The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of

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The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of Page 21

by Kristin Levine


  “You never saw your mom or Eldin?” Felix asked.

  Sara shook her head. “They only let a few of us out at a time. But I asked everyone about them. I guess word got around that I was there.”

  We’d reached the top of the hill by that point. We could see the trees of the Vienna woods just off in the distance. After a moment, we turned around to go back home.

  “Were you scared?” I asked.

  “I was so scared,” Sara said. “But I kept thinking about the bridge in Prague. I imagined you were both there, holding my hands.”

  We held hands again, Felix on one side of Sara, and I on the other. We walked back down the hill in the golden twilight.

  “The worst part,” Sara whispered, “is that Mama will not talk to me. All I know is that they only got my first letter with the old address. They decided to leave, and things did not go as planned.” Sara started to cry. “I wish she would tell me more. Whatever horrible things happened, not knowing feels worse.”

  I squeezed her hand. We walked in silence for a long way. But it was a good quiet, not a bad one. Then Felix started to sing: “Di quell’amor ch’è palpito dell’universo intero.”

  Sara was so shocked, she stopped walking. “Felix, you have a beautiful voice!”

  He blushed. “My father taught me to sing a little.”

  “You should sing more,” Sara said.

  Felix shook his head.

  “Come on,” I urged. “There’s peppermint tea at home.”

  As we walked, Felix and Sara and I hummed bits of the opera, listening once more together to the heartbeat of the universe.

  CHAPTER 38

  The Riesenrad, Part 2

  Dad had to go back to work the next morning, but Katarina took the day off and drove the rest of us to the dentist. Eldin only needed a cleaning and one cavity filled, but the dentist decided Mrs. Tahirović needed a root canal. While Sara explained to her mother what was going to happen, Eldin ran around the waiting room, ripping the covers off all the magazines. Katarina suggested that since the dentist was near the Prater, maybe we should take Eldin on a little walk. “Stay as long as you want,” Katarina said, giving Sara some money. “We’ll meet you back at home.”

  I liked Eldin. Sure, he was a little naughty at times, but he reminded me of a puppy dog, running in circles around us. I’d thought escaping from a war zone might have made him shy; instead, he seemed to assume Felix and I were his best friends. He chattered away to us nonstop, although we couldn’t understand a single world. Whenever I asked Sara to translate, she said something like “He said, ‘Pretty bird.’” Or “‘Lot of big cars.’”

  “You’re not translating everything!” Felix scolded her.

  “He’s young,” she said. “Uses too many words. Repeats himself. I get to point.”

  At the Prater, Eldin liked the games and the rocket-ship roller coaster. But he kept grinning and pointing at the Riesenrad. Finally, Sara turned and looked at me.

  It was my last week in Vienna. I was going home next Tuesday. I doubted I’d make it to the Prater again, and I really did hope to cross the Riesenrad off my list. Eldin obviously longed to go. I didn’t want to be the type of person who prevented a little kid from going on a Ferris wheel.

  “Let’s try it,” I whispered.

  “What?” Felix asked.

  “I’d like to go on the Riesenrad,” I said a bit louder.

  “You sure?” Sara asked.

  I nodded.

  Sara smiled and went to get the tickets.

  We all stood in line, looking at The Third Man poster once again, just like we had done . . . had it only been seven weeks before? I’d like to say I waltzed onto that ride without the slightest twinge of anxiety, but I’d be lying. In truth, it was almost as scary as it had been before. But this time, I was able to say, I hear you, heart. You’re beating like there are bombs falling overhead. But it’s only the bumper cars next door. I took long, deep breaths, and Felix helped, counting, “One, two, three, four, in. Hold. Eins, zwei, drei, vier, out.” As we got closer to the front of the line, I felt nauseous. Fine, I said to myself, throw up. There’s a trash can over there.

  What I didn’t do was run away.

  Finally, it was our turn. I held Eldin’s hand as the man took our tickets, and his enthusiasm propelled me over the threshold onto the ride. The car was big, bigger than our compartment on the train. I estimated it could hold twenty people easily.

