Thank you for applying toThe Adventureverse. We’ve had some unexpected last-minute changes to this upcoming season’s cast and would like to speak with you and your partner about an available position that we need filled immediately. It is extremely short notice, as filming is set to begin this Monday, May 25th, so please contact us as soon as possible if you are interested. While we can’t give away too many details about the season, as an added incentive, I can disclose that the prize money will be doubled to two million dollars (USD) for Season 25 only.
Please contact me ASAP if you’re interested.
Aliona Vasilyeva
No matter how many times I close the app, I keep finding myself drawn back to those three words:two million dollars. Eugh. I resist the urge to scream into and/or suffocate myself with my shower-hair-dampened pillow.
I loveThe Adventureverseand I’ve dreamed of competing on it for over ten years. But Yumi got that email, too—her email address was right next to mine—and she didn’t say anything. So, why would I? I’m fully prepared to just repress it—seal up the memory of my dream come true in the little lockbox that I hide in the cobwebby corners of my mind.
But then the reality of the situation hits me. Two million dollars. Well, my share would be one million. And after taxes, it would be closer to half a million. Still, though, that’s five hundred thousand more than what my dad has right now.
This is a way out. I am being offered, on a silver platter, the opportunity to buy my dad out of his stress, his worry, his debt. While it’s not like he could buy a new liver (it only works that way on the black market), the money would give him options. Professional cleaners to make the house safe when his immune system is nonexistent post-transplant, a home health nurse to check on his recovery, healthy food. No debt. No pushing himself to go back to work before his body is ready. And if I don’t need to get a job right away, I can be available to drive him to lab appointments and checkups.
At least for a little bit, we could relax.
I inhale, angry at myself for trying to hold back the inevitable.
My life keeps asking me to change. Just when I’ve gotten the pieces into a configuration I’m happy with, something else moves,or grows, or pushes against me. And it’s never my fault. No, not fault. It’s never mychoice. My mom dying, losing Yumi, my dad getting sick, college,The Adventureverse—no matter how carefully I place the puzzle together, the picture keeps changing. So, fine. Just tell me where to go, tell me what shape I need to be. Whatever makes the puzzle work.
People endure things they don’t want all the time. People who live in war zones don’twanttheir houses to be destroyed. Poor parents don’twantto have to work two jobs. My dad doesn’twantto have liver disease. Yet here I am, not wanting to go on a fun little globe-trotting game show adventure and learn to polka dance for two million dollars.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
It’s time to grow up, Noelle. You say you’d do anything for your dad—the least you can do is grovel for him.
You know what’s not interesting?
Dread.
It’s a slow, boring whitewashed wall of a mental state, like apathy or depression. Though artists and writers try to romanticize it, it has only ever been, and will only ever be, a mind-numbingly dull wasteland. And yet I’ve spent so much of my life hanging out in it.
It’s dark outside by the time I do the first of three things I’ve been dreading: I go to Taylor Norris’s graduation party. This, in and of itself, isn’t the worst fate. I like Taylor. She still invites me to her parties even though I rarely make an appearance these days, and I appreciate that.
However, that appreciation doesn’t keep me from contemplating faking my own death the entire drive over, because action items two and three for tonight are as follows: find Yumi Panganiban, and beg her to doThe Adventureversewith me.
I park, and even though I would happily sit in my car and anxious-avoidance around for the next few hours, I force myself to move. My consciousness separates from my body, leaving the discomfort of being perceived somewhere behind me, an afterimage Noelle Breland abandoned on the side of the road. She watches me step out of the car, lock the doors, and march down the block.
Pounding bass-heavy music reverberates down the street, and I wonder how the cops haven’t been called yet. This is an upscale neighborhood right on the edge of Phoenix, the kind where every house has an elaborate xeriscaped lawn—that grassless, zen-garden-like design that uses different types of gravel and pops of native plants to say,Even in a drought, I’d still be wealthier than you.These people absolutely call 911 on house parties.
When I open the Norrises’ front gate, its hinges don’t squeak and the bottom doesn’t scrape along the ground. I find this deeply unsettling. Silent fences live in a different tax bracket than me. A gaggle of nicotine addicts greet me with a synchronized vape glow as I cross the front porch and step inside.
I suspect that if I stumbled upon Atlantis one day and the Atlantians were throwing a little function that I needed to awkwardly maneuver in order to explore the city, the lost empire would remain lost. I would reboard the boat, declare there’s nothing to see, and be on my merry way—reality-shifting discovery bedamned. That is to say, I am deeply uncomfortable as I wander past stacks of discarded beer cans and strings of color-shifting lights, looking for my former best friend.
I find her in the living room, which has been cleared of furniture to create a dance floor. Yumi’s dressed in the black fitted crop top her older sister, Mila, got her for Christmas two years ago. Her wide-leg jeans are slung low around her hips, highlighting her lean swimmer’s body. She’s laughing, red plastic cup hoisted into the air as she looks back over her shoulder at the girl she’s grinding on.
I know that doesn’t mean anything. That’s just how people dance at Taylor Norris’s parties. And it shouldn’t matter to me if it did mean something. But she used to dance with me like that. I can’t stop my teeth from clenching, but it’s totally fine. I’m over her. I’m so over her.
She looks up, her eyes locking with mine. The smile dies on her lips faster than she can angrily mouth,What?
I try not to bow my head, even though my primate brain is desperate to show deference. I nod toward the kitchen and the backyard beyond.Can we talk?
Yumi’s jaw flexes, relaxes, and flexes again as she decides what to do. Then, without a single word, she abruptly stands up straight and brushes past me, jerking her head to indicate I should follow her.
I imagine it’s habit more than anything that has her walking to the farthest corner of the backyard, past the pool and its burbling filter, away from the people partying on the deck. We used to come sit on this stone bench whenever we needed a break fromyelling over the music and brushing up against sweaty bodies on the dance floor. It’s secluded here, tucked away beneath a vine-covered trellis and turned in such a way that nobody can see it from the deck. Obviously, that means we’ve walked up on couples making out a few times, but that’s just an occupational hazard of secluded benches.
Thankfully, tonight the bench is empty of football players and their hot girlfriends, so Yumi perches on one end and I take the other. Neither of us speaks, sitting in parallel as we stare off into the middle distance.
I wish I could freeze this moment—not because it’s good, but because it’ssomething. Call me pathetic, but it’s as if the opacity on this layer of existence is turned down, and I can almost see through to what should have been: On this stone bench in another dimension, she’s still my person. Fruitlessly, I want to stay here and hold on to that life, even though the dust of it has long since blown out of my fist. But I can’t.
