Excerpt, Extracurricular #2
When I open my eyes at three thirty in the afternoon, the apartment is somehow colder than it was when I got here.
My head throbs with a dull, insistent ache, my throat dry.
Groggily, I force myself into a sitting position, reaching for my phone on the nightstand before remembering it’s tucked into the front pocket of my backpack on the other side of the room.
I grab my phone and the water bottle that was always a little too big for my car’s cupholder and settle back in bed. Now that it’s almost—I quickly count backward—seven a.m. on the West Coast, the Dorfman family chat is waking up.
Mom: How’s your apartment? How’s the weather? How’s the food? We miss you already, send pictures when you can!
Dad: Is Amsterdam as charming as it is in photos, or are they all just a very well-crafted tourism campaign?
Mom: Be sure to make a doctor’s appointment and refill your prescriptions! I read online that they might have different names in the Netherlands.
The messages come with a pang of homesickness I wasn’t expecting to feel this soon.
My parents have always regarded me with an extra sense of caution, as though I’m forever the micro preemie born three months early with lungs that didn’t work properly.
Severe asthma meant no contact sports, waivers from gym class, an urgent call to our family doctor if I experienced so much as a hint of discomfort.
It’s much more manageable than it used to be, but that never stops the constant check-ins.
Sometimes I think they’d have plastic-wrapped me if they could.
I answer them with enough detail to put their minds at ease: Extremely charming!
Cold but sunny. Haven’t eaten anything yet that didn’t come from an airplane, will report back once I do.
I have plenty of meds with me, but I’ll make an appointment soon.
Miss you too, will call when I’m a bit less jet-lagged!
My father immediately replies, asking if I have digital copies of my medical records or if I need them to scan anything for me.
And even though he’s punctuated it with a handful of emojis—a doctor, a stethoscope, a grinning face—I can’t help drawing the conclusion that they think I’m too fragile to do this on my own.
I decide I’ll reply to that one later, thumbing over to a separate thread with my sister, who’s texted a much more rational love you take your time but please know I want to hear everything!
oops I tripped and fell into a dungeon, I type, sending her a few photos of the apartment.
Phoebe: nooooooooo
Phoebe: maya says dungeons are very in this year. perhaps an intentional design choice?
Maya, her wife, is an interior designer, while Phoebe owns an independent bookstore in Pasadena. I’ve always loved that they managed to turn their passions into careers, in part because it’s something I’ve been chasing for years, never quite able to get there.
Maybe that’s why it was so easy to say yes to this move—because I haven’t put down the same roots.
Dani: that doesn’t explain the bathtub in the bedroom
Phoebe: omg. go home amsterdam, you’re drunk
Phoebe: also! don’t forget to take those melatonin supplements I gave you for the jet lag
I track down the jar in my suitcase, position it lovingly on top of a pillow, and send her another photo.
We’ve always been close; Phoebe’s only a year and a half older, and we’ve never lived more than an hour from each other, even in the worst LA traffic. But now that we’re nine time zones apart and her wife is ten weeks pregnant, I imagine that’s about to change.
They told us they were expecting during a dinner with my parents last month, Maya’s hand easily curving around her stomach. I’d already committed to Amsterdam at that point and had to fight the urge to cancel all my plans—because what if I missed my niece or nephew being born?
That’s still seven months away, I told myself. Don’t think about it right now.
Compartmentalization works wonders on mental health.
Though I’m not exactly well rested, I know I shouldn’t go back to sleep, so I head for the bathroom’s tiny walk-in shower that sprays water…
absolutely everywhere. There’s no shower curtain, only a sheet of murky glass that does nothing to keep the water in.
Because there’s also no ventilation, I settle for mopping up the water as best I can before unzipping an oversized sweater and a fresh pair of jeans from the suitcase that also contains every product in my seven-step skincare routine, though I can’t remember the last time I made it past step three.
The contents of my life fit perfectly into two checked bags and a carry-on, and while I’m not sure what that says about me, now’s not the time to linger on it. So I shrug on a slightly wrinkled wool coat and step outside to explore.
