Me, says Nico.
Me, says Jameelah.
Me, says somebody else and when I squint I see Lukas’s closed Bambi eyes through the fog of smoke, he’s smiling and his long lashes nestle against his white skin. It must be weird for him to be here with us so far from his wide-open habitat, I think, flying ever farther from his green surroundings travelling through the galaxy in a phone booth and even though I don’t feel one way or another about Lukas I think it’s pretty cool. Who knows maybe his green habitat isn’t so green at all, maybe it’s not the way I picture it and maybe ours isn’t so hot and sharp-edged either, no idea, when you’re fucked up life is soft around the edges and everyone’s surroundings are the same colour.
Nico and I sit in the back row for the entire bus ride, totally high, singing we R who we R. Nico holds my hand with one of his hands and with the other he scribbles sad all over the seatback in front of us. I find it hilarious because Lukas and Jameelah are sitting in front of us playing rock paper scissors and the whole thing with Jameelah and Lukas really is sad though maybe I’m reading too much into it all which I often do when I’m wasted. When we hop out at Grunewald there must be twenty of us. Anna-Lena and Nadja prop up Tobi who felt so ill on the bus that he had to puke under a seat.
What did you do to him, says Anna-Lena to Nico nodding at Tobi.
Nothing, says Nico, why is it always my fault?
You don’t have to get so fucked up all the time, says Nadja.
Shut up, says Tobi to her, I’m feeling better.
Nico smacks me on the ass as he walks by.
What’s wrong with you, I say.
There was something on you.
Haha very funny, I say even though I do think it’s funny.
Did you ever notice, he says putting his arm around my shoulders, that they’re all stupid, we’re the only ones who aren’t he says snorting like a horse grazing in winter. Nico doesn’t smell like Weleda, if he smells of anything at all it’s Nivea but first and foremost he smells like alcohol and cigarettes. Weird, for some reason all the men I like smell like alcohol and cigarettes. Papa smelled that way too when he came home from work in the evening and drank a beer in the living room while I sat in his lap, my nose buried in his clothes, that’s exactly the way he smelled.