The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of

by Kristin Levine

  “There, there, sweetie,” Dad said calmly. “It was just an accident. We know you didn’t mean to . . .”

  “Serve us bugs?” Felix added.

  Then he began to laugh too.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I remembered I actually did have a page in Doomsday Journal #1 about eating bugs. “My friend Chrissy and I once found a study that said people accidentally eat a lot of bugs each year.”

  Katarina stopped crying. “Really?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Like two pounds or something.”

  “Gross!” said Felix.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But it’s not dangerous.”

  Dad smiled at me. “Good to know.”

  Sara walked into the kitchen and came back with the jar of paprika. She held it up, tried to say something, and burst into laughter. Felix grabbed the jar from her and shook it.

  Even from across the table, I could see all the insects crawling around inside. I started laughing then, so hard I was clutching my stomach and tears were streaming from my eyes.

  Finally, Katarina started to giggle too. We threw the jar from person to person so we could all inspect the uninvited guests at our dinner.

  “Oh no,” Katarina sighed when she finally got control of herself again. “We’ll have to throw it all out.”

  “You know what?” I admitted. “I really felt like grilled cheese anyway.”

  “What is grilled cheese?” asked Sara.

  “Gegrillter Käsetoast,” translated Felix.

  “Oh yeah,” said Dad. “I make a mean grilled cheese.”

  Katarina looked in the fridge. “We have raclette and emmentaler. But no toast bread.”

  Felix jumped up. “I’ll go to the store.”

  “Becca and I clean up,” said Sara.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You rest,” Dad said to Katarina.

  We all got to work. Sara helped me scrape all the meat from the bowls into the small trash can in the kitchen. “It’s a shame,” I said, pouring the rest of the meat from the pot into the trash. “The goulash really tasted good.”

  “We’ll make it again sometime,” Dad said.

  Sara made Katarina a cup of tea, and they sat on the couch, chatting, while Dad and I worked in the kitchen, cutting more tomatoes for the sandwiches, frying up a bit of bacon. It felt nice to work next to my dad, side by side.

  “You know,” Dad said as he removed the bacon from the pan. “I was thinking.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About how I was pretty tired when I first arrived here. All the new stuff. New foods and language.” He paused. “Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to go along with Katarina’s plan for a big dinner on your first night here. Maybe I should have told her no. Maybe you would rather have had a quiet dinner with your dad.”

  My eyes teared up again.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “What do you say we do that tomorrow night? We’ll have spaghetti with sauce from a jar. Or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches!”

  “Peanut butter and jelly,” I said.

  “The jam here is scrumptious.”

  “Thanks.” I concentrated carefully on the tomato I was slicing, but it still made my eyes water as if it were an onion.

  Dad put his arm around me and gave me a little hug. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Me too.”

  Felix came back with the “toast bread,” which turned out to be a regular loaf of sliced bread. Dad heated up a big frying pan and made the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’d ever had, with tomatoes and bacon and strange cheeses that tasted so much better than the fake orange American stuff.

  When Katarina and Felix and Sara finally went home, Dad and I did the dishes together. I couldn’t help thinking about The Sound of Music and that awful first dinner Maria has with the kids, when they put a pine cone on her seat. Everyone ends up crying in that scene. But it works out okay for them in the end. Maybe it would for me too.

  CHAPTER 13

  Produce, Pizza, and Peppermint

  Over the next few weeks, we fell into a routine. In the mornings, Felix and I would run errands or go sightseeing with Sara; we’d spend afternoons reading or playing board games. (Dr. Teresa firmly believed that being tired increased anxiety, and I’d overheard Dad telling Sara to build in more downtime so I wouldn’t get quite so exhausted.) In the evenings, Dad and I would alternate between eating dinner with just each other and having a bigger meal with Felix, Katarina, and Sara.

  Mom and I chatted about twice each week. It was hard to get in touch with her at the youth hostels (“which aren’t only open to youth,” Mom told me on the phone, “although I’ve been told I look much younger than forty-five”), but she sounded so excited. She’d danced around the fountain at Mirabell Gardens while singing “Do-Re-Mi” and jumped from bench to bench while humming “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” at Schloss Hellbrunn. The connection wasn’t always the greatest—and Mom needed to feed money into the pay phone to connect to the local country number. You had to pay for local calls by the minute too. But it was nice to hear her voice, even if just for a little while.

  Dad and I did get to have those peanut-butter sandwiches. He went a little overboard, buying three kinds of bread: “toast bread,” Semmeln (traditional Austrian round rolls), and a small dark loaf so thick and nutty, I could practically taste all the fiber. He also got three types of jam: apricot, raspberry, and blueberry. We had our own taste test, mixing and matching all the flavors. We used up a whole jar of peanut butter, not because we ate so much, but because the jars were so incredibly small.

  But that wasn’t a problem, because people in Austria seemed to go grocery shopping every single day. If you felt like eating a peach, you just went to the store and picked one up. It was sure to be juicy, sweet, and ready to eat—no need to let it sit for a few days and ripen on the counter. You had to bring your own bag with you—or pay money for a reusable one. They didn’t pack your bags for you either, so Sara liked having me and Felix along to do that for her.

