Chapter 49 Again
Again
The dismay I feel is mirrored in Yumi’s tight expression.
“Should we have prepared something? Why didn’t anyone tell us to prepare something?”
Twenty-four seasons of Adventureverse reunion shows, and never before have I seen the teams come out with choreographed bits. On the monitor in the wings of the stage, Yumi and I watch as JSP announces each couple in order of elimination, and they all have a little routine. What is this?
Yumi turns to a crew member in all black and asks, “Can you get me paper and a marker real quick?”
He runs off, returning just as Matt and Morgan complete a series of lifts and spins, much to the audience’s delight.
While Yumi scribbles something on the page, I try to peer over her shoulder. “What are you writing?”
“It’ll be funnier if you don’t know,” she says, capping the marker and hiding the paper behind her back. She sticks her tongue out at me. It’s painful how hot she is. “Do you trust me?”
I laugh, absolute faith in both Yumi’s reality TV showmanship and protectiveness of me. “Unfortunately, I do.”
Her eyes flash deviously. “Great answer.”
The same stagehand who got us the stationery now waves his hand to get our attention. He counts down from five with his fingers and then points at the curtain separating us from the audience. Despite two months of being in the public eye, my stomach still drops in the moment before we step out.
Then Yumi grabs my hand, and my nervous system settles.
They call people eliminated right before the final three “the fallen angels,” in reality TV. And everyone loves a fallen angel. That’s why I’m not surprised at the thunderous applause greeting us as we enter the spotlight and make our way to the edge of the stage.
Yumi releases my hand, turning to face me. With a cheeky smile at the crowd, she sinks down onto one knee and stares up at me lovingly. “Noelle,” she starts dreamily.
The audience goes crazy, their frenzied screams echoing throughout the theater. Behind Yumi, I see JSP’s jaw drop, and I wonder how much of his reaction is because this season is supposed to be about his engagement.
I know that this all has something to do with the paper Yumi sneakily reaches for and sandwiches between her palms to disguise, but my body hums with electricity when she opens her hands like a ring box.
I cackle, bending over with laughter at the lined paper, complete with freshly tattered spiral notebook holes. In large, sloppy letters, it reads, Will you lose The Adventureverse with me?
The audience erupts in a chorus of laughter and groans as the camera focuses in on her note. I compose myself because she’s watching me expectantly.
“I would absolutely hate that. Yes.” I pull her to her feet and into a kiss.
The crowd goes wild. As they should.
“Noelle,” JSP starts, and most of the cameras filming the reunion swing my way.
“We saw you struggle a lot this season with your dad’s illness, and infamously you did not get to see him during the family visit episode.
Can you describe what that was like?” He raps his handful of index cards in an open palm to punctuate the question.
My throat is tight with all the things I can’t say. I clear it with a small cough, but I can’t stop tapping my foot. Yumi is worse, her knees bouncing so violently that I can feel it through the floor. Luckily, KC and Gabriel are seated in front of us, hiding our legs.
“Yeah, it was really…” When I trail off, Yumi’s grips tightens in mine.
“It was really hard. My mom passed when I was a kid, and my dad is the most important person in the world to me. I thought about him the entire time I was out there, because we always watched The Adventureverse together. So, it was really heartbreaking to not get to see him and know he was okay and share this experience with him, yeah.”
Someone in the audience screams, “Love you, Noelle!” And I duck my head to hide my reddening cheeks as the cheering grows.
JSP laughs, gesturing to the crowd with his cards. “Yumi, you two were last-minute additions to this season. Did you expect this sort of response from the fanbase when you agreed to do the show? What have these past few months been like for you and Noelle during the airing of this season?”
“Oh, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, which Noelle and I are deeply grateful for. We’re lucky that so many fans saw themselves in us.”
“You two are probably the most meme’d team we’ve had on the show. How has that played into your enjoyment of the season?”
We can’t answer until the audience stops their whooping, some of them calling out “Yumi!” through laughter.
