Chapter 19 Pitter-Patter
Pitter-Patter
It’s a beautiful morning in Buenos Aires. The sun is shining, birds are singing, Yumi is talking to me, and I am high on the power of being in the top three.
The other two teams, Grumpy X Sunshine and Team Football, meet us in the lobby of Ezeiza Airport, where JSP stands ready to count us down. With her tablet tucked beneath her arm, Aliona makes a few final adjustments, including stuffing three envelopes into the clue box behind Jonathan St. Pierre.
“Remember that after you grab your clue, you must go to your assigned spot and read it for camera before you are allowed to continue with your Adventure. Does everyone know where they’re going to read their clue?”
“Yes, Aliona.”
“Good.” She looks us all over one more time, walking from team to team and pushing our shoulders down to get us to crouch slightly, like we’re starting a race.
“Are we all set?” she asks, waiting for confirmation from the crew before stepping out of the way.
“Energy, everyone! Whenever you’re ready, Jon. ”
JSP straightens his gray windbreaker, lifts his chin, and smiles. “Teams, welcome to Buenos Aires, Argentina. As our top three finishers in the last Adventure, you will have a thirty-minute head start on group two and a one-hour head start on group three. Adventurers ready? Let’s get out there!”
Yumi and I race to grab our envelope, then retreat to our designated clue-reading corner, right under the sign for the budget car rental company paying for regular ad placement this season.
I tear the envelope open and read, “ ‘Individual Challenge: One team member must choose between COOK or BOOK.’ ”
“This is me, right?” Yumi asks.
“Yep, all you.” It’s the right decision.
There are always four individual challenges in a season, and they must be evenly split between team members.
Better to have Yumi take one of these, which don’t seem to involve heights, than have her get stuck rappelling into a cave when there are fewer teams and the margin for error is smaller.
“Then can you hand me BOOK?”
I nod and tuck the COOK clue into my jacket’s zippered pocket, hoping we won’t need it.
BOOK: Often called “The World’s Most Beautiful Bookstore” for its frescoed ceilings and stunning golden details, El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a 22,000-square-foot theater that opened over one hundred years ago as a performance space for Argentina’s most venerated dancers.
It transformed into a cinema ten years later, and now stands as a gorgeous palace of books that draws literature lovers from around the world.
Today, one member from each team will travel back in time to perform a classic Argentine tango on the stage once more.
NOTE: The Adventurer chosen for this challenge must also perform the COOK challenge, if teams switch tasks. Once switched, you may not switch back.
Yumi fist pumps. “I knew it.” She looks straight into the camera. “I knew it. I said this morning, ‘It’ll be tango.’ Didn’t I say that, Noelle?”
I lean in, using my head to push her head out of frame. “Yeah, she did. But she also said thafffb—” A hand covers my mouth.
“No, no. None of that,” Yumi says, pinning me in place against her to prevent me from revealing that she hoped the dancers would suffer a non-serious injury that might keep them from kicking our butts.
She meant it as a joke, a throwaway comment with no intention behind it, but both of us know that the internet wouldn’t take it that way.
I was never going to relay what she actually said, for that reason.
For as long as I can remember, being around Yumi has felt like playing.
Not, like, playing games. Just playing. Fun.
Joyful. So few things have been joyful and fun for me lately.
I wanted to play again. I wanted to step back into that version of myself and us and her and this.
I wanted to see if she’d react how I thought she would—and she did.
This relationship will only last as long as our run on this show, and I was thinking that I wanted to take full advantage of it.
But I’m stupid. Because I didn’t consider that Yumi doing the exact thing I goaded her into would mean her palm on my lips.
The scent that I already know will transport me back to The Adventureverse for the rest of my life—Eau de Hotel Soap—somehow smells good on her skin.
Her body is solid behind mine, but because she’s shorter than me, we don’t quite line up.
If I were the one with my hand over her mouth, pulling her against me, then our bodies would…
Oh my God, Noelle, what are you doing? I grab her hand and pull it away, whipping around and nearly hitting her with my braids.
Her face is flushed, cheeks raspberry colored. “Sorry, I—”
“No, don’t—” I realize my fingers are still circled around her wrist. I let go with a start. “No, it’s fine.”
She smiles, looking down at the paper in her hand. Abruptly, her smile disappears. “Oh, shit.”
I follow her gaze down to the paper. Nope. To the clue. Looking around, I see all the other teams and crews are gone. Ugh. Shit.
Now, I hate to keep bringing this up, but the love locks bridge was indeed a bridge with love locks on it. El Ateneo Grand Splendid is both grand and splendid, with its frescoed ceiling and opera boxes packed with bookshelves. The whole store glows with the warm lighting of an intermission.
The only one dropping the ball so far is Red Rocks.
Yumi and I climb the short flight of steps onto the stage turned cozy cafe. It’s sandwiched—or bookended, depending on which pun you prefer—by heavy red velvet curtains. A neat grid of tables and chairs fills one part of the stage, the other clearly left open for this challenge.
