Chapter 35 Something You Aren’t Holding
Something You Aren’t Holding
We follow a production assistant down the creaky, narrow staircase.
Outside, over the mountains, is the bluest sunset I’ve ever seen.
Unlike the cotton candy clouds back home in Arizona, here the snow-capped peaks are the only things turning pink and orange.
The sky above them simply deepens, like someone is standing atop a distant mountain, slowly turning a dimmer switch.
It’s quiet. Faraway cowbells and water flowing into a wooden trough are the loudest sounds in the village, apart from the crunch of our footsteps.
Wooden chalets, their flower boxes overflowing with colorful flowers, line the lane.
It’s so peaceful that I almost forget what we’re doing: losing The Adventureverse.
On a stone terrace at the end of the path, JSP stands beside an older woman in traditional Swiss clothing—a dress with a front-laced bodice and a richly patterned apron.
She has a small bunch of wildflowers tucked between her bodice and the white cotton blouse beneath it.
JSP glances over at us before quickly turning away.
I choose not to interpret this as any sort of sign.
“Girls,” Aliona says, appearing from nowhere and startling me.
“The plan is to have you run up, as if you came right here from the via ferrata. We’ll let your crew get into place”—she motions for Bo and Petter to go ahead—“I’ll count you down, and then Jonathan will take it from there. Big reactions, got it?”
“Got it,” Yumi and I respond as I try to read Aliona’s face for any hint as to our placement. As usual, it gives me nothing.
Aliona waits for Petter and JSP to give her the okay before nodding and stepping out of frame herself. “All right, girls. Three, two…” Instead of finishing, she points at us, and we immediately take off running.
It feels so silly, but I suppose I understand how showing teams waiting for hours wouldn’t exactly improve the show’s plotlines or enjoyability.
JSP smiles when we plant ourselves on the mat.
“Grüezi. Welcome to Gimmelwald,” the woman beside him says, grinning widely.
“Yumi, Noelle, you’ve had quite a day,” JSP says, his tone measured. “As you know, the team with the slowest time on the via ferrata will be eliminated from The Adventureverse.”
I nod, eyes unfocused. Please don’t let this be it. Please.
“With a time of forty-one minutes and sixteen seconds…”
During his classic reality host dramatic pause, the world stops. Blood rushes in my ears as I grind my teeth hard enough to chip them. Forty-one minutes feels like forever. This feels like forever.
“You are…” He looks between us, arching an eyebrow.
I’ve spent years on the edge of my seat, yelling at the screen, cursing the very existence of commercial breaks and cutaways. But I have never wanted to shake Jonathan St. Pierre more than I do in this moment.
“Team number five.”
Yumi and I collapse into each other, with her forehead pressing into my shoulder and my arms locking around her to hold myself up.
“I’m happy to say that your adventure will continue.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe into my hands. As relief and adrenaline both crash over me in equal parts, I can’t bring myself to move. I inhale the sweet scent of the grass and fresh-cut hay.
“Congratulations, ladies.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. Yumi nods in agreement, the movement a massage against my shoulder.
“Would you like to know how much time separated you from elimination here in Switzerland?”
The world keeps stopping tonight. It doesn’t normally do that.
I remind myself to breathe through my nose and focus on keeping my lips closed.
Forcing moisture into my drying throat, pushing back on the walls as they close.
I am not crying. I am not giving The Adventureverse what they want.
I will not participate in my own exploitation more than I am contractually obligated to.
I am reaching past Jonathan St. Pierre, to the watcher—a flash of self-awareness, a vanishing trace of discomfort for a viewer who has momentarily been perceived. I know what’s happening here.
JSP holds my eyes for a moment before tilting his chin up and relaxing his smile into uncanny fatherliness. “Thirteen seconds,” he declares, leveling us with his gaze. “You certainly are lucky.”
I swallow, threatened by stakes both life-changing and inconsequential.
The money, the game, the proof, the audience.
The brain gremlins. Is that true? They could just be lying for drama—choosing an amount of time that could be attributed to the sixth-place team hesitating on a hold. No. I shut the brain gremlins down.
“We’re more than lucky,” Yumi says, taking a deep breath and bending down to scoop up the bag that had fallen off her shoulder. “Thank you, Jonathan.”
He seems placated by her willingness to play along, turning his attention away from me and toward her. “It’s my pleasure.”
“Great!” Aliona calls after a pause, jerking her head back in the direction from which we came. “Come, girls. Let’s have a quick chat.”
I slip my blue windbreaker on, flipping my braids out from beneath the collar with a wave of my hand.
