Chapter 18 No Metaphor
No Metaphor
We’ve been in our hotel room in Buenos Aires for about half an hour when production saves me from the silent treatment. Aliona leads us to a small conference room, parks us on two stools in front of a white backdrop, and hands us our blue windbreakers.
“Long day, huh, girls?” Aliona asks, settling onto her own seat. She crosses one leg over the other, balancing a tablet on her knee as she ties her hair up.
“Very long day,” I answer. As excited as I am to get to the challenges and do the Adventureverse part of The Adventureverse, I see why they’re giving us a night to rest. Humans were not meant to endure two (Three? I can’t keep it straight) days of cross-ocean flights in a row.
She smiles. “Well, let’s jump right in. What did you think when you saw Blair and Art went home in Paris?”
As expected, Blair and Art, the Goths, weren’t at the airport when we arrived this morning. Yesterday morning? “It isn’t surprising that Art and Blair went home. No goth team has ever made it past the first episode.”
“Huh,” Aliona muses, and I wonder if she genuinely didn’t know that statistic. Makes sense, I guess. My dad probably knows the Boston Bruins’ stats better than the Boston Bruins themselves. “As superfans, can you give me your predictions for this season’s elimination order?”
I sure could, but I know this is a trap. If we say something bad about a fan-favorite team, we’re setting ourselves up for public harassment. No matter what we guess, there’s a high chance production will use it against us.
“Oh, definitely,” Yumi says, her voice dripping with confidence. “Winning team: Yumi Panganiban and Noelle Breland. Easy.”
I smile, waiting for the next question, but Aliona just looks between us. After a beat, she frowns. “Let’s take that again. Yumi, I loved that answer, don’t change a thing, but can we get more…” She cups her hands and brings them together. “Connection between the two of you?”
It’s the same thing Petter and Bo asked for back in Paris.
Interaction. I tense. That doesn’t feel like something a couple on an all-couples season would need to be prompted on.
For now, we can pass it off as superfan jitters, but that won’t work forever.
I need to win this show. I need production to believe us.
“Sorry, I’m just so nervous,” I lie sheepishly, shaking my wrists out.
“That’s okay,” Aliona says the same way a teacher might say, But don’t do it again. “What are your placement predictions for this season?”
“As superfans, we definitely know the boot order for this season,” Yumi says, light in her eyes as she turns to me. “Winning team: Yumi Panganiban and Noelle Breland.”
“Hell yeah!” I say, high-fiving her. Our hands shift, slotting into each other, palm to palm. Yumi holds my gaze, biting her full lower lip. Her dimple is visible, a comma at the end of her smile. I forget what I’m saying and where we are and who we’re with. She is so unfairly pretty.
“Better,” Aliona approves with a clap. It breaks the spell. She asks a few more leading questions and we give a few more evasive answers before she sends us back to solitary confinement. Depositing us in our room, she says, “Girls, a word of advice: We cast you for your chemistry—remember that.”
“Yes, Aliona,” we say. It’s second nature at this point.
“Good night.” She closes the door, and we hear the sound of masking tape again.
“We’re fucked,” I say.
Simultaneously, Yumi says, “We’re so cooked.”
Great. At least we’re on the same page about that.
Dingy floral wallpaper stripes down the wall, too beige to be yellow and too yellow to be beige. I stare at it and not Yumi as I say, “I know you don’t want to be here.”
“You’re wrong.”
That makes me turn to face her bed. She sits propped against the headboard with her notebook resting on her lap.
In her oversized T-shirt and loose pajama pants, she looks like every childhood sleepover we’ve ever had.
It only makes me feel worse. So many things are the same as what they used to be, but not the most important things.
“I love this show. I do want to be here,” she continues, biting the cap of her pen. “I just don’t want to be here with you.”
There it is. I knew a sucker punch was coming.
Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I deserve it, I think Yumi has every right to feel what she’s feeling.
She doesn’t need or want to be here. Every moment that she doesn’t quit, she’s doing me a favor.
And she doesn’t owe me any favors. Still, does she have to be such an asshole about it?
My dad, my dad, my dad. I reach up and spin my globe necklace.
My mom. “I know. I know.” My dad, my dad, my dad, my mom.
“I’m sorry. If I—I wish things were different, Yumi.
