Page 1 of What Happens in Amsterdam

One

Sometimes you can have theclearest memories of places you’ve never been. Distant cities are familiar as old friends, either because you’ve seen them onscreen a thousand times or you’ve heard stories about life-changing vacations or years abroad. You can taste the sugar crystals dusted atop a pastry. You can see the lights of a famed monument shimmering bright with your eyes shut. You can hear the rush of water, but only if you’re quiet enough to listen. The melody of a language you don’t understand.

That kind of yearning is so specific, a dreamy ache that could be simple wanderlust or maybe something sharper, something that sits between your ribs and convinces you that’s where you’ll finally be happy. Able to breathe. The best version of yourself.

I fell in love with a place like that once, built it up until there was no way the reality could compare to my imagination.

As I sleepily pass the cabdriver a fistful of euros, I wonder if that place ever really existed at all.

I triple-check the address while my phone hunts for a signal. Somehow it’s eight in the morning, a fact my body is protestingwith every jet-lagged muscle. Anxiety kept me awake during the flight, worst-case scenarios piling up like Tetris blocks, and I only started nodding off when the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent. The low winter sun gives everything a haze of the surreal. A touch of the otherworldly.

That must be why I don’t notice the basement unit at first. Concrete stairs on the steepest incline stop at a black metal door graffitied with a phrase someone tried to scrub off, leaving behind half an underlined word and a giant question mark. There’s no apartment number. No window. I glance back toward the street, as though waiting for the patron saint of lost Americans to help me out, but there’s no point. My cabdriver is gone. Everyone I know is on another continent.

For the first time, I am completely and utterly alone, except for an orange cat perched on the railing, tail flicking back and forth.

Before I left Los Angeles, my friends and family had plenty of questions.Is this a real job, Dani?andAre you sure you can handle living on your own in another country?andHave you showered yet this week?To which I replied:Define “week.”

When your entire world implodes around you, sometimes the only option is to implode right along with it. Especially if that implosion takes you nearly five thousand miles away from home—or whatever that is in kilometers.

I will my nerves to remain at a low simmer and run a hand through my chin-length bob, a breakup haircut that doesn’t suit my face the way the stylist assured me it did. I’m not sure I’ve properly exhaled since I got off the plane, not when I hauled my paperwork-stuffed carry-on through passport control or dragged my suitcases off the luggage belt. I do it now, letting my shoulders drop and my lungs relax. One deep breath of Amsterdam air, and then another. This is exciting. This is an adventure. This is not a catastrophe in the making.

The street is fringed with rows of crooked houses pressed tight against each other, most only three or four stories high, in shades ranging from light brown to dark brown. Some roofs are curved and some are shaped like bells, and some have intricate designs etched above the doors. Maybe the strangest thing is that it’s soquiet. No cars, no traffic noises except the gentleplinkof bicycle bells as commuters head to work, not a helmet in sight.

I’m so floored by this level of confidence that I don’t notice a cyclist speeding toward me until he starts shouting in Dutch.

“I’m sorry!” I say, leaping out of the way as he nearly clips my backpack.

If I were halfway lucid, I’d have noticed that the street beneath my travel Crocs is painted red. Bike lane.

I assess my surroundings again. There’s supposed to be a lockbox with a key inside, but I don’t see it anywhere. Another mark for the catastrophe column.

That would track. A mysterious job offer, an interview process that seemed much too short, a free flight…Odds that this is a scam: getting higher by the moment. I would absolutely be the kind of person to fall for it, just like I fell for Jace promising me we were exclusive or my parents assuring me I’d grow into my ears someday.

Even the cat is judging me in that condescending way cats do, eyes unblinking as it lazily licks a paw.

“Hi there.” I lift my hand, because long-ago warnings not to pet animals you don’t know were never something I took seriously.

The cat hops off the railing and disappears down the street without giving me a second glance—revealing the little black lockbox it was sitting on.Victory.

I punch in the code from my email and the box opens up, producing a key that fits the industrial-grade door with minimal effort. A rush of adrenaline convinces me this is the greatest achievement of my thirty years on this earth. I am strength. I am power. I am—

—standing in a restored medieval torture chamber.

Basement apartmentis too generous a description, I decide as I step into my new home, anxiety giving way to a shock of cold. A sliver of window lets in just enough light to cast grim shadows on every piece of dust-coated furniture: a couch with a gaping hole at the back, a kitchen table with two skeletal chairs. Walls painted dark blue, a dank musty smell hitting my nostrils and making me wish I hadn’t swiped that extra packet of cookies from the galley when the flight attendants weren’t looking.

None of that matters when it’s clear the apartment’s pièce de résistance is a gleaming white bathtub in the middle of the bedroom. Inexplicably. Mere steps from the bed.

An unhinged laugh slips past my throat. I must be delirious from travel if this is what finally sends me over the edge, because of course.Of coursethe apartment my company found and that I agreed to, sight unseen, looks like this.

A knock on the front door stops me on the verge of a panic spiral, but just barely.

“Hey—is that yours?” A girl who looks mid-twenties is peeking down from the stairs, motioning to the suitcase I left on the sidewalk. “I live next door,” she explains with an accent I can’t place. Not Dutch, I don’t think. She’s dressed for a run, long dark hair in a ponytail, one AirPod in her ear and the other in her palm.

“Sorry, yes,” I say, embarrassed. “It is. Thank you.”

It takes her an extra second to respond, one that I’ve gotten used to when meeting people for the first time.

Usually when someone sees my port-wine stain, they stare longer than they should and then make every effort to focus on a different part of my face to appear as though they’re not staring at all. When I was a kid, I assumed people would be less obvious about it as I got older, but they’ve only gotten more awkward. Literalstrangers have gone out of their way to assure me I’m “still beautiful.”

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