He gingerly tests the mattress with his big feet and I notice that his second toe is longer than his big toe. He says something but the music is so loud that I can’t understand it. I grab his hand so he doesn’t fall over and as I do I ask myself whether the length of your second toe plays a role in keeping your balance. Mama had said something once about people with long second toes, I can’t remember what it was, but it was something bad, something like people with long second toes die young, that wasn’t it but it was something like that. Mama often says things that sound wrong. Mama says that back when Papa left he took her engagement ring, the one with the green gemstone in the middle, it was real, she says, it belonged to his mother, she says that every time she starts going on about the ring, it was real, she says, and Papa took it to give to his new girlfriend, and then she starts to cry and says that you just don’t do that, and the way she says it makes it sound as if the fact that the ring is gone, that Papa took it with him, is much worse than anything else about Papa leaving.
We jump around on the bed to the deafening music. The guy pulls me close.
You have such beautiful hair, so blonde, he shouts in my ear so loud that it hurts.
He tries to grab my hair as it flies around and I kiss him and he grabs my ass. Jameelah drops to her knees and pulls the guy down with her and opens his belt and pulls down his jeans and he’s wearing boxers and they get pulled part way down with the jeans but it looks kind of nice, even the bulge where his hard-on is sticking out. Jameelah takes a big swig of Tiger Milk and dribbled it all over the guy’s chest. She leans over him and starts to slurp up the milk from his body and he wraps his long legs around her and I take two of the silk scarves and tie his hands to the bed frame. We take turns kissing him and take off the rest of our things until we’re naked except for our stockings. Jameelah ties his feet to the other end of the bed, her stockings are rolled most of the way down, I don’t know why and I want to pull them up for her but she does the opposite and takes them all the way off. She’s hidden the condom somewhere inside, and when she finds it she rips open the package. The condom’s bright red and I wonder what flavour it is, must taste like something red, I think, maybe strawberry or cherry, but then Jameelah puts it in her mouth tip first and things get serious. We take the big white sheet that’s crumpled at the bottom of the bed and lay it around the guy so that only his cock, which is all red, is showing, like during surgery, when everything is covered with that green fabric except the spot where they are going to operate. The guy lays there completely still, as if we’ve given him anaesthesia.
Jameelah says you can learn something from these guys, just like when you study medicine. First you cut up a frog, then corpses, and only at the end do you get to work on real, living people. That’s how you learn something. We need to practise, for later on, for real life, at some point we’ll need to know how it all works. We need to know everything so nobody can ever mess with us.
It’s still the middle of the day, meaning it’s a little too early to go to the planet, but going home now would be weird so we head toward Wilmersdorfer Strasse U-bahn station and wander through the pedestrian zone, into the mall, and then downstairs to the supermarket. We grab all kinds of stuff, Yum Yum noodles, marble cake, Pixy Stix, tubes of sweet Milchmädchen condensed milk, and butter rum flavour Riesen, which Nico likes so much. We pay with Jameelah’s fifty euro bill and then walk over to the planet.
The planet is a big ugly concrete ball right next to the mall at Wilmersdorfer station. There are a bunch of smaller planets or moons around the big one, all of them made out of concrete too. In summer, when it’s hot, foamy yellow water sometimes shoots out of the small planets, but most of the time the whole thing is dry. I have no idea who decided to put it here. I guess it’s supposed to be art but it just looks like shit. I think they wanted mothers to sit around the planet with their kids and eat ice cream and splash around in the fountain or whatever. But you never see mothers and children at the planet, only alcoholics and crazy people and us.
Nico says the city didn’t build it for mothers at all, he says it’s for us so that we have a place to meet after school and on weekends. There’s a phone booth next the planet. It’s an old yellow dinosaur and I’ve never seen anyone go in to use it except for Nico when he’s smoking up. But it’s actually in the perfect spot. It’s covered from top to bottom with writing. We leave each other messages on it about when we’re going to meet or where a party or concert is. It may be old fashioned but it’s cheaper than calling or texting and everyone who comes to the planet checks the phone booth for messages anyway and luckily for us the city cleans it as soon as every inch is covered with ink.
Kathi and Laura are sitting at the planet. Kathi is fussing around with Laura’s bangs with a razor blade, just like earlier today at school during the twenty minute morning break, when we were down in the basement in the bike storage area, where we always smoke, she was working on Laura’s hair too. She wants her bangs to be straight, perfectly straight, but to run at an angle from left to right and it’s not so easy to cut them at an angle and make the line perfectly straight.
So what’s going on today besides hair cutting, asks Jameelah.
S-bahn party I think, says Kathi, Nico was just here and said something about it.
Where is he anyway, I ask.
Under the railway bridge. You guys have anything to drink?
Jameelah pulls out the bottle of Tiger Milk and the bag of butter rum Riesen from her rucksack. Viovic are next to the phone booth. Viovic are always in the same outfit, all in black, with the same hair, dyed black and cropped at the chin, and when it rains they have the same black umbrellas, which is why we just call them Viovic, like it’s just a single entity, even though that’s not true, there are two of them, they’re twins. The only time you can tell them apart is when they are on stage, because Viktoria plays bass and Violetta plays guitar. Their band is called Viovic and they’re crap, everyone says so, not just me. I don’t understand why they are so bad since they have a rehearsal space in their parents’ basement, with egg boxes on the wall and everything, and they practise almost every day because there’s also a music room at the private school they go to, but maybe they don’t practise as much as they say they do.
Nini, Viktoria calls, do you have a sharpie?
I shake my head.
I do, says Kathi and tosses it over to Viktoria.
Violetta scrawls something on the phone booth.
You guys coming to the S-bahn party?
Viktoria and Violetta shake their heads.
We’re going to Rotor, they say.
I wonder to myself whether they practise saying everything simultaneously like that, it’s almost creepy.
Here comes Nadja, says Laura with her mouth full. She points toward the S-bahn tracks.
She looks awful, whispers Kathi.
She was already looking bad at school earlier, says Jameelah.
Hey, have you guys seen Tobi, asks Nadja as she walks up.
Is everything okay with you, asks Kathi.
Got my period, where’s Tobi?
He’s with the others under the railway bridge.
I look in the butter rum bag. Only one left.
This one’s for Nico.
We run past the entrance of the U-bahn station and cross Stuttgarter Platz toward the raised S-bahn tracks. Apollo and Aslagon are squatting next to the underpass. It looks like Apollo is drawing something on the ground with his wooden sword. His Viking helmet is tossed to the side, lying in the dirt. Apollo believes he’s a Viking and Aslagon thinks all humans are divided between bird people and lizard people. I’m a bird person and so is Jameelah, he says, but he himself is a lizard person, just like the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Apollo and Aslagon only hang out with us at the planet during the summer because they spend winters in the Auguste Viktoria mental hospital.