“Noe!” she shrieks, staring at me staring at a large, broken dining table leg.
Right there, along one of the flat expanses of dark wood, is a goldenADVlogo.
Chapter 45
Skypark
I try not to letthe sadness seep into my words as I read out anAdventureverseclue for the final time.
Teams must make their way to Skypark Sentosa, home of the tallest tower on Sentosa Island. Once there, they will join countless thrill seekers before them in seeing Singapore from new heights.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” says Yumi, burying her face in her hands. “One finalfuck youfromThe Adventureverse, huh?”
I grimace. “They have done a weird number of heights things this season, haven’t they?”
“Yeah,weird,” she says, emphasizing the word. “Also,weirdthat they cast two people who would rather eat worms than climb a ladder, yet there was no worm-eating challenge. Where was the worm-eating challenge, Jonathan?” Yumi asks the camera.
I laugh. “Would you have eaten balut?”
She’s eaten the classic half-formed fermented chick fetus right out of the shell exactly one single time. Her mom mentioned it was a delicacy, and after a young, impressionable Yumi looked up whatdelicacymeant, she insisted on trying it. Despite her parents’ attempts to dissuade her (to be fair, they did lie for years aboutcoffee ice cream being “too spicy” to keep her from eating it), she annoyed them about it until they caved.
She took one bite, looked me directly in the eyes, and wailed,I can see its eyes!
Then she demanded a funeral for it. We had it in her backyard. Yumi was not in attendance because it was “too gross,” and honestly that was for the best because my dad’s hardboiled egg joke would have gone down about as well as the balut itself.
“Yes,” she says now, nodding emphatically at the camera. “Oh my God, happily. I would have eaten balut, Jonathan, but you just wanted to keep dropping me from things.”
She’s different all of a sudden. In the disappointment of the loss, she’s also become lighter, the weight of the show off her shoulders. For this moment, we have the gift of being onThe Adventureversewithout the pressure it brings—at least until production tries to drop her from something one last time.
“Let’s go see what this is about, at least,” she says on a sigh.
We back up to the rising tideline, looking for the tallest building on the small island.
“Oh.”
Yumi follows my gaze to the concrete structure looming over the section of beach I’ve just spent a fugue-state number of hours cleaning up. It doesn’t look like a tower. It looks like a skyscraper construction zone.
She pales. “Oh, that…that can’t be it, right?”
“No. No way. It can’t be.”
But it is.
Of course it is.
Several beach-goers assure us of this on our short walk over to the entrance, a huge metal banner informing us thatSkypark Sentosais home to Singapore’sFirst and Only Bungy Jump. Yumi pretends to spit at this information as we pass beneath it.
Just past the entrance sits our last purple-and-yellow clue box. I open the lid, holding it up for Yumi to reach in.
There’s one envelope left. We’ve never been the last team to take an envelope before, and the void it leaves behind is…weird. I pause, drinking in the finality of the moment, the confirmation that our game is well and truly over.
She tears the envelope in two unceremoniously, handing one of the halves to me.
“Why?” I ask, taking it from her hand and turning it over.
“Think of it as a souvenir,” she says in a terrible Southern accent.
A surprised cackle bursts from me.
