Tiger Milk Read Online Free

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.
    What’s that supposed to be, asks Jameelah.
    It’s Naglfar, says Apollo, the ship that has to be built out of human fingernails before the end of the world can finally come.
    And that’s why you two can’t pass, says Aslagon, peering at us with his kohl-smeared eyes.
    Why not?
    Anyone who wishes to pass beneath the railway bridge must have their nails cut by Apollo, he says, so we can build the ship and bring on the apocalypse.
    Why would you even want to bring on the apocalypse, asks Jameelah.
    Yeah, says Nadja, maybe we don’t want the world to end.
    God’s earth is rotten, says Apollo as he gestures at us with a rusty set of nail clippers.
    Nadja rolls her eyes.
    Fuck it, she says, taking the clippers and snipping one nail from each of us.
    The walls of the underpass