Chapter 20 Tilted
Tilted
I have been hit by a truck.
I did not survive a plane crash.
I am dead.
There is no other way to explain why I am allowed to watch Yumi sashay onto the stage in a deep blue dress, its fringe sweeping across the inside of her thighs with each step.
Oh God.
I should leave my face the way it is, let the show’s audience chuckle at the raw slack-jawed shock of someone seeing the world’s hottest woman in all her glory. But it’s too embarrassing. It feels too real for reality TV.
I can’t watch her, so I watch the dress, schooling my expression into a softer, more palatable appreciation of the art form instead of Yumi’s body.
Her dancing isn’t as smooth or confident as Morgan’s was, but to my untrained eye, it looks pretty similar.
Suddenly, the fringe comes to a total stop, and I let my eyes travel up to see her partner—a different instructor from Morgan’s—shaking his head and demonstrating a sort of swinging kick, then leading her back behind the curtain.
Wincing, Yumi shoots me an apologetic expression, to which I give a very non-dorky thumbs-up. I don’t know what the COOK challenge is, but if it involves actual cooking, Team Football won’t be able to rush it. We have plenty of time.
But then the next team arrives, and Yumi still hasn’t come back out for another attempt. I try to put our thirty minute head start on group two out of my mind. There’s still a whole other flight. We have plenty of time.
The male High Elf jogs backstage and the female High Elf drops her bag a little ways away from me without acknowledging my presence.
What is going on with the people in this cast?
I suppose my season will be light on the usual B-roll of non-participant team members chatting.
I hope Yumi learning tango is interesting enough to make up for it.
“I’m Noelle,” I say, leaning across the table. “My partner is Yumi.”
She primly takes my offered hand. “Bee. He’s Logan.”
Am I being pranked? Is getting people to speak more than ten words its own secret bonus challenge? If so, I’m failing.
“Where are you two from?” I ask, feeling like a little kid tugging on their mom’s sleeve at the park.
Bee keeps her gray eyes focused on the door that Logan disappeared through. “Miami,” she answers.
Huh. I expected somewhere with less sunlight. Like Forks, Washington. “Oh, nice. I’ve never been to the East Coast, but Yumi used to live in New York before she moved to Arizona. Have you ever been—”
“Yes.”
“To Arizona? Or New York?”
“Both.”
I’m saved from the rest of the interrogation I’m being forced to conduct when Yumi walks through the curtain again. The music starts, and no sooner have I thought Thank God we’re done than Yumi is stopped by her instructor. He points back the way they came.
No way. No way she has to do it again.
Yumi widens her eyes at me, expression murderous. And if that fury was turned at me or the Adventureverse gods or another team, I would be able to handle it. But it isn’t. Yumi’s fury is directed squarely at herself and there’s nothing I can do to help.
I call, “You got this, Yumi!”
She nods, expression pinched. I practically watch the frustration wrap its hands around her and choke her. She storms off.
This moment of stunned silence is when Bee finally decides to take advantage of multi-clause sentences. “Wow, that was quick. Is the judge really strict, or is your partner struggling? How many tries has she taken already?”
My hackles go up at her not using Yumi’s name.
I just said it. I’m tempted to give a snarky answer, but a glimpse of the camera in my peripheral vision reminds me that anything I say or do will be used against me to build someone else’s dramatic arc.
Production isn’t my friend. If I give them fodder for a mean girl narrative, they’ll take it, and I’ll be viciously harassed on social media for years to come.
“That was Yumi’s second try.” I put more emphasis on her name than necessary. “She got to the end on the last try. I’m not sure what was different that time.”
“Huh. I guess she’s just not—” Lucky for both of us (because I suspect that sentence would’ve ended in fighting words), Bee trails off as her focus is pulled to Logan. He emerges in a tight-fitting emerald outfit, his crepe button-up barely buttoned up at all.
I sit there, my vision blurring more and more with each passing moment of Logan’s dance. When the music comes to a stop and he’s handed a shiny gold envelope, I can physically feel the two-million-dollar prize slip out of my hands.
Then the Surfers run in. Which is bad. And fifteen minutes later, the Influencers. Which is worse. They’re followed shortly by some of the crew including Aliona, and I want to cry at the sudden realization that everyone is now in Buenos Aires. We’ve just blown an hour lead.
There’s cold comfort in the fact that the sit-outs from these new teams, the Surfer Dude and the Influencer Girl, are much nicer than Matt and Bee.
The Surfer Dude, Joe, tells me that he and his girlfriend, Brooklyn, are from Southern California.
She’s not much of a dancer, he says, but she’s pretty good at moving her body if I know what he means.
The way he says it is goofy, rather than creepy, so I give him the courtesy of a laugh.
Meanwhile, my eyes are fixed on the curtain, willing Yumi to make an appearance.