  The conductor shut the door and locked it tight. I still felt dizzy, so I sat down on one of the benches along the side. Eldin ran to look out the window.

  Twenty people fall to their deaths, my brain screamed.

  Sara walked over, and I clutched her hand. I closed my eyes, and that’s when we started to move. I was so surprised—it was such a funny motion, like an elevator but moving sideways—that I forgot to be scared and opened them again.

  Felix and Eldin were standing by the window, looking out, and we went to join them.

  The view was amazing! I could see . . . I could see my summer. Stephansdom, the streetcars, the opera, Heldenplatz, Schönbrunn—it seemed like every place we had gone was there, laid out before me in miniature. I was fascinated. It was like the music at the opera, only this time, it was the view that made my nerves fade away.

  The Ferris wheel stopped at the top. I glanced at Felix, but he said, “They’re loading more riders.”

  I nodded. Felix and Eldin were pointing things out to each other. They were smiling. My fear was still there, but so was I.

  “You did it, Becca,” Sara said. “You finished your list.”

  I thought about that. When I’d talked about traveling somewhere, I’d meant by airplane, but a train was close enough. I had eaten an egg, learned to ride a bike, and hung out in a couple of large crowds. And now I was on a Ferris wheel.

  “Nah,” I said. “You’re wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “I think you should say we finished my list.”

  “Yes.” Sara smiled. “Very true.”

  * * *

  On the way home, we stopped by the Julius Meinl so Sara could pick up a few groceries. She gave Eldin a package of candles and spoke a few words to him. He got so excited, he ran up and down the aisles, waving the candles in the air and shouting.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  Sara sighed. “He’s yelling, ‘It’s my birthday!’ It isn’t, but I told him I would make him a cake.”

  We laughed and lugged the flour back to Katarina’s, only to find Mrs. Tahirović working with Frau Gamperl in her garden. Sara exchanged a few words with her mother.

  “She says she feels better now,” Sara reported. “And she likes pruning flowers.”

  Eldin “helped” Sara make the cake, which meant he spilled a cup of flour and broke a glass measuring cup. But the cake was delicious.

  CHAPTER 39

  At the Ball

  We spent most of Saturday getting ready for the ball. Katarina was wearing a rich-red gown, and her hair was piled in an updo, with dark curls falling onto her forehead and neck. She looked amazing. For me, she’d found a purple dress she thought would suit me in the back of her closet. I spent Saturday afternoon standing on a box in her bedroom while she tucked and pinned and hemmed.

  “So . . . a ball is basically a big prom for grown-ups?” I asked.

  Katarina laughed. “Something like that. Most balls are held in the winter,” she explained. “It’s Vienna’s version of Carnival. Kids are usually strictly verboten, but since this is a student ball—and the dance studio helped organize it—your class is being allowed to go. Sara’s gone early to get ready to perform. We’ll meet her there.”

  Katarina made one final adjustment to my skirt. “Done. Take a look!”

  I stepped down off the box and turned toward her mirror. The purple dress
had a tight bodice and lace over the shoulders and sleeves. The skirt was full and flew out when I twirled. I had a petticoat underneath, and Katarina had found me a pair of high-heeled shoes. (They were low-heeled high heels, because shoes that are too high are very bad for the tendons in your feet. See DJ #3, p. 31.) In any case, the dress made me feel like I had walked into a fancy party on Love on the Evening Tide.

  “I love it!”

  My dad took Felix to rent a tuxedo, and the two of them got more into it than I’d expected, coming home talking cummerbunds and cuff links. Even Sara’s mother was coming, in another borrowed dress from Katarina, this one black and long and elegant. Eldin was way too young to come (and he’d probably break something), but Frau Gamperl had volunteered to watch him. “I’ve been to plenty of balls in my time,” she said. “But you all have fun!”

