The New American Dream

Part Four: Amsterdam | Chapter Thirty-Eight

The flowers were stunning. I had never seen so many tulips in one place, my fingers were itching to draw them. The best about it was the smell, however. So many flowers in one place ought to smell heavenly.

Cassie ducked left and right, slightly panicked as bees kept flying into us.

"Hello friend," I said softly to a bumblebee who had bonked against my chest and was now clinging onto my shirt, dazed.

"How are you so calm?" Cassie asked, a safe distance away.

"It's just a cute little bee. She bonked her head on me, let her rest." A moment later the bee took off. "See? I'm still alive, she didn't eat me," I laughed, looking after her as she took off to the next flower.

We tried avoiding the bees as well as possible. Occasionally I pulled Cassie out of the direct flight path of a bee.

I tried to simply enjoy the ocean of flowers around us, desperately trying to ignore the sun that still was shining mercilessly down on us. It was only getting worse, the closer to midday we got. I focused on Dan's hand around mine and wondered what the others might be doing, I wondered if Nate was alright.

Eventually the sun was too much for me to ignore. Generally I had been feeling pretty great that day, amazing actually, but I was slowly but surely starting to get dizzy from the heat combined with, once again, not drinking enough.

"How about we go to a restaurant?" I suggested, "I think the sun isn't too god for me." No matter how innocent I tried to make it sound, immediately everyone was worried. "Jesus Christ, let's just get out of the sun is all I'm saying. You need to stop making such a fuss."

"May I remind you that just yesterday you were a whimpering mess on our bathroom floor and scared the living shit out of slightly hungover me?" Cassie said as we walked into the shade on the other side of the road.

"You may not," I said dignified. "I'm not feeling bad today. I feel great actually," I said with a little smile towards Dan, which got me a squeeze from his hand. "May I remind you that I'm from Los Angeles? Where the sun is literally always shining?"

"Didn't seem to do you any good in the past days," Cassie countered.

"Alright," I said pointedly.

Just a moment later we both burst out laughing, we simply couldn't be mad at each other.

"I will never understand girls," Jace stated, dumbfounded.

"Same," Dan agreed.

_____

We went to a pizzeria and shared pizza, my friends made sure that I was drinking plenty of water.

"You do know that the human body can only absorb 200ml per hour?" I asked them.

"Why on earth would we know that?" Cassie asked with a sigh. "Why on earth do you know that?"

I shrugged as I bit into another piece of pizza. "I thought it was common knowledge," I said through a mouthful of pepperoni pizza. "That by the way also means—" I swallowed "—that the most you would be able to drink and absorb per day would be 4800ml, which is about 162 ounces. That is if you were awake for 24 hours. Assuming you're getting a full eight hours of sleep leaves us with 16 hours of water drinking, and 3200ml of water that you can absorb which is 108 ounces."

Silence spread at our table, my friends stopped eating and stared at me.

"Are you serious?" Cassie asked. "You can't do math for shit but you know that?"

"I might not be able to do math to save my life but that doesn't mean I can't memorize useless facts. You should know by now that I'm great at that. Besides, it's not really useless, is it?"