“We’ll have you two seated on these,” Aliona directs, pointing at two overturned wood crates at the crest of a small hill, which I imagine will make it appear that there’s a dramatic cliff directly behind us.
To be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t actually seat us at the edge of the canyon.
Could be fun to make Yumi cry during our talking head.
I take my seat, scooting it closer to Yumi’s so I can rest a comforting hand on her knee, partially hiding her behind me. Going into a confessional that has an arrow nocked and pointed squarely at her, I want my partner to know that I am here with her and for her.
“Yumi, would you call today an emotional roller coaster?”
“Today was absolutely an emotional roller coaster. Running up to the mat, I had no idea what was about to happen. All I knew was that there was a very good chance of us going home.”
“Was today the most scared you’ve been on an Adventure?”
“I’ve never been more scared than when I was hanging off that cliff. That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it was worth it, because we’re still in this.”
“What would it have meant to lose your shot at the two million?” Aliona asks, tilting her head curiously.
I shift in my seat, cutting in before Yumi can answer.
“It would have been disappointing to get sent home, but I keep trying to remind myself that the money isn’t ours.
We aren’t losing the two million, we are trying to win it.
Those are different things. You can’t drop something you aren’t holding. ”
Aliona turns on me, like a security camera detecting movement. “But for you specifically, Noelle, what does it mean for you to stay in the game?”
The bait dangles before me: Tell us the story. Talk. You know you want to. You want people to respect you, to understand, to commiserate, don’t you? The fandom could like you. They could pity you, help you. All you have to do is tell them.
And maybe under other different circumstances, I would.
Not right now, though. “It means that we get to stay in the game,” I say, flipping her question over like it’s a lock screen notification that I’ve decided to deal with later.
“That’s everything for two people who love The Adventureverse as much as we do. ”
“Thirteen seconds is a razor-thin margin, isn’t it, Yumi?”
One look at the guilt on Yumi’s face, and I jump in to answer before she can. “Thirteen seconds is a razor-thin margin. It’s scary to realize we came that close to elimination.”
“It must be heartbreaking for the team that came in last,” Yumi says softly, and it makes me want to pull her in, tell her that it is not our problem. It was them or us.
“It was,” Aliona says.
Again, I feel that I am looking through the facade of the show to the scaffolding that production has cultivated so carefully, the leading questions that funnel me through the illusion of choice, straight into whatever corral they’ve already designated to me.
A strong magnetic pull draws me to ask who went home.
Whose dream did Yumi and I crush? That very same setup answers the question for me.
I try not to picture the next page in Yumi’s logbook, but I can already see MATT AND MORGAN with a red line striking through the heart of their names like a fatal wound.
Aliona stares a moment longer, then realizes that the fish aren’t biting. “Especially since you were so friendly with Morgan and Matt.”
Yumi squeezes her eyes shut.
How many times can I explain how much I love and understand The Adventureverse?
As a watcher, a superfan, I know a story needs to be woven.
Seasons without high emotion, good storylines, and vulnerable characters are, frankly, boring.
I have no interest in being a boring team on a boring season with no rewatchability.
I came on this show knowing what it would ask of me.
But, God, it does kind of suck to live through.
I want to do justice to the canon, but I need to do justice to Yumi first. Even though we didn’t lose, mentally this is a lose-lose situation for my partner.
I know how this sort of illogical thinking sinks into the psyche—fault, blame, survivor’s guilt.
It’s not a burden worth carrying for the next sixty years.
“It’s sad to see Matt and Morgan go,” I start, taking Yumi’s hands between mine.
“They were tough competitors, and good friends. But at the end of the day, only one team can cross that finish line first. The fact is, they went home, and that means we didn’t.
This is the time to lock in, not let our emotions get the best of us. ”
“Last question, how does it feel to be in the final five?”
Of all the questions, this one unseats me. My emotions ricochet—defensive to surprised to excited to embarrassed to annoyed to thrilled. The emotional whiplash is exhausting.
Fighting my brain fog, I say, “It’s a dream come true.”
“I never thought we’d actually be here,” Yumi agrees, smiling softly. “I won’t believe it until I see it on TV.”
“All right.” Aliona stands, stretching. “We’re good, girls. Go get some sleep. You’ll be leaving last tomorrow. Your crew will be waiting at eight with instructions. Congrats, and welcome to the final five.”
I take a deep breath as I pull my blue windbreaker off and hand it back to Aliona.
Two more eliminations stand between us and the chance at two million dollars.
I spin my necklace. We’re so close. No matter what I told Aliona, it does feel like we’re already holding that two million, and I refuse to drop it now.