She pauses. “Where now?”
Pointing at the heavy curtains, I say, “I’d try there. It makes sense you’d get ready backstage, right?”
“You’re a genius,” she says, dropping her pack on an empty tabletop. “Wish me luck!”
Taking a seat at her bag’s table, I watch Yumi run off with Bo and Petter in tow. Right before she disappears backstage, I call out, “Good luck…babe?”
She looks over her shoulder, the corners of her mouth turned down in amused distaste. “Thanks, babe.”
Perfect. Totally convincing. I’d drop my head into my hands and groan, but there’s an extra pair of crew members filming the sit-outs, which is just me for now. Time passes excruciatingly slowly. The waiting really is the worst part.
Just as I start to reason that Matt and Morgan have either already blown through this challenge or picked COOK, I hear a voice pant, “Here! It’s here.”
Seconds later, Morgan bursts into my view. She dashes across the shiny wood and drops her bag beside me, grinning. “Love a dance challenge first thing in the morning. Which way?”
It’s a cardinal Adventureverse rule that you don’t help the other teams, no matter how friendly they seem to be, but Matt and Morgan are going to body this challenge.
They’ll finish before us, whether or not it takes them five extra minutes to find the dance instructor.
We might as well build some goodwill with them here. Plus, I like Morgan.
I point behind the curtain. “Yumi’s back there.”
“Awesome, thanks!” she shouts, taking off just as Matt arrives. He looks at Morgan’s pack beside me and drags it away, sitting at a completely separate table. I get it.
“I’m surprised we got here before you,” I say by way of greeting. “Did you guys get lost or something?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Yup.”
Okay. I try again, meet him at his interests. “This seems like a fun challenge for dancers. Are you bummed you don’t get to do it?”
“No, Morgan’s got it.”
“Has she done the Argentinian tango before?”
“No.”
Have I made some sort of monkey’s paw wish that I’m not aware of? I get to be on The Adventureverse, but every single conversation I have will be like pulling teeth?
The camera swallows every moment. I’m desperate to give it something besides all my awkward, non-couple-y interactions with Yumi, but maybe this is a good thing.
The audience might just think it’s me, that I’m the problem.
Noelle Breland: incapable of human relationships.
Honestly, as a narrative, I like it much better than Noelle Breland: wanted for breach of contract.
“What about you? Have you done the Argentinian tango?”
Matt heaves an annoyed sigh. “Argentine.”
“What?”
“The Argentine tango. You keep calling it the Argentinian tango. It’s the Argentine tango.”
It feels culturally insensitive to ask what the difference is, so I just assume Matt is right.
Noelle Breland: incapable of human relationships, also culturally illiterate American swine.
I’m almost tempted to press him on whether or not he’s done the Argentine tango, but I decide to drop it. Thankfully, what has to be less than two minutes later, Morgan emerges from behind the curtain, trailed by a man in all black.
She strikes a dramatic pose in her shiny heels and a gold sequined gown, slit all the way up the thigh. And Matt, as I’ve come to expect, transforms into a completely different person. He wolf whistles as sultry violin strains begin playing from speakers out of sight.
Despite the literal seconds she took to learn this tango, Morgan performs it like she’s known it her whole life. She moves like a whip spun overhead, the tension of a smooth glide building to an inevitable sharp crack. Then a change of direction before the pattern starts again. It’s hypnotic.
I glance over at Matt as his girlfriend slides her bare leg up another man’s body.
I guess I expected to see some degree of jealousy, but instead I find him…
clucking? His head bobs up and down, narrowed eyes flicking around like he’s participating in a conversation I can’t hear.
As his lips pop open and closed wordlessly, he produces a guttural sound.
I think he’s counting? But it could also just be a really good chicken impression.
The second the music ends, Matt doesn’t even wait for the instructor’s approval; he knows they’re good to go. He stands, taking both of their packs with him and grinning ear to ear.
Morgan fluidly steps out of her ending pose, a deep dip with her head thrown back, and shakes the instructor’s hand. He seems surprised at how well she did, and he must say as much because I hear her respond, “Yes, I do, but not tango. Have you always—”
“Morg,” Matt interrupts sternly. “Pitter-patter.”
“Sorry, let’s get at ’er,” Morgan returns with a sheepish smile, no trace of the annoyance that I would’ve felt had Yumi spoken to me the same way.
I know, purely from the look on her face, that they’re on the same page—that they both knew Morgan would need to be rescued from her friendly conversationalist self.
I’m struck by how real the other teams are. I mean, obviously they’re real, they’re standing right there, but for so long the people of The Adventureverse were just pixels on a screen. A team was reduced to whatever storyline or stereotype production grafted onto them. But now?
I watch them run past me. Matt, laden with both their packs, admiration in his eyes. Morgan, envelope in hand, sequins of her dress catching the light. Now they’re human.
It occurs to me that I’d feel bad winning the two million and denying real, actual humans their hopes and dreams. But not, like, that bad.