I squint into the afternoon sun despite the mid-January cold. The street is more active now, kids scribbling chalk designs on the sidewalk and dogs pausing to sniff flower beds. Iulia’s apartment is on the ground floor with a cluster of plants in the window, but I’m guessing she’s at work.
I make sure to avoid the bike lane this time and feel irrationally proud, then completely expose myself as a foreigner by snapping photos of everything.
The quaint brick architecture. The elevator contraption across the street lifting a couch through a third-story window.
The orange cat I saw earlier, now sprawled in a sunbeam inside the basket of a parked bike.
“What is this place?” I mumble to myself.
My stomach lets out a low growl, a reminder I haven’t eaten since I was somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean.
Groceries. I should probably find groceries.
I’ve never experienced freedom like this before—true freedom, no tethers or puppet strings.
There was college, to some extent, where I experimented with boys and with alcohol because there wasn’t anyone around telling me not to.
But I was in the same state. The same time zone.
Now I’m alone in a new country, with nothing on my calendar until I start work next week.
There’s a terrifying thrill that comes with it.
That connection I once thought I had, so distant now that it might as well have been another lifetime, wasn’t just to this place.
There was a person, too—the first one to ever break my heart.
I try not to think of him often, but now that I’m here, it’s unavoidable.
For a fraction of a second, I panic about running into him, though the reality is that we’re two specks in a country of seventeen million people.
Still, he might be in the Netherlands somewhere, sketching the view out his window the way he used to do at our kitchen table.
Or maybe not. Maybe he left again with a suitcase of empty promises, the same way he left me.
The neighborhood I’m in is called De Pijp, a little strip of the city without canals but with plenty of bars and restaurants.
Around the corner, something much better than a grocery store comes into view: a huge open-air market.
The street is electric with activity, stands selling fruit and vegetables, freshly cut flowers, snacks from more cuisines than I can count.
People shout in both Dutch and English above the hiss of the grills, enticing tourists and locals to come closer and to try something delicious.
There are gigantic wheels of cheese and kitschy Amsterdam souvenirs.
Multiple booths just for French fries, served in a cone and dripping with sauce.
I nearly go dizzy from the scent of it all, savory and sweet and fried and perfect.
In my Burbank apartment, the only thing within walking distance was a car wash.
I stop in front of a cart selling miniature pancakes, where an older man is pumping batter into small circles on a griddle. Poffertjes, says the sign above him.
“One of these, please?” I ask, and then try my best at the pronunciation. “Poffert-yays?”
“Poffertjes,” says the man, the word sounding as light and fluffy as the pancakes themselves. Po-fur-chess. “With sugar or Nutella?”
“Both?”
I watch my little pancakes rise, darkening at the edges before he scoops them onto a paper tray, sprinkling them with powdered sugar and a healthy dollop of Nutella. The finishing touch: a toothpick with a tiny Dutch flag wrapped around it.
The first bite is all buttery warmth, the texture at the sacred intersection of pancake and donut. Heavenly. I’ve always had an incurable sweet tooth, and this is true comfort food for the jet-lagged.
As soon as I’m finished, I order another tray, every worry about this being a mistake instantly replaced with sheer dumb optimism.
I am in Amsterdam.
And then, an equally bizarre thought: I live here.
It sounds so absurd that my heart squeezes in my chest and a pressure starts building behind my eyes.
And yet what’s most absurd is that this could be my chance for a reinvention.
Here, I don’t have to be the girl whose parents consider too breakable.
I don’t have to be the girl who forwarded her ex’s private, borderline-smutty emails to the whole company or the girl whose friends told her she was acting immature when all she wanted was for them to hold her hand and let her cry.
The girl everyone is running laps around, mortgages and promotions and holiday cards with kids in matching outfits.
When are you going to figure things out?
Grow up?
Settle down?
And did you remember to refill your meds?
Maybe this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Maybe it’s a sugar rush or maybe it’s the jet lag, or maybe it’s a giddiness I haven’t felt since I was a kid.
I’m not sure I’ve ever possessed a true childlike sense of wonder—maybe jaded is in my nature—and yet here, in the middle of this market in a city I once wrapped in love and then in heartbreak, I finally feel it.
Amsterdam is going to change my life.
It has to.