Chapter 14 Get Out There
Get Out There
The flight to Paris is nearly ten hours long, and while that does mean we get a brief respite from the cameras as the crew take their union-mandated breaks from us, I’m sure I don’t have to explain how much my ADHD body loves sitting still for prolonged periods of time without any distractions.
The entertainment screen is off-limits for “social isolation purposes,” though I’m not sure how much insight Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves would actually give me into Parisian culture.
We’re also not allowed to so much as look at the in-flight safety pamphlet, lest it contain some secret treasure map directly to Jonathan St. Pierre.
Wanting as little to do with me as possible, Yumi nodded off against the window before the flight even began taxiing out, or at least she pretended to.
She’s truly knocked out now, though, with her head slumped at a neck-stiffening angle, snoring softly.
And I’m reminded how broken our dynamic is every time I get up to use the bathroom—my only respite from literal bone-aching boredom—and pass the Dancers playing card games or the Cowboys curled up into each other.
I resort to watching the toddler across the aisle play a fruit merge game on his dad’s tablet until he falls asleep.
Then I’m left with nothing but the little graphic of our plane, inching across the Atlantic painfully slowly.
Adventurers always say the waiting is the worst part of the show—waiting for transportation, for your crew to finish their bathroom break, for other teams to be done with their interviews—and while I’d believed them, I hadn’t truly understood until now.
No challenge could be worse than this. On this plane, I am an unmagical thing, impatiently waiting.
By the time the captain announces our initial descent, I’m so full of kinetic energy that I don’t even mind the way the clouds have congealed into one dark, ominous blob over Paris.
It’s the kind of sky that promises rain and delivers on that promise violently.
We hurtle through a curtain of water, droplets exploding against the glass and obscuring the outside world, which I suppose rules out the possibility of the clue being seen from the airplane like it was in Season 19’s Beirut challenge.
Yumi wakes with a jolt at a particularly rough wave of turbulence, her head bonking against the window.
Dazed and half-asleep, she blinks softly at me once before the gentle, beautiful face I recognize hardens into one that’s become more and more familiar lately.
Her lip curls, cheeks sucking inward—my very existence sour on her tongue.
Then she spots the camera, peeking above Petter’s and Bo’s seats in front of us like a nosy neighbor spying over a garden wall. She startles, her expression flickering in a Goldilocks-esque hunt for the right feeling. Too resentful, too kind. Scared, and then scary.
“Bad dream?” I offer.
Relief splashes across her face. “Worst dream I’ve ever had,” she says, shaking her head. “We here?”
“Just about.”
On cue, the fasten seat belt sign dings on, and shortly after, wheels hit tarmac.
The landing isn’t smooth by any means, but given the Biblical-level deluge outside, I’m just grateful the plane didn’t skid off the runway, break into a million pieces, and kill us a fiery tragedy that would put an end to The Adventureverse franchise forever.
I pull my bag into my lap, trying not to let the constellation of worries I have show on my face.
It’s the first challenge and I’m already nervous about money, about time, about whether we chose the right task.
We can’t go home first. It would be worse than not coming on the show at all.
If we get to the Checkpoint—the designated finish line of each Adventure, where one team gets sent home—and JSP tells us we’re last, I’ll be taking a full break from reality.
A vacation in the void, and with any luck I return home with amnesia.
We can’t lose now.
We can’t lose ever.
I glance at Petter and Bo, making sure they’re ready to go.
The sound of the rain battering metal is distracting.
My leg bounces, driving the top of my pack into my chin as I survey the other passengers.
The old couple a few rows in front of us will probably be slow getting up.
We can cut them off, but if the camera gets separated from us, will we be penalized?
“Little warm in here, huh?” Yumi prompts out of nowhere, her tone suspiciously casual.
The rain is so loud, it’s hard to think. But yeah, I guess it is kind of hot.
“You want the fan on you?”
I nod and am immediately hit with a blast of cool air. My eyes fall closed.