  No one smiled either, not at the grocery store or at any other shop. “Why would they smile?” Sara asked. “Their job is to sell you stuff,” Felix pointed out, “not to pretend to be your friend.” Only Dad understood. “I know!” he exclaimed. “I spent the first month thinking I had accidentally done something to offend everyone. They all seemed so grumpy! But it’s just a different custom. No one has the expectation that someone working in retail will be friendly and cheerful. It’s actually kind of nice once you get used to it. I mean, sometimes I just want to buy a liter of milk without engaging in small talk.”

  Speaking of milk, that was odd too. It came in brown glass bottles, which you returned to the store once you were done with them. The milk was so thick that the first time Dad poured me a glass, I thought he had accidentally given me cream. Sara gamely helped me search for skim or 2 percent, but the only reduced-fat milk we could find came in boxes, didn’t need to be refrigerated, and tasted awful. Katarina found it amusing that I still drank milk—“It’s only for little children!” I tried to explain that everyone drank milk at home, even Dad sometimes, but I don’t think she believed me.

  About two weeks into my trip, Dad had a special event at work. There was a conference with a dinner and a party after, and he said, “I’m afraid I won’t be home until really, really late.” It was decided that I would spend the evening at Katarina’s, and then Sara would come home with me and sleep on our couch.

  Katarina took Sara, Felix, and me out for pizza at an Italian place nearby. It was a warm evening, but we sat outside because there was so much smoke in the restaurant—and it wasn’t air-conditioned anyway. But it wasn’t too bad under the trees. We ordered large bottles of sparkling water, and it was almost as refreshing as soda. The pizza was paper thin, and instead of sharing one, like we always
did at home, we each ordered our own. I asked for pepperoni and was disappointed to discover Peperoni means peppers in German. (Felix said I should have ordered “salami” instead.) Luckily, Katarina liked peppers, so she switched plates with me. Her pizza was plain, topped only with sauce, blobs of mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil. It looked a little funny, but it tasted oh so good.

  “Felix,” Katarina said between bites of pizza, “I thought we should start planning your birthday.”

  “No.”

  “But it’s next week!”

  “Yes, it is,” said Felix.

  “Don’t you want to have a party?”

  “No,” said Felix. “I want to have cake at home and then go to the movies. Like we do every year.”

  Katarina made a face. “That was fine for last year. You were turning twelve. But this is thirteen! You’ll be a teenager.”

  It was Felix’s turn to make a face. “Don’t remind me.” He took another bite of his ham-topped pizza.

  “But being a teenager is wonderful!” Katarina exclaimed. “All the new freedom! The excitement! It’s a fabulous time in your life.”

  That was not how I heard most people describe being a teenager, but hey, I was only twelve, so what did I know?

  “Maybe for you, Mama,” Felix said, “but I’m different.”

  “We could have it at a Heuriger,” Katarina continued. “Right up the road.”

  “What’s a Heuriger?” I asked.

  “It’s like a little tavern,” Katarina explained. “Very Austrian. They serve new wine and bread, cheese, and salami on a cutting board. It’s casual. Fun. There’s even music!”

  “Wine?” I asked. “For thirteen-year-olds?!”

  “No, no, no.” Katarina laughed. “The wine is for the grown-ups. There’s sparkling grape juice for the kids.”

  “If we have to go out, I’d rather just come here again,” Felix said. “Then we can just jump on the bus to the movie theater.”

  “But we come here all the time!” Katarina said.

  “That’s because I like it,” Felix said.

  “Becca has already been here,” Katarina insisted. “A Heuriger would be something new.”

  “But I like not new things,” Felix said.

  “Don’t make a big deal about this, Schatzi,” Katarina said. “Just invite a few friends from school and have a party. It can be a little one.”

  “Ich will aber nicht.”

  I could tell he was upset. Felix rarely lapsed into German when I was around.

  “Okay, okay,” Katarina said. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  Luckily, they did not discuss it later. Instead, after dinner we sat around their living room playing a silly board game called Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht. Each person had four colored pegs; you threw dice to move them around the board, trying to get them all Home. If you landed on an opponent’s piece, you could send them back to Start. Basically, it was the German version of Sorry! It was pretty fun!

  When it was time to go to bed, Sara and I walked back to my dad’s house. She brought a bag of overnight supplies with her: toothbrush, pajamas, etc. I got out a blanket and an extra pillow and helped her make up a little bed on the big L-shaped couch, since we didn’t have a guest room. Then I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed, pretty sure I was going to dream about pepperoni and peppers and parties and moving little colored pegs around a board.

  I was woken by a scream. At first, I thought I might have imagined it. It was raining hard, and as I lay in bed, lightning lit up the window, followed a moment later by a boom of thunder. Then I heard it again—a loud, short shriek.

  I jumped out of bed and ran, panicked, down the stairs. The lightning flashed again, and for a moment I could see Sara thrashing about on the couch. She screamed again, but I breathed a sigh of relief. She was just dreaming.

