The next day of the 14th Annual Upland Hot-Air Balloon Festival dawned with a balloon flight over Lake Meridian. Four-wheel drives and minibuses were parked at the terminus of the access road, just beyond the shore. Half a dozen balloons were already in the air, ready to catch the first light of the new day.

Jack and the others had arrived earlier in near darkness, taking a shuttle bus together from the Bernadino Mall. As the dawn lightened, the spindly silhouettes of the scrub trees at the edge of the lake took form against the backdrop of a blue morning sky.

It had been Delilah’s idea to film the morning balloon ride to replace the failed balloon race of the night before. She said they could fudge the details and splice it into yesterday’s footage, and no-one would ever know the difference. But Jack and Sampson had refused to re-run the race for the cameras. They would ride in one balloon, together. Delilah had taken some convincing – it wasn’t the big ending she’d been expecting. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly the ending Jack had been expecting, either.

Sampson and Philo were the first to climb aboard the balloon. It was, Jack noted with relief, a balloon that sported the traditional reverse-teardrop shape, as opposed to looking like a pair of shrivelled grapes or an overblown rocket ship emblazoned with bulging avocados.

There seemed to be little danger of mistaking this balloon’s alternating light-green and dark-green stripes for the furrows and grooves of a giant scrotum.

Reese and Darylyn climbed in after Sampson and Philo. The balloon operator sent a few blasts of heated air up into the balloon.

Vivi turned to Jack. ‘You go first.’

Jack shook his head. ‘No. I’ve done too much cutting ahead lately. After you.’

‘I insist.’

‘So do I.’

Vivi sighed. ‘Look, let’s just get on board. Everyone else is in there already. Why are we arguing about this?’

In the end, Jack went last. He put his foot into the lowest of the zigzagged rungs cut into the side of the basket. Reese, Philo and Sampson helped him over the edge.

As the balloon pilot got ready for take-off, Jack glanced back to the shore. Delilah and her crew looked bleary-eyed and pasty-faced. This was the last piece of filming on their schedule before they flew out of Upland.

Delilah went to tap something into her phone, then screwed up her face in disgust, as though she couldn’t bring herself to even touch the screen.

Jack couldn’t help smirking to himself. Part of the reason Delilah was so reluctant about the ending to Jack’s Bigwigs story was that she was still mad about what had happened the evening before. When he’d stormed away from the balloon festival, Delilah’s first instinct had apparently been to go after Jack and chase the drama. But Vivi, Reese and Darylyn knew the score now. They knew Delilah had set Jack and Sampson up against each other. Why she’d done it, they weren’t sure. They’d just known that the last thing Jack needed at that moment was more Bigwigs.

Reese had acted first. Noticing that Todd was wearing a Twisted Antlers t-shirt, he managed to hold the crew up for at least ten minutes by launching into an intense discussion about Scandinavian death metal.

Then Vivi, up on the bandstand giving the launch speech, went off script and told everyone at the festival that Delilah and her crew were filming a documentary called ‘Fifteen Minutes of Me’. Anyone who wanted to be on camera could go up and talk about themselves for fifteen minutes.

A crowd circled the camera immediately, trapping Brett like a lone survivor in a zombie movie.

When Delilah took out her phone, apparently determined to get her footage any way she could, Philo whisked it out of her hand and – for reasons known only to Philo – dashed off into the crowd with the phone stuffed down the front of his pants.

Eventually, as the opening night wound down, Delilah had got her crew back. She’d got her phone back too – still operational despite the slightly-more-humid-than-recommended environment it had just been subjected to. Delilah threatened to follow Vivi and the others to Jack’s house when Darylyn whipped out a counter-threat: either Delilah backed down, or they’d all withdraw their consent from the filming that Bigwigs had done so far, leaving her with no footage at all.

After everything that had happened, Jack wasn’t sure he deserved to have everyone looking out for him like that. He’d been the opposite of loyal to Vivi, but still they hadn’t ditched him.

Maybe there’d never been any danger of that in the first place.

Jack had imagined the take-off would be a slow and steady rise into the sky, but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like they were suddenly launched into the atmosphere, either, though. What seemed to happen was that one moment they could feel the ground beneath them, and the next it was gone. When it happened, it took Jack a second to realise they were even airborne.

Jack joined the others at the edge of the basket. Dozens more balloons had lifted off from the ground, all at different altitudes, all sharing the same lifting urge, the same surrender to the wind.

Jack forgot himself for a moment. He wasn’t Jack the Mayor for a Week, or Jack the Bigwig, or even Jack the pubeless weirdo freak-boy. The world suddenly seemed vast and full of possibility. He felt, for that moment at least, the freedom not to be anything or anyone at all.

Just then, Jack remembered something. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out with a short laugh. Everyone turned to look at him.

‘Dude,’ said Reese. ‘Why did you bring that manky fake beard with you?’

Vivi and Darylyn looked disturbed. Sampson instinctively reached up and scratched his chin as if bothered by fleas.

‘It’s not a beard,’ said Philo. ‘It’s –’

‘It’s something I don’t need anymore,’ said Jack. Then he stopped, and looked serious for a moment. ‘Not that I ever did.’

In truth, with everything that had been going on, he realised he’d forgotten to do his usual pube check the past couple of mornings.

When he was sure the balloon operator wasn’t looking, Jack tossed the merkin over the side of the basket.

It seemed to hover in the air for a moment, like a particularly disgusting species of albatross, then disappeared from sight.

Delilah and her crew had driven around to the other side of the lake to film the landing. After the descent to the lake shore, Jack and the others climbed out, still buzzing from the flight.