“Which flight are we on?”
My eyes fly open. “You think we should memorize the flight number?”
“No, dingus.” Yumi snorts, shaking her head. “We’re on the first flight, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay?” She doesn’t have to say anything else. Stressing out about getting off this flight, mowing down the octogenarians in row 34 might save thirty seconds, but it won’t be the difference between first place and last place. The Adventureverse is always made in the challenges.
“Okay.” I look down, loosening my grip on my backpack straps. “Thanks.”
And I want something from her that she won’t give me.
I want an acknowledgment of what just happened—Yumi recognizing a spiral born from a combination of pent-up restlessness and anxiety and overstimulation, and stopping it with ease.
A reluctant return to form: You aren’t alone, Noe.
I got you. You do the heights and I’ll do the executive functioning.
She’d said that to me once.
When I was first diagnosed with ADHD—what felt like just another series of letters to join the alphabet soup in my file—my psychiatrist explained that I would always struggle with executive functioning. Always. Like, forever.
Having only ever dealt with colds and broken bones to that point, this was terrible news: Something was wrong with me that could never be fixed, never be healed, wouldn’t go away, even given infinite time and chicken noodle soup.
For the rest of my life, I would struggle to manage time, handle frustration, switch between tasks, and generally focus.
Faced with an eternity of suck, I refused to talk to my dad, merely staring at my reflection in his truck’s side mirror and marinating in the unfairness of it all until he gave in and dropped me off at Yumi’s house.
In a borrowed bathing suit, I’d walked circles in the Panganibans’ aboveground pool, working with her to create a whirlpool as I recounted what Dr. Benelli said. I remember the way she laughed.
She threw her head back and let the current of the water push her forward. “You have ADHD? That’s your big news? That’s not a surprise to anyone.”
“That they have ADHD?” I asked, misunderstanding but diligently marching on.
“No!” Yumi flung herself backward, flattening out her body and floating atop the water. Her bathing suit was a polka-dotted black one-piece, and the purple ruffles around the leg holes fluttered as she drifted. “That you do.”
“Oh,” I said.
The mesquite trees that lined her backyard were blooming, yellowish pods growing between the needle-like leaves.
Between them and the shade created by the Panganibans’ house, the pool was out of direct sunlight for most of the afternoon.
But I didn’t like the way the pods sometimes drifted down into the water.
“Where’d you go?” Yumi asked, suddenly appearing beside me in the pool, her head tilted to the side.
“Hmm?” I shook my head. “I was just looking at the trees.”
“Oh, yeah, they’re cool, right? Anyway, it’s not like it’s a bad thing, it’s just who you are. You’re Noelle and you have ADHD. I’m Yumi and I’m Filipino.”
“That’s not the same,” I protested with a laugh.
She shrugged. “It’s close. Can’t change it, right? Anyway, I thought of something. What did your doctor say the problem was?”
“Executive functioning,” I repeated carefully.
“That’s like what an executive assistant is for, right?”
That season of The Adventureverse, the winners had been team of executive assistants, creatively deemed by production as Team Executive Assistant. Yumi became obsessed with executive assistants as a result.
“I guess?”
“Good! I’ve always wanted to be an executive assistant”—she’d only found out what they were two months prior, but sure—“so I’ll just be yours, right? I can help! I’ll ask my mom for a planner.”
The Executive Assistants had a planner.
“Anyway, hey, look at this!” She splashed me as she launched into a sloppy underwater handstand, lifting one arm to wave to me from beneath the surface.
That’s what I want, here and now, on this rainy day in Paris. But it’s not what I get.
The plane comes to a stop, the seat belt sign blinking off and ambitious aisle-seaters hopping up to grab luggage from the overhead bins. Yumi pushes herself to her feet without another word, slinging her bag over one shoulder and looking down at me, waiting for me to stand.
“You good?” she asks.
I want, I want, I want, I—
“I’m good.”