Let's Be Birds (OLD VERSION)

☀10☀

The preparations for Carly's neighbourhood 'shindig' start early the next morning. As soon as we're up and not groggy enough to cut our fingers, she has us making cakes and those small bread rolls with chocolate chips in them. I've never seen much cake batter in my life.

Hannah takes pictures and videos the whole day, captioning it The Great Cake Caper even though we aren't stealing any of the cakes. Someone comments on that and she replies to them saying they should live a little.

Cousin Carly asks us about what we've done so far and is pretty unimpressed by our stories.

"You're on a road trip and you haven't even caused an ounce of chaos yet? No spontaneity?"

Hannah stops icing some cakes with the U.S. flag and points to Clementine who is sleeping outside the kitchen door. "Well, we did adopt a cat from a gas station."

She titters in response. "It's not a proper road trip until someone streaks."

"There will be no running around naked." I insist, taking another tray of cupcakes out to cool.

"Not even near the waterfalls?"

"Never. And I'm not even going to fight you on this one, nobody needs to see my butt apart from me." I say which causes them to laugh. "What?"

"You sound like an old man." Hannah comments and I pull a face at her.

We laugh, complain and talk about life while we bake and cook and grill far into the late afternoon. I'm so happy when we're done because my hands kind of hurt and my feet are sore from walking around all day. Carly lets us take a cupcake and the three of us sit out on her balcony, eating and staring at the sunset from our little deck chairs. It's hard for me to believe that I'm in Georgia, miles away from home, but it's also quite refreshing. The weather isn't quite as hot as in Florida but it's also less unpredictable which is a nice change from the random summer storm that hits us just because it wanted to.

Weather in Florida literally does what it likes.

The next day, we're up early again and we have to start packing away and taking the food down. There are tables and chairs with balloons and buntings laid out around the apartment complex. Lots of people from the surrounding apartments are up and at it, blowing up the balloons and laying mismatched table cloths on the little fold out tables. There's also a ton of food being put on like a buffet table thing and a little platform with speakers for God knows what.

"This is so cute," Hannah says to me. "I've never been to a neighbourhood party before!"

"I'm going to gain so much weight after this." I tell her and she laughs. "My mom will be proud."

We help set up as much as we can before going back upstairs and changing to something more appropriate for the weather. By then, there's music blasting and people are already eating.

Hannah and I are total strangers to most of the people and at first we're hesitant to mingle so we stand with Carly and talk about television and music. Carly's into Korean stuff and was over the moon to find out that Hannah is half Korean, demanding her to say things in the language before this guy whisks her away to dance.

"Nate, do you want to dance?"

I can't dance too well and I want to say no, but I don't want to stand awkwardly by the speakers and blow out my ears either. Besides, it must be more fun than standing here and eyeing the grapes on the table across the dance floor, right?