Jack looked along the shore to where other balloons were starting to land. He blinked as a familiar balloon made its descent.

It was the Sultana World balloon, hanging in the sky like a giant pair of testicles.

As it landed on the shore, out of its basket climbed a party of men, young and old, whooping and high-fiving and bear-hugging each other, all ruggedly dressed in khakis and lumberjack shirts and other wilderness gear. It was only when Jack spotted Mr Trench among them, breaking free of a bear hug with another member of the group, that he realised these were the Lionheart Tigerwolves.

Jack laughed incredulously. The Lionheart Tigerwolves had somehow ended up flying over Lake Meridian suspended beneath an airborne scrotum. It was almost too good to be true.

‘Jack Sprigley!’ Mr Trench’s voice rang out across the lake as he spotted Jack and rushed over. He slapped Jack on the shoulders. ‘This is an unexpected rendezvous! What an experience, eh? Do you know, I’ve never actually flown before!’

‘In a hot-air balloon?’

‘In anything!’

Jack frowned. ‘Not even in, like, an army helicopter or something?’

‘Good heavens, no! But we all had such a great time up there, we’re going to fly straight back over the lake again!’

‘That balloon …’

Jack began. ‘It’s kind of –’ ‘Isn’t it marvellous! I can’t explain it, but as soon as we saw it, we all thought, “Yes, that’s the one for us!”’ Mr Trench waved back at the other Lionheart Tigerwolves.

With that, Mr Trench slapped Jack on the shoulders again and hurried back to the scrotum-shaped balloon formerly known as Hot-Air Force One.

‘Imagine not realising that you’re attached to a giant scrotum,’ Jack said to Vivi, shaking his head.

‘Yeah,’ said Vivi wryly. ‘Almost as embarrassing as telling everyone you’ve been masturbating for two weeks straight.’ She paused. ‘I think the word you’re looking for is “touché”.’

Jack smiled. ‘Touché,’ he said. He was relieved to see Vivi smile back.

Jack wandered over to where Delilah was standing next to the minivan. ‘You look happier than before,’ he said.

‘Just relieved you made a safe landing,’ said Delilah. ‘And so do you, by the way. Look happier, I mean.’

Jack glanced back at Sampson and the others. ‘I guess I’m just glad this Bigwigs thing is nearly over.’ He looked Delilah in the eye. ‘It didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.’

Delilah crossed her arms and stared down at her feet for a moment. ‘Listen, Jack. I shouldn’t have played Sampson against you. I’m sorry about that. But that’s what we do. We try to make stories out of ordinary life.’ She looked into the distance, then turned back to Jack. ‘I have friends who work on big shows, important shows. And here’s me, working on this kids thing. So I pitched the reunion idea. Get the past contestants back, add a bit of drama, make it feel older and cooler. And then, when I saw the weird vibe between you and Oliver, and found out he’d been rejected from the show … I guess I got carried away trying to make things out to be bigger than they were.’

‘I get it,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not like I’ve been totally upfront this whole time either. I’ve been meaning to ask about the Bigwigs Board thing, though. I didn’t get to have my big moment opening the festival on camera. Because of the whole storming off like a not-very-manly diva thing. Is that … going to be a problem?’

‘You still want to be in the running?’

Jack thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, finally. He wasn’t sure he was up for the competition anymore.

‘But you’ll still do the reunion, right? I mean, I don’t want to play hardball or anything, but you did sign a contract. You’re still technically required to appear on the reunion show.’

Jack didn’t answer straightaway. He still had to do the bit he was dreading most – stand up on stage with the other Bigwigs in front of a studio audience and try to look as though he’d grown up as much as the rest of them, when it was obvious that he hadn’t.

If puberty doesn’t happen soon, thought Jack, it’s probably time to go see a doctor or something. Or, failing that, dip into the half-used jar of testosterone cream he’d stashed in his ensuite after all the drama of the night before.

In the meantime, could he do it? Could he really stand on stage with the other Bigwigs?

He looked back at Vivi and Reese and Darylyn, at Philo and Sampson.

Reunions, he thought.

Reunions he was up for.

A week later …

‘Coming soon on the new season of Bigwigs …’

(Fade in to a dimly lit stage. Four spotlights beam down into empty space.)

‘It’s been two years since we crowned our first Bigwigs champion. We’ve seen scores of hopefuls take to this same stage, seeking glory. There have been challenges. There have been triumphs.’

(Dramatic music.)

‘There have been bitter defeats.’

(Quick montage of the new Bigwigs. The next generation.)

‘Soon, a brand-new cast joins us for our third year of ups and downs in the Bigwigs Mansion. And this year, Bigwigs gets even bigger. You’ve seen our contestants take on challenges in the grown-up world. You’ve seen them sent off to work for some of the toughest bosses in the country. But this year, the tables are turned. This time, the Bigwigs are calling the shots. This time, it could be your boss getting performance reviewed …’

(Dramatic boom)

‘… BY A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD.’

(The words ‘twelve-year-old’ echo annoyingly in surround sound stereo.)

‘But that’s not all. We’ve got a special surprise in store for Bigwigs fans in our season premiere.’

(Another quick montage: Piers Blain, Hope Chanders, Amit Gondra, Jack Sprigley, Mickey Santini, Denny Trimble, Cassie Tau. Quick bursts of YouTube videos, chat show appearances, crowds screaming at in-store promotions – then a mysterious cut to a sky full of hot-air balloons …)

‘See which familiar faces we’ve brought back – and who we’re bringing back for good! – on the new season of Bigwigs. Next Sunday at 7. Network Twelve.’

(Fade out.)