The funniest thing about the memes, which started after Episode 1 and didn’t stop until we were eliminated, is a secret only Yumi and I know. A common thread of virality has been the moments of Yumi looking at me intensely and my complete obliviousness.
Her face has become almost synonymous with simping and she couldn’t be more thrilled.
Meme accounts in particular love one popular night vision shot of us walking through the cave. While I’d been thinking about how I wished Yumi and I had the kind of connection that Matt and Morgan had (the fanbase doesn’t know that, of course), Yumi had been staring at me with undisguised longing.
Astrology accounts had a field day with that one.
Blocky default-font captions like Leos When They Lie for Attention and Nobody Notices.
Almost every single meme-able moment was like that, some meta-game communication that the TV screen distorted to mean something different than what it was.
It’s made me rethink my entire perception of reality TV, and, to be honest, getting to rewatch old seasons with that framing in mind has changed the show completely in a very cool way.
It’s just another unexpected thing I get to walk away from The Adventureverse with.
I lace my fingers between Yumi’s.
“It’s been so funny,” Yumi answers, smiling at me. “And it’s nice that now everyone else also knows how oblivious Noelle can be. It’s not just me!” she calls to the audience, drawing a peal of laughter from them.
“Hey, I notice some things!” I protest jokingly, and the audience laughs again.
“Going back to my earlier question, Noelle, how is your dad doing now?”
The audience goes deathly silent, like they know I’m going to deliver bad news. I’m happy to subvert their expectations by pointing out into the first row, where my dad sits recording the reunion show with his phone even though it’ll be on streaming in a few hours.
“He’s good! He’s sitting right there.”
JSP had been waiting to ask me that, because there are already two camera operators focused on my favorite man, broadcasting his image to the big screens meant for the studio audience.
He lowers his phone and gives a sheepish smile, pulling down his mask to expose his grin. His face is fuller than it has been in months, silver stubble against skin that is once again a ruddy, healthy pink.
The momentary absence of his mask makes me nervous, but I take a deep breath and let it go. As he adjusts to his new liver, we’ve had to be careful in large crowds. His immunosuppressant medication makes him more vulnerable to illness, and his body can’t handle a major illness right now.
My dad hams it up, waving to the camera. The audience cheers, the strangers behind and beside him leaning over to clap him on the shoulder in support.
I didn’t think people would have much of an investment in him besides the investment they have in me, but so many Adventureverse watchers reached out to me during the airing of the season to tell me how similar their story was to mine.
One of them—Genie—was the reason I joined a support group for children of ill adults. She’s the reason I trust my dad to put his mask back on when he’s ready. He’s my parent. He can take care of himself. He can take care of me.
“Dad,” Jonathan says. “Were you disappointed to not get to see Noelle in Siena?”
“Jonathan, I have to be honest, I hate Italy,” he says with a wince, ducking as if the audience might start pelting him with tomatoes. “Bad memories. So, I was happy to be out of there as quickly as possible.”
JSP laughs, and it’s definitely fake. I wonder if Dad disrespecting Italy feels like we’re crossing into banned-from-Vienna territory. He pivots. “What was watching this season like for you? Because we got to see a lot of Noelle’s insecurities—”
“Thanks, JSP,” I cut in dryly.
He shrugs. “Am I wrong?” Addressing my dad, he continues, “Were her concerns about your health something you were aware of, going into this season?”
My dad’s face falls a little. He fiddles with the nose bridge indentation at the top of his mask, like he’s considering pulling it back up to hide his face. “Simply put? No. I should have been, but I wasn’t. Over the last year, I’ve leaned on Noelle more than I should have.”
“Dad—”
“Let me finish, kiddo,” he says authoritatively. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I wanted my little girl around me as often as possible, in case…” He clears his throat. “In case…in case she lost me.”
The audience makes sympathetic noises.
“Thank you,” he says over his shoulder. “But I involved her in my care way too much. I didn’t let her be a kid.
We’ve talked a lot since the show began airing and hopefully now she knows that she’s free to live her life.
