The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of Read online

  “Unlike the ring,” Felix told me, “Kärntner Straße has been a road for hundreds of years.”

  There was something about walking on the paving stones, where people had walked for generations, that felt . . . well, interesting at the very least.

  “Where’s this cathedral?” I asked. “I still don’t see . . . Oh!”

  A huge tower suddenly loomed over the sky, attached to a gigantic, bulky base. The roof of the church was covered with multicolored tiles, which made a zigzag pattern that looked like a bunch of Ws. I didn’t have to be told this was Stephansdom. I could feel how old it was.

  A deep rumbling started, and I jumped. Birds streamed out of the clock tower, circling overhead. The bells were ringing, so loud and powerfully, I could feel the vibrations in my bones.

  “Legend has it that Beethoven realized he was deaf when he saw the birds fly out of the clock tower, but he couldn’t hear a thing.” Felix’s face was shining. He was clearly in his element. “The tower used to be the main lookout for the defense of the walled city. There’s even an apartment for the watchman who used to ring the bells if he spotted a fire.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Well, most of the bells are automatic now. The largest was originally cast from cannons captured from Turkish invaders in 1711. But there was a fire in 1945 at the end of the war, causing it to crash to the ground. It was recast using some of the original metal. They only ring that one on New Year’s Day.”

  “Wow.” I wondered what it sounded like. Deep and rich or high and shrill or—

  “The smaller bells have names from their old uses. Feuerin means fire alarm. Kantnerin called the cantors or musicians to Mass. Bierringerin . . .”

  “There’s a bell called Beer Ringer?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Felix shrugged. “It was to tell the men drinking at nearby taverns that it was time to go home. Come on! You have to see the Christ with a toothache statue.” Felix led us around a corner and stopped in front of a statue of Jesus. “People pray in front of this statue when they have dental problems.”

  “Very funny,” I said.

  “Is true!” Sara insisted.

  I studied the statue. Jesus had his hands folded, one over the other. His head was tilted to one side, his mouth half-open, his cheeks swollen and his eyelids heavy.

  “When the statue was put up, people thought Jesus’s expression made him look like he had a cavity,” Felix explained.

  It did look like Jesus had a toothache.

  “And come over here,” Felix urged. He led us to the front entrance and pointed to the wall just to the right of the door. “This is my favorite thing about the church.” There was nothing to see except for a letter and a number carved into the stone.

  “O5?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It was the symbol of the Austrian resistance during World War II,” Felix explained. “Not all Austrians were Nazis, and some were outraged when Hitler marched into Vienna. In German, Austria is Österreich. The first letter is Ö, which is an O with two little dots over it.”

  “Called umlaut,” Sara said.

  “Ö can also be written OE,” Felix continued. “And E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, so O5 stands for Austria.”

  “Cool,” I said. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I like to read about Austrian history too.”

  We finally went inside the grand entryway. It was cool inside the church, as if we were entering a cave. I was already overwhelmed by so many new things. Everything seemed so ancient. Even the bell was older than the United States. I sat down in a pew, my head spinning.

  The O5 reminded me that fifty years ago there had been Nazis in Vienna. My grandparents on my dad’s side were Jewish, but they had emigrated from Poland in the 1920s, before the war. What if they hadn’t left then? Would they have been sent to a concentration camp? Would they have been killed? What might have happened to Sara if she hadn’t left Bosnia?

  It suddenly felt even colder, and I shivered. I was glad when Sara said it was time to go.

  “You okay?” she asked as we walked out into the bright sunlight.

  “Yeah.” It felt too complicated to explain my thoughts. “I think I just need to eat something.”

  “Okay,” Sara said, pulling out the envelope from my father. “Where?”

  I looked around. There were so many bustling cafés. My throat got tight. Every place had a menu I couldn’t read. Food I wouldn’t recognize. Customs I didn’t understand. And she wanted me to choose!

  Then I saw it. A little piece of home. A golden M. “McDonald’s!”

  “McDonald’s?” asked Felix.

  “Yeah.” I was as surprised as he was. I didn’t even like McDonald’s very much. But my mom and I had eaten there at the airport and . . . “I know it’s not very fancy, but I just need something familiar.”

  “No, no,” said Felix. “I’m excited. ’Cause my mother never lets me go!”

  We pushed open the door to McDonald’s, and I immediately felt more at home. The booths were red-and-yellow plastic; the air smelled of fries and grease. It took me a minute to realize a Quarter Pounder was called a Hamburger Royal in Austria. Even the burgers were fancy here!

  Sara doled out the money from my father’s envelope, and we sat down at a table with our food. Felix pulled out his book, and I finally started to relax. Sure, we had to pay for ketchup, and my Coke was only eight ounces with no ice. But the burger tasted exactly the same as the ones at home. There were even enough seats, so we didn’t have to share a table with some stranger.

  Except there was a guy at another table who kept glancing over at us. He looked about Sara’s age, with a short scruffy beard and dark hair, gelled as if he were auditioning for a boy band. He wore jeans and a soccer jersey. “Sara,” I asked, poking her with my elbow. “Do you know that guy?”