  I turned on the lamp on the side table next to the couch. Sara was sweating, the green lock of hair sticking to her forehead like a piece of overcooked spinach. I put my hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

  “Sara,” I said. “Wake up! You’re having a nightmare.”

  She moaned and tried to pull away from me. Then the living room lit up from the lightning again, and the room shook with thunder. Sara opened her eyes with a shriek.

  “It’s me, Becca!” I said. “It’s just a thunderstorm.”

  Sara blinked once or twice, and then something clicked and she recognized me again. “Oh, Becca!” she said. “I had such a bad dream!”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Sara huddled in the corner of the couch, her blanket wrapped around her. She looked terrible, with big dark shadows under her eyes. It scared me a little.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked.

  Sara took a deep breath in, held it for a long moment, and then exhaled slowly. “Could you make a pot of tea?”

  “Sure.” I was glad to have something concrete to do. Dad had an electric kettle. All you had to do was fill it with water and plug it in, and in a couple of minutes, you’d have boiling water. It was so fast! Something to do with the different current in Europe.

  Sara got up from the couch and went to the bathroom. She looked a little better when she came out. She’d splashed some water on her face, though her eyes were still puffy.

  “Do you want peppermint or chamomile?” I asked.

  “Pfefferminze,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  The tea was loose—another thing my dad had had to show me how to use—but I scooped some out of the tin and put it into a cloth bag on a little metal ring that sat on the lip of the teapot. Then I poured the hot water over it. The smell of peppermint drifted into the living room. It smelled like candy canes and Christmas.

  “Okay if I put on some music?” Sara asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She took a CD out of her bag and went to the stereo. Mournful violins began to play.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “La Traviata,” she said. “My favorite opera.”

  Okay. So it wasn’t what I listened to when I couldn’t sleep at night, but if it made her feel better, I didn’t mind. The clock in the kitchen chimed midnight.

  “Becca,” Sara asked shyly. “Will you sit with me?”

  “Sure.” I ran upstairs and grabbed a blanket off my bed. I poured each of us a mug of tea, and we settled in on the couch, each of us curled up on one end of the sectional, our feet meeting in the corner, our hands warmed by clutching the mugs. I felt cozy and safe, listening to the rain outside.

  Sara was staring at her tea as if she expected to find a prize at the bottom of the cup.

  “Want to tell me about your dream?” I asked.

  She looked up in surprise.

  “You don’t have to,” I added quickly. “But if I have a nightmare, it always makes me feel better to tell someone.”

  “I not want to scare you.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not scared of dreams.”

  “You scared of eggs,” she pointed out.

  “Raw eggs are scary!” I insisted. “But a bad dream can’t hurt you.”

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I will tell.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Bridge

  Sara sipped her peppermint tea. “I mention the bridge near my house, yes?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The one you’d walk across with your mom and little brother and eat ice cream.”

  She nodded. “When Serbian snipers first moved into the hills, they started targeting that bridge. People were already leaving the city, and sometimes they could not take their pets with them. One day, I watched a little dog walk back and forth across the bridge. All day long he walked, looking for his owner. Poor little sad dog. Finally, he started to howl. Then a sniper shot him.”

  “What a terribl
e nightmare!” I said.

  “That not my dream,” Sara said. “I saw that happen.”

  “A man shot a dog for barking?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s awful!” I shivered and tucked the blanket in closer around me.

  “My dream,” Sara continued, “was about my little brother’s birthday. He was turning six. We were in our apartment in Sarajevo. Mama scrambled eggs for breakfast. The war was still going on—I knew because I could see the bullet hole above the stove. The first week of fighting, a sniper missed my mother by only a few inches. There was blue paint on the wall, and it left a big white crater where the bullet lodged in the plaster. That’s when we started closing the blinds.

  “In my dream, my mother put out yellow crocheted place mats. They looked bright and cheerful, even with only strips of light coming in through the blinds. As we ate, she showed us some German marks she had saved.”

  “German marks?” I asked. “Don’t you have your own money?”

  “Of course. But when the war started, there was lots of inflation. Pretty soon, our money not worth much anymore. Mama had saved this money for a special occasion. ‘I go to the market and buy flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, so I can make Eldin a real cake for his birthday!’ she announced in my dream.

  “Eldin clapped his hands for joy and went to play in his room with his toy trucks. I begged Mama not to go. Too dangerous. But she insisted: ‘War or no war, my son will have a cake for his birthday.’ She put on a white sweater, very fluffy, like a rabbit, something you wear to a party, not the market. I knew it was a dream, because Mama would never buy something so impractical. She picked up my purse, the little green one, said, ‘Keep an eye on Eldin while I am gone,’ and marched out the door.

  “She was gone all day. Much too long for a trip to the market. Eldin and I looked out the window, saw boats float by, people by the river. It was like everyone had forgotten there was a war. Finally, I spotted Mama coming back from the market. She was walking across the bridge, with the white sweater and my bright-green purse, carrying a bag of groceries. She waved at us, as if to say I got everything!, and we waved back. I told Eldin, ‘Put on your shoes; let’s go meet her.’ But before we could walk out the door, there was a loud bang.