  The ball was being held at the University of Vienna, in a massive building that looked more like a palace than a school to me. We showed our tickets at the door and were waved through a hallway into a courtyard surrounded by curved archways on all four sides. A wooden dance floor had been laid out over the stones of the patio.

  Sara and Marco came over almost as soon as we arrived. “You made it!” she cried. Sara looked beautiful. Her dress was white and as light and fluffy as a vanilla cupcake. She even had a tiny tiara sparkling on her head, right where her green streak should have been.

  “It’s gone!” I exclaimed.

  “Yeah.” Sara touched her hair gingerly, as if she could feel the change in color. “Mama is here.”

  Mrs. Tahirović smiled and kissed her on both cheeks. Katarina snapped a picture of them together, one all in white, the other all in black.

  Marco wore a white tie and tails—he even had white gloves—and looked like he’d stepped out of Masterpiece Theatre. He bowed and kissed Mrs. Tahirović’s hand, making us all laugh.

  “We must go,” Sara said. “Meet you after opening!”

  Rasheed, Mai, and their parents joined us next.

  “Hey,” I said to Rasheed. “Looking sharp.”

  Rasheed pulled at his collar and muttered, “This thing is so uncomfortable.”

  Felix laughed. “Becca’s dad took me for a professional fitting.”

  “That’s why your tux looks so nice,” Mai said.

  I thought Felix was going to faint. Luckily, he was saved from having to respond, because at that moment, eight trumpeters appeared, poking their instruments out of the second-story windows, two on each side of the courtyard. A hush fell over the crowd.

  They played a fanfare. A real gosh-darn-it fanfare, like we were in a movie. The orchestra, tucked away in a corner of the courtyard, started to play. The young women and men opening the ball stepped two by two onto the dance floor, then they joined together to march four by four, then eight by eight, and finally they made a circle around the courtyard. It took me a minute to find Sara in the sea of white dresses.

  The trumpets played another fanfare, and then the orchestra played the first measures of a waltz. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sara and Marco as they spun around the courtyard. The dresses swirled out like little tulle tornadoes. They seemed to float across the floor.

  When the song was finally done, they all bowed, and a man in tails came onto the floor and called out “Alles Walzer!”

  Immediately, people rushed onto the dance floor as the band started another song. Dad held his hand out to Katarina and asked, “May I have this dance?”

  The rest of us stood awkwardly in a group for a moment. I was waiting for Felix to ask Mai to dance, but of course he didn’t. “Hey, Rasheed,” I said. “You want to try out some of those steps we learned in class?”

  “Sure!”

  Mai got the hint. “Felix, would you like to dance?” He nodded, and the four of us walked out onto the dance floor.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed as Rasheed promptly stepped on my foot.

  “Sorry,” he called out cheerfully. “Just like in class.”

  The dance floor was packed. Back in the United States, I’d only ever seen old people waltzing, maybe at a wedding or a stuffy restaurant. But most of the couples here were Sara’s age, and they zipped across the floor, spinning like tops. It was kind of hard to avoid them. Actually, it felt like dodgeball in gym class.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed again.

  “Oops!” said Rasheed with such a goofy grin, it made me giggle.

  I stepped on his foot—on purpose. Then he stepped on mine, and it turned into sort of a game. A couple who totally weren’t paying attention to where they were waltzing ran into us. They yelled at us in German, and we burst out laughing.

  “Come on,” I said to the others. “Let’s go explore!”

  The orchestra in the courtyard was playing traditional music—waltzes, polkas, and tangos. We found another band playing rock and roll in a smaller hall. Felix, Rasheed, Mai, and I watched for a while, smiling at the Austrians in formalwear dancing the jitterbug. “They are so good,” I marveled.

  There was another room with a disco ball and a DJ, and yet another with a magician doing magic tricks while people in ball gowns plopped down on the floor to watch. After a couple of magic tricks, we got up to explore some more and ran into Sara, Mrs. Tahirović, and Marco in the hallway.

  “You were amazing!” I gushed to Sara.

  Marco squeezed her hand.