  She turned to look, and the guy immediately grinned. “Hallo, Sara!” he called out.

  Sara waved back and blushed. “Yes,” she whispered as he walked over to us. Felix peered suspiciously over the top of his book.

  “Ich habe die grüne Haare gesehen,” he said happily. “Wie geht’s?”

  “Gut,” Sara answered. “Can we speak English, please? Becca not speak German.”

  “Sure,” he said. “You’re au pair, right?” he asked Sara.

  “Yes. This is Becca. She arrived yesterday. This is Felix. This is my friend Marco. We take German lessons together.”

  He slid into the booth next to Sara. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Where you from?”

  “United States,” I said.

  “Ooh!” he said. “I learn English watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

  I laughed. “Where are you from?”

  “Firenze.”

  I looked at Felix. “Florence,” he translated. “It’s a city in Italy.”

  “My parents came to Austria five years ago to open a gelato shop,” Marco explained.

  “What’s gelato?” I asked.

  “Italian ice cream,” Marco said. “Best in the world.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “I love ice cream.”

  “Me too,” Marco agreed. “Until I start working in an ice cream shop.”

  We all laughed.

  “So.” He turned to Sara. “In class you say you like to dance, right?”

  “Yes, in Sarajevo I took ballroom lessons.”

  Marco pulled a postcard out of his pocket. “I dance too. My neighbor owns a dance studio. She’s Hungarian.” He handed Sara the postcard. “I help with teen ballroom class. We need a new female assistant.”

  “Ich soll unterrichten?” Sara asked. I guess she was so surprised she lapsed into German.

  “You be great teacher,” Marco coaxed. “No pay, but you get free dance lessons. And I take you out for ice cream.
”

  Sara smiled. “Sounds fun.”

  “Great.” He glanced at his watch. “Lunch break is over. I must go back to my father’s shop. Serve more ice cream to tourists. I call you to work out details.”

  Sara nodded.

  “Ciao!” he said as he walked off.

  “He’s kind of cute,” I said once he had gone out the door.

  Sara blushed. She tucked the postcard into her purse.

  Oh yeah. She liked him.

  “I’d like to learn to ballroom dance,” I teased.

  “I would not,” said Felix.

  “But this class comes with free ice cream!” I pointed out.

  They both laughed.

  I was done eating by then, but when I looked around for a trash can, I couldn’t find one. “Where do I put my trash?” I asked.

  “Leave on table,” said Sara.

  “That’s rude,” I said. “And it makes more work for the cleaning crew.”

  Felix closed his book. “You can’t throw away your own trash.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You might recycle it wrong!”

  “So . . . in Austria they trust people to pay for a bus ticket but not to throw away their own trash correctly?”

  Felix and Sara nodded.

  This was clearly an odd country.

  After lunch, Sara asked if I wanted to go to the Prater. I shrugged and said okay. But I should have followed my rule about visiting new places (DJ #3, p. 12), which is to always ask lots of questions. Because the Prater wasn’t another church or museum or historic building. Oh no! It turned out to be something truly horrible and terrifying.

  The Prater was an amusement park.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Riesenrad

  I am not a fan of amusement parks, not even the pretty, heavily regulated ones like Disney World. Which this wasn’t. No, this reminded me of one of those traveling carnivals, with old rides that looked like they had not been inspected in about one hundred years. There was a rickety roller coaster and a decrepit merry-go-round with peeling painted horses and lots of carnival games with cheap prizes like giant stuffed tigers and neon-pink hats. And towering over everything was an enormous Ferris wheel.

  “No,” I said, stopping outside the entrance. “I don’t want to go.”

  Sara looked confused. “I pay,” she coaxed. “Money from father.”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on,” Felix urged. “We’re already here! Let’s at least go on a roller coaster.”

  I shook my head again. Maybe they had a death wish, but I didn’t. Do you know how many fatalities and/or maimings can be attributed to subpar safety inspections of traveling carnival equipment? Well, I do. At least, I did. It was written down at home in Doomsday Journal #2. And I wasn’t going to risk my life for a few thrills on some stupid roller coaster that looked like a fake rocket ship.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t like roller coasters.”

  Sara looked confused. “You said . . .”

  “Look, I didn’t know what the Prater was,” I explained. “I thought it was a museum or an old bridge or something.”

  “Ach du meine Güte!” exclaimed Felix. “We’re here, I’m going on some rides. If you don’t want to come, you can just wait for me.”

  He stormed off. Sara looked at me for a long moment, not saying anything. Finally, I shrugged and trudged after him. Sara and I waited on a bench as Felix went into the fun house, with its mirrors and dead ends. But I saw her looking longingly at the rocket-ship roller coaster. “Do you like roller coasters?” I asked.

  “Yes. And my little brother loves them.”

  “What’s his name again?” I asked.

  “Eldin,” she said. “He’s six.”

  Six. And he was already braver than me. I sighed.

  Felix came out then. “All right!” he said. “The rocket ship is next. Who’s coming?”

  “Sara,” I said.