Rania and Kendell, the red team, turn out to actually be influencers, though she tells me they prefer “content creators.” I don’t give myself too much credit for correctly identifying them—there’s really nothing else they could have been.
They have, and I quote, “a shit-ton of followers” that they call the Rankenphiles.
Rania presents this to me like it’s funny, but if it’s a joke, I don’t understand it.
Like I said, she’s nice, but I’m wary of them.
High-energy teams, especially those with jobs that require performing for a camera, always do ten times more yelling than necessary.
My suspicions are confirmed when Kendell returns in even less time than it took Morgan, a literal professional dancer, and Rania shrieks like she’s been electrocuted. “Go, Kenken!” she cheers as he starts the dance by leading his female dance instructor into a spin.
I’ve seen this dance performed four times now, and not once has it started with a spin.
Rania cups her hands around her mouth and stands, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “You got this, Kendycane! Woo!”
I like to think of myself as resilient.
Yes, The Adventureverse has been stressful. I’ve had to talk myself down off several panic-spiral-shaped ledges. And yet, thus far, I’ve persisted. But Kendycane? Kendycane breaks me.
As the instructor tries to stop him, Kendycane prances around her. I didn’t know that the tango was something you could do at someone. But here it is, happening right in front of me until Kendell finally lets his instructor drag him backstage.
Yumi finally comes out for her third attempt, and I grimace, recognizing the look on her face.
It’s the look she gets after her relay team is DQ’d for someone else’s false start and she’s about to botch her individual race because she’s distracted by frustration.
It’s the look Yumi gets after her sister, Mila, hits her kart with a red shell and Yumi falls off Rainbow Road just before the final lap.
Repeated failure puts her off balance. She’s tilted.
And Yumi always loses when she’s tilted.
If I don’t break the cycle, there’s no doubt we’ll get sent home today.
“Can I help her?” I ask Aliona, who stands beside one of the Sit-Out Cam operators.
Sit-outs aren’t supposed to interfere with individual challenges.
Teams have been awarded significant time penalties for so much as pointing out a dropped item in a delivery challenge.
I want to help Yumi, but if Aliona doesn’t approve it, I’d be putting us in an even worse position.
Aliona shrugs, chin propped on her fist as she watches something on her tablet and deftly telegraphs her impatience with me at the same time. Multitasking girlboss.
I press, “It would be good TV, and you did say it was our job to make good TV.”
“Fine. Go.”
I don’t even thank her, fearful that any further interaction might cause her to change her mind. I bound over to Yumi, tapping her dance partner on his shoulder. “Do you mind? Just one second.”
He glances at Aliona, who nods permissively. The man steps aside.
Yumi’s eyes narrow with suspicion. “What are you doing? Sit back down.”
“Don’t worry,” I murmur, placing an arm across her shoulders. I try not to notice the dress. It doesn’t work. Desperate times call for desperate measures. “I got permission, bossy.”
She shudders beneath my touch and I shouldn’t be so cocky about it, but they’re popping bottles in my brain’s executive office. I’m not even the one wearing a sexy outfit.
“If you’re not leading in tango, you’re following,” I say quietly into her ear. “All you have to do is move when I move. And stay close.”
Yumi makes a squeaking noise, pulling back to look me in the eye. “When did you learn to tango?”
I laugh, gesturing for her to get close to me again, waiting for her to fill the empty space in my arms for the starting pose. Once she’s settled herself before me and tucked her hands into mine, I say, “I didn’t. Trav says it to Trenise in Season Three, Episode Fourteen, ‘It Takes Two to Tango.’ ”
“Oh my God,” she scoffs a laugh. “You watch a single tango challenge and suddenly you think you can dance like Trav?” Yumi turns to look at me over her shoulder, exposing the long line of her neck.
“Dance? I’m not gonna dance with you, who do you think I am? I’m just hitting the reset button.”
“The reset button?” she repeats, confused.
“You’re tilted,” I whisper, my lips brushing her ear. I fend off a smug smile at Yumi’s indignant huff as I step away and return to my seat.
Aliona, pleased, gives me a measured thumbs-up.
It’s the cardinal rule of reality TV: Breaking the rules is okay, as long as the drama is worth it.
Knowing the cameras are on me, I paste a smile on my face and watch Yumi complete a flawless run-through of her tango.
But mentally, I’m a million miles away, thinking of the last time I was that close to her face-to-face.
Yumi is my girlfriend, I remind myself, even as I hear the loop of No. This is a bad idea. Disgust crawls its way up my back, hundreds of roach legs scratching against my skin. I cringe away from myself, like my body is something I can escape.
To untilt her, I have accidentally tilted myself.
And that’s why, when Yumi comes barreling toward me holding the purple Adventureverse envelope, I don’t answer her noises of delight and relief the way a normal person would.
No. When Yumi goes in for a hug, I, Noelle Breland—culturally illiterate American swine, incapable of human interaction—stick my hand out for a handshake.
Cool.