Page 16 of The Noisemaker

I watched his tall, muscular frame as he moved across the marketplace with a smile. By the time he came back, there were still two people in front of me.

“This must be the hot spot,” Desmond observed, looking around at the twelve people gathered behind me. “What are we getting from here?”

“Oliebollen,” I informed him.

His thick eyebrows furrowed as we moved forward. “Oliebollen?” He repeated the word as if he were tasting it.

“It stands for oil balls. And that’s basically how you make doughnut balls.”

“So, we’re getting Dutch doughnuts?”

“Yes sir. And we’ll eat them so that the attacks of our enemies will fail and slide right off of us.”

He gave an appreciate nod as we stepped up to be next in line. “That’s what’s up.”

“Or that’s my interpretation of it, anyway.” I shrugged. “In the Netherlands, they’d eat oliebollen so that when Perchta the Belly Slitter tried to cut their stomachs open, the fat from the dough would cause her sword to slide right off.”

“How can I help you?” the woman behind the register greeted us.

“We’d like protection from the opps, please,” Desmond joked.

The woman, confused, looked between us. “I’m… sorry?”

Holding in my laughter, I shook my head. “Ignore him. We’ll take half a dozen oliebollen, please.”

CHAPTER4

We ate the Dutch dessert on the way to the river where we tossed in a penny for good fortune like the Romanians do on New Year’s Eve. It took us an hour to get home and that’s when we went into overdrive.

We threw old clothes we weren’t wearing anymore out the window to represent that we were letting go of the past as the Italian tradition called for. We threw the old toaster out the window to symbolize a fresh start as they do in South Africa. We ran around the apartment complex with empty suitcases to usher in a year full of travel and adventures like they do in Colombia. In order to cleanse the previous year’s past sins, we took a page from the Buddhist temples in Japan and rang a bell one hundred and seven times—knowing the one hundred and eighth time would have to be at midnight. And then we danced for five whole minutes with the bear masks.

“Okay, that’s it for now,” I promised Desmond as laughter shook my body.

He sat on the couch next to me, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “You said you were worried about us being evicted because of how noisy you are in bed and then you got us ringing bells, throwing shit out the window, running around the block with carryon bags.” He threw his hands in the air. “Fucking we can explain, but you about to get us evicted for some bullshit we can’t explain.”

I was in tears.

“Stop,” I screeched, collapsing my body into his as the laughter weakened me.

“Next thing I know, your ass is going to have us setting something on fire.” He looked around dramatically. “Where’s that list?”

“Stop!” I wiped my eyes. “I promise there’s only three more things for us to do and we have to do them at midnight anyway.”

Grinning, he stood up. “Good.” He looked at his watch. “All these activities made me tired. But now it’s time for my portion of New Year’s Eve.”

I wiggled my eyebrows. “Yes, it is.”

“You want to get to the ball at nine-thirty? We can leave here at nine.”

My eyes widened as I realized the time. “It’s almost eight o’clock?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my God,” I panicked, eyes wide. “I’m going to have to rewash my hair! I have to start getting ready!”

“Okay well I’m going to let you do your thing and then I’ll be up in a minute to get ready,” he called behind me as I rushed up the stairs.

At 9:37pm, thirty-seven minutes later than we planned to leave, I walked down the stairs fully dressed.

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