” I stare at the ceiling. I will not cry.
My dad, my dad. “But we can’t keep going like this.
If we lose because we lose, then fine, that’s just how The Adventureverse goes.
But if we get kicked off because we couldn’t pretend well enough?
I will never forgive myself. I know you don’t care about that, or about me, but if you care about… ”
My mind wants to float out of my body like a helium balloon, but I grab it with both hands, wrap my fingers around its ankle.
It’s not something I like to do—pushing through the dissociation.
If it were easy, I would never dissociate.
I am in a war of attrition against my own brain, and I will always surrender once I have nothing left to throw at myself.
But for a brief moment, I can look like I’m winning.
I can prove I am not a lost cause. “I’m so fucking tired of begging for things, Yumi, but I am begging you to fake it for the cameras. ”
She doesn’t say anything. I can’t bear to look at her, and anyway, I’ve already taken pity on my mind and let it drift on up into the stratosphere.
So, I just sit there, waiting. The generator outside shuts off suddenly; the silence in the room swells until I can hear both our breaths falling into rhythm.
It makes me claustrophobic, and a little unsettled.
“Will he be okay?” she asks quietly. “If you get the money, I mean. Will it help?”
I shake my head. “It’ll help, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be okay.”
She exhales. “I wish I could’ve been there.”
I don’t ask what she means exactly. Been there for me? For him? For the diagnosis, for the hospital visits? In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Here’s how you know my mind is out of my body in this moment: I tell Yumi the truth. “Me too.”
“I’ll try,” she says. “I promise. I’ll try to act like…For him, I’ll try.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“But you can’t read too much into it,” she says in a voice that tugs my attention back to her.
I know that voice. That’s her smiling voice. That’s her joking voice. I know that voice. It hits me. No metaphor, because it doesn’t hit me like anything. It just hits me. I turn slowly to find her smiling down at her notebook.
She looks up, pointing her pen at me. “I don’t forgive you. And if it seems like I do, it’s just friendship muscle memory. I’ll do it, but after we win, I’m never talking to you again.”
I can’t catch my breath—drowning in relief, gratitude cresting over me in waves. “I…Thank you. Yes. Got it. I…Thank you.”
She rolls her eyes, smiling. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Breland.”
Oh, I know. I just don’t care. Tentative, aware that this moment is something very fragile I hold between my hands, I quip, “And yet you’re dating me.”
“Only under great duress,” Yumi says gravely.
“It’s charity work, really.”
She huffs a laugh.
I hesitate before continuing, but I’ve already come this far. Might as well dive further under the bus. “I’m about to say something you’re going to hate. If we’re going to be dating, I think we’re going to have to start calling each other ‘babe.’ ”
She furrows her brow. “Why ‘babe’?”
I swirl my hand. “Doesn’t have to be babe. Bunny, snookums, light of my life, whatever. You have to call me something besides ‘uh, hey’ if we want people to believe we’re dating.”
She sighs exaggeratedly, but without malice. “Fine, sure. Whatever convinces Aliona.”
“Yay,” I say, not even caring about how small and dorky I sound. It’s such a weight off my mind to know that we’re going to at least try. I spin the globe again.
“And you’re not allowed to be weird about this, by the way.”
“I…don’t know how much control I have over acting weird.” My cheeks hurt from smiling. I spin my necklace again.
She tips her head playfully. “Well, to the best of your ability, then.”
“Friends would probably hug right now,” I comment with a frown, knowing that she’ll say something like Yeah, and girlfriends would probably make out, but we won’t be doing that, either.
But she doesn’t. She just shrugs, smirking. “Yeah, but I’m not getting up. You’ll have to come over he—oof!”
The hug is more of a collision, a crash that results in us lying on her comforter, staring at the ceiling. We’re not quite side by side, I’ve somehow ended up near the foot of the bed, but we feel closer than that.
“Thank you,” I whisper to the overhead light.
“I love him, Noe. I didn’t like seeing him like that.” Her voice is sharp, angry at something, but it’s not me this time.
“Welcome to my entire last year,” I joke humorlessly.
“I hate it here.”
“I did, too.”
The night doesn’t last much longer—the Second Adventure starts at seven a.m. and we want to be well-rested—and for the first time in a year, I fall asleep easily and I don’t dream of anything at all.