  “No, no,” she protested.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll just sit here and wait for you.”

  Felix grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

  “No,” Sara said seriously. “Becca’s father said she gets nervous sometimes. I not leave her alone.”

  I was suddenly furiously, irrationally angry. Of course my father would have told Sara about my anxiety, but I wasn’t a baby.

  “My dad exaggerates sometimes,” I said, my heart pounding. “I can sit on a bench by myself for five minutes.”

  Sara still looked doubtful. “You sure, Becca?”

  “Go!” I ordered. “Enjoy it for your little brother.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We come right back.”

  I waved, they ran off, and as soon as they were gone, I thought, Oh my goodness, what have I done? I was alone. In a strange country where I didn’t speak the language. This was why Dad had gotten me a nanny in the first place! What if something happens? What if I get sick? What if I get kidnapped?!

  I tried to take a deep breath. I’d looked up the safety statistics on Austria when Dad had first moved here. It had one of the lowest homicide rates in the world! So why am I so worried about sitting on a bench by myself? Other people did normal things, like riding a bike or going waterskiing. Lots of kids flew on planes without their mother. Some even went on roller coasters. Felix might look young, but I was the one acting like a little kid.

  Glumly, I watched the rocket-ship roller coaster dip and turn in front of the towering Ferris wheel. Like the streetcars (and the Austrian flag), the Ferris wheel was red and white. It didn’t have open-air seating; instead, each of the compartments was the size of a passenger van. And something about it looked familiar. I couldn’t help staring and wondering, What’s the view like at the top? What would it feel like to go up in the air? To go around and around and around?

  I looked over at the booth selling Ferris wheel tickets and noticed a movie poster: The Third Man. I knew that movie! It was the one Dad had made me watch a couple of days after our pancake brunch. The one that was set in Vienna and starred Orson Welles. In the film, there was a big scene on a Ferris wheel. This Ferris wheel!

  I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a scaredy-cat—to Sara and Felix, to my dad, and most of all, to myself. So when Felix and Sara returned smiling from the roller coaster, I forced myself to stand up and say, “Hey, why don’t we go on the Ferris wheel?”

  They both stopped short. “The Riesenrad?” Sara asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The name of the Ferris wheel,” said Felix. “It literally means giant wheel.”

  My heart started to beat like crazy. My hands were clammy, but I forced them into fists and said, “Cool. Let’s go.”

  Sara looked doubtful. “You said you scared of roller coasters.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But the Riesenrad isn’t a roller coaster. I’ve been watching it. It moves nice and slow.”

  “But your father said . . .”

  “My dad wants me to try new things,” I argued. My voice only shook a little. “It’s why I came to Vienna.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sara said. “We go buy tickets.”

  I was fine—excited even—as we stood in line to buy our tickets. It wasn’t until we took our place in the line to get into one of the cars that it started to feel like the metal detector at the airport.

  I tried to take deep breaths like Dr. Teresa had taught me. I drummed on the railing, tapping my fingers to a chant in my head: It’s perfectly safe. It’s perfectly safe.

  Sara looked at me. “You okay, Becca?” she asked.

  This was my chance to be brave. “Yeah,” I said.

  Sara didn’t look like she believed me, but she didn’t say anything. There were seven of us waiting in line: Felix, Sara, and me; a mother with a toddler sleeping i
n a stroller; and two teenagers, a boy and a girl about Sara’s age, who kept their hands in each other’s back pockets. The attendant opened the door to one of the compartments, and the previous riders got off. It was almost our turn to board.

  That’s when I noticed the sign that stated the Riesenrad had been built in 1897. Which meant it was nearly a hundred years old. One hundred years old! Plenty of time for parts to wear out. Or rust. Or . . . My neck started to sweat. I breathed even faster.

  I forced myself to think about something else. I caught sight of The Third Man poster again. Which made me think of the part of the movie where Orson Welles (who plays the bad guy in the film) is up on the Ferris wheel and talking about how the people below look like dots and how no one would care if they stopped moving. But my parents would care if our car detached and fell to the ground. I would care. There’d be a funeral and . . . and . . . they probably wouldn’t be able to have an open casket because my body would be so mangled and . . .

  That was when I realized I had made a horrible mistake. My heart was racing; I felt like I was going to throw up. My hands felt numb, my fingers tingling as if I had been sitting on them and they had fallen asleep. My chest hurt, and I gasped for breath.

  I heard one of the teenagers ask “Was ist los mit ihr?” and even though I couldn’t understand the words, I knew he was talking about me.

  Sara put her hand on my shoulder. “No worries,” she said. “Just loading passengers.”

  “I feel sick,” I managed to choke out, jerking away from Sara and running to the bathroom.

  I made it into a stall before I burst into tears. I was shaking, hot one second and cold the next; I dry heaved a couple of times but didn’t throw up. I was exhausted and embarrassed, but mainly, I was disappointed. I had actually wanted to go on the Riesenrad. I’d wanted to see the view. I’d wanted to prove I could be brave. And I had failed. I sobbed and sobbed, leaning against the side of the stall.