I have my brother, Stu, fly in from Houston every other weekend to make sure I’m all stocked up so Noelle can focus on her schoolwork.
She needs to. She almost failed her calculus course, you know? ”
“Dad!” I say, widening my eyes at him.
“What, sweet pea? You did, right?”
I bury my face in my hands as everyone in the studio laughs.
“We’ll let Noelle off the hook for that one,” JSP says. “We’re almost out of time, folks.”
The audience groans.
“I know, I know,” he says, placatingly, doing a settle down motion with his hands. “But before we go, I want to introduce our next season. Take a look at this.”
He points to one of the nearby screens, which plays a trailer for Season 26. It’s a returnee season, and the fans go crazy at the first confessional.
“I feel great to be back,” Killian Grace, half of the show’s first-ever winning team, says from a modest light blue couch in his living room.
“We feel great to be back,” a voice corrects off-screen. The camera swivels to settle on Hugo, Killian’s best friend and team partner.
The cheering in the audience doubles at the beloved team on the screen.
The subreddit is probably going nuts right now. They’ve been fancasting Killian and Hugo on returnee seasons for years.
Several other iconic teams pop up on the screen, giving talking head interviews and competing in snippets of challenges from their original seasons. Finally the video fades, showing the Adventureverse logo under the words Season 26: Heroes vs. Villains.
The applause is thunderous. The people love a returnee season.
“Oh, I forgot. One more thing before we go. Dad,” JSP says to my dad, glancing up from one of his index cards.
“Yes, Jonathan?” My dad’s eyes twinkle under the stage lights.
“Are you and Noelle more comfortable being apart from each other now?”
“I think so.”
“So, you won’t mind if her and Yumi disappear for just…one more season?”
There’s a wave of excited noises as the question registers. Morgan, from down the row, reaches over to thwack me on the shoulder for keeping this secret from her.
My dad shakes his head, smiling so hard his dimples show.
“Yes, that’s right,” JSP says theatrically to the crowd. “Noelle and Yumi will be a Heroes team when we start filming in a few months. But we can’t cast a Hero without a Villian, right?”
The cameras now center on Bee and Logan, sitting smack-dab in the middle of the front row. Bee waves regally as the crowd boos and cheers in equal measure.
The people love a returnee season, but they love a good villain more.
“Joining Noelle and Yumi, we have our season’s winners, Bee and Logan.”
Since we’ve left the show, our relationships with the other contestants have shifted a bit. I was willing to give Rania and Kendell a second chance, until I found out they’re proud trophy hunters. Half of their Instagram page is just guns and safaris, it’s horrible.
Some people have been kinder than others about things that were twisted (or even fairly represented) in the edit. KC and Gabriel, for example, brushed off our apologies for calling their celebrations “annoying bro energy.”
KC told us over FaceTime, “You don’t get to be a pro athlete without having annoying bro energy. We get it.”
It hits me that we’ll have that exact same spread of understanding and vitriol, but this time with teams Yumi and I grew up watching.
“Yumi, Noelle, you’ll be going up against quite a few winners, including your former castmates. What are your thoughts on that?”
We may not have practiced an intro, but we did practice this. Yumi points to Bee and Logan, turned in their seats to hear our answer.
In tandem we say, “Jonathan, we won’t let a team that we’re better than beat us again.”
A cacophony of sound bursts from the crowd, a flood of different reactions to one of the most contentious soundbites of the season.
Beside me, Yumi cackles, beaming under the bright stage lights.
It’s so weird to be on this side of the story, to know the moments taken out of context, the memes that came from shared secrets. But I can’t wait to do it again.
“Well,” JSP says into the camera, tapping his cue cards against his palm, “what an exciting end to an exciting season. On behalf of our cast, the crew, and everyone here at The Adventureverse, thank you for joining us. I can’t wait to get out there with you all again soon.
Good night, and good luck on your next adventure! ”
I’ve heard Jonathan St. Pierre say those words so many times, but this time is my favorite. Because, this time, I know I don’t need luck.
I have Yumi.