  “Did you see the magician?” I asked. “He’s great!”

  “No, we were just on our way to—”

  At that moment, a waiter carrying a tray of drinks collided with a couple dancing their way out of one of the ballrooms. The glasses fell to the floor with a spectacular crash. Someone screamed.

  Almost before the glasses had finished tinkling to the floor, two more waiters descended on the scene with brooms and a dustpan. Clearly, they were prepared for this, because a minute later, all signs of the accident had been erased, except for a small wet patch from the spilled drinks on the stone floor.

  But someone was still crying out, as if in pain, as if they’d been hurt. I turned around and realized it was Mrs. Tahirović, her hands protectively covering her face. She was sobbing.

  “Mama! Mama!” Sara called.

  “Was ist los?” asked Marco.

  “What’s wrong?” I repeated in English.

  Mai and Rasheed made a little wall, trying to block her from the view of the others passing by in the corridor.

  “Did she get hit by a piece of flying glass?” asked Felix.

  “I do not think so,” Sara said. She and her mother had a brief, terse exchange in Bosnian. “The glass breaking reminded her of something that happened in Sarajevo.”

  “Let’s get her outside,” said Marco.

  Our little procession led Mrs. Tahirović down the stairs and into a side garden just off the courtyard. It was a warm evening but much less stuffy outside than it had been in the crowded building. We found a secluded bench in one corner. Mrs. Tahirović sat down, and Sara put her arms around her mother. Mrs. Tahirović’s mascara ran down her face, leaving a gray smudge on the shoulder of Sara’s white gown.

  “Could someone get some water?” Sara asked. “And find Katarina?”

  “I get the water,” said Marco.

  “We’ll find Katarina,” said Mai, pulling Rasheed away with her.

  Felix and I stood awkwardly nearby, unsure if we should leave or stay.

  Sara gripped her mother’s hands and began to plead with her in Bosnian. I didn’t understand a word, and yet somehow I knew she was asking her mother again and again to please tell her why she was upset.

  Finally, Mrs. Tahirović began to speak. I couldn’t understand her either, of course, but she spoke slowly and deliberately. Sara was crying, with silent tears running down her face.

  Dad and Katarina ran up then. “What’s happened?” Katarina asked.
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  Felix spoke softly. “A waiter dropped a tray of glasses, and Mrs. Tahirović started crying.”

  Marco came back with a glass of water and handed it to Sara’s mother. She drank it in one gulp.

  Mrs. Tahirović spoke again, then looked at her daughter to translate. “My mother apologizes for making a scene,” Sara said in almost a monotone. “The glass breaking reminded her of . . . an incident back home.”

  “It’s all right,” said Katarina kindly. “Why, anyone could get startled!”

  Sara translated again, and Mrs. Tahirović smiled weakly.

  “Let’s take your mother to the restroom,” Katarina suggested. “She can wash her face, and she’ll feel much better.”

  Sara translated, Mrs. Tahirović nodded, and the three of them walked off.

  Dad, Felix, and I watched them go. Marco picked up the water glass and went to return it to the bar. I looked around.

  No one was paying us any mind. A group of young women giggled as they walked by. A couple argued loudly in German. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but everyone ignored them too. Mrs. Tahirović had freaked out in a group, in public. The thing I had always feared. The fear that had kept me from fireworks and musicals—and yet nothing had happened. We’d had a good time before she’d gotten upset; could we even have a good time after?

  I looked over at Felix. “What do we do now?”

  He shook his head uncertainly.

  “I think,” Dad said slowly, “we should go to the disco.”

  So we did. The DJ was playing “Y.M.C.A.” I knew a bunch of people on the dance floor: Daisy, Peter, and their parents had shown up. Even the stern Frau Kovács was waving her arms in the air. Mai, Rasheed, and Marco joined us. We walked out onto the dance floor. The others welcomed us into their little circle, and we all jumped up and down and waved our arms and called out “Y-M-C-A” together, pronouncing the letters with a German accent. I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed so hard.

 

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