Her deadpan expression doesn’t break as she holds up the group challenge envelopes for me to choose from. “ ‘Team Challenge: FALL or FLY?’ ”
I consider the options, trying to put myself in the head of a drama-loving reality TV producer. “You don’t think FALL is Singapore’s ‘first and only bungy jump’?”
“I do not,” Yumi confirms, holding up the FALL card. “Should we open it?”
“Might as well,” I deadpan.
She lifts the envelope, as if toasting me, then pops it open.
FALL: On Skypark Sentosa’s Giant Swing, couples will be harnessed in together and winched 131 feet into the air, where they will pull a rip cord that will send them soaring over the ground at speeds of up to 75mph. Once the Adventurers have completed this challenge, the ride operator will hand them their next clue.
It’s a shallow victory, but I say, “Well, you were right.”
She huffs a laugh. “Hate that for me.”
“We could try the other one?”
“Noelle,” she chides flatly. “If the other one isn’t the bungee jumping, I’ll go skydiving. What else could it be?”
She’s right. I lower my voice. “Okay, but, Yums, we don’t have to do it. We’ve already lost, right? Let’s make JSP come to us for a change.”
Teams can skip challenges at any time and take a four-hour penalty. It only ever works out in their favor on a non-elimination leg, but it is a feasible way for Yumi to avoid this. If the team is still waiting out their four hours when everyone else has checked in, JSP will go to them and let them know they’ve been eliminated.
Cue the sad music and low-key implication that we weren’t strong enough to overcome our fears. There’s comfort in knowing that real fans recognize futility when they see it in a torturous reality TV show challenge. I always did. I think they’d let us off the hook for this.
“You think I’d take a penalty now? Right now?” Yumi asks.
“I mean, it’s…” My voice trails off sheepishly.
Yumi holds my gaze as she whips her notebook out, onlylooking down to thumb through it. “I took a lift seven hundred feet down into a volcano in Iceland.” She flips a few pages. “I dangled two thousand feet above the Lauterbrunnen Valley floor.” Flip, flip, flip. “Climbed four hundred steps up a two-hundred-eighty-nine-foot-high structurally questionable tower—”
“Hey, don’t take this out on the Italians,” I cut in. “Their tower was fine.”
She squints, turning a page with a dramatic flourish. “They have a track record. Piza. And Isangon national TV. But now you’re gonna ask me if I want to bail? On a swing?”
I feel the need to defend myself. “Only because we don’t have to do it. Wehadto do all those other ones.”
Her glare is piercing and only partially playful. “You didn’t take the penalty on the beach.”
I frown, tilting my head. “Kinda wish I had. It would’ve been shorter.”
This, at least, makes her laugh. “Can we just get out there, please?”
Finally, I take her hand and tug her forward. “Okay, let’s get out there.”
“I’m trying so hard not to throw up right now,” Yumi says as two lanky teenagers—they can’t be much older than us—clip our full body harness into a complicated rig.
We’ve been asked to remove our mic packs for safety purposes, and I almost miss the way it digs into my skin.
“Don’t throw up,” I advise, twisting my head to confirm I’m actually clipped to something. The literal child behind me seesthis and tugs on the webbing to prove it’s connected. I give him a grateful smile before turning back to Yumi. “If you throw up, you’ll fly right into it as we’re going down. Pass out instead. It’ll be cleaner.”
She narrows her eyes, half-playful, half-done-with-me. “Thanks.”
We’re herded up a freestanding flight of metal steps, the kind they use in Costco to restock the high shelves but with astroturf laid out on the platform. The death trap’s operator instructs us to lean down and grab the railing, then the harnesses start to lift, swinging our feet out from under us so we’re parallel to the ground, facing downward.
A sharp inhale of breath pulls my attention to Yumi as someone slides the structure out from beneath us, our hands leaving the metal bar and dragging across the rough fake grass until we’re hovering ten feet off the ground and there’s nothing left to hold on to.
Her eyes are closed, but she opens them as the instructor on the ground begins to speak.
