Izzy and I recorded more than twenty episodes of our show.
That’s a weird thing to say. Our show.
And we were hits, too. We hit the number one slot with episode seven.
We were five minutes into episode twenty, where Izzy and I were at the Madison High Reach for the Stars Fall Carnival. Mindy told us the show would be about nostalgia. She wanted Izzy and me to walk around the carnival and go on some rides so they could get B-roll of us having fun. She said they’d edit it into a montage. Corny, but we understood what they wanted. Since they couldn’t get footage of us during the last couple of years of our relationship, they wanted to see us having fun and being “normal kids.” Herc was there with that week’s girlfriend, Spice, a black girl who’d moved out here from Philadelphia. She played field lacrosse and had the most infectious laugh I’d ever heard. And, yes, Spice was her real name, which I thought was incredibly cool.
There were some protestors outside, because there were always freaking protestors. But there were a lot of cops and a lot of security provided by Mindy’s producers. I saw one guy with a red Neo-Luddite scarf and a MARS IS DEATH placard, but a minute later I saw that a cop with a big German shepherd was following the guy to keep an eye on him. Nothing happened.
Actually, for the first, like, ninety minutes of the carnival the producers let us have some fun. There were rides, including a Tilt-A-Whirl, which I dug and Izzy did not, and a great haunted house, which Izzy loved but which made me jump halfway out of my skin. We dropped some cash to play the game where you pop balloons with darts and I won a stupid-looking stuffed penguin for Izzy, but she gave it to a little girl whose dad couldn’t hit the board let alone the balloons.
Because Mindy’s people were using those ultracompact digital cameras, they were able to put a dozen camera people in the crowd and caught everything: us, our friends, the goofy space decorations all around the place. The carnival was set up in the sports field and spilled over into the parking lot. It was a dollar to get in and the money was for a food bank, so the organizers were happy with the enormous crowd that showed up.
The trouble started when the handlers brought us over to where Mindy was waiting. There was a crowd of people around her and five of the production team’s camera techs.
“Uh-oh,” said Izzy when we were still twenty feet away.
I said, “Yikes.”
“Make a diversion so I can escape.”
“Nice try, but if I have to do this, so do you.”
“I know.”
She squeezed my hand and we walked over to Mindy, who met us with open arms, like she hadn’t seen us in years.
“Tristan and Izzy,” she cried, and from her tone it was clear her mic was on and this was all part of the show. “I hope you’ve been having a wonderful time here at the Madison High Reach for the Stars Fall Carnival.”
The crowd clapped and yelled and whistled. I saw that Herc and Spice were front and center. He had a funny look in his eyes. Almost a warning, but there was no time to give me any real message. It was too late for that.
“We have a special surprise for you both,” said Mindy brightly, which caused Izzy to squeeze the bones in my hand hard enough to hurt. Mindy shifted her focus to me. “Tristan, since this is your last carnival on Earth, and your last week of school before you begin final training for the Mars One colony mission . . . I thought you’d like to have the chance to say good-bye to some of the special people in your life.”
I was totally unable to say anything. I think there was a grin on my face, but it was probably a wince. My heart started hammering.
“Tristan, perhaps you will remember Tommy Callahan?” said Mindy triumphantly, and she yanked a skinny kid out of the crowd with all the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
“Tommy—?”
He grinned shyly and offered his hand. I shook it, then before either of us knew it we were hugging and slapping each other on the back.
I heard Mindy telling the crowd and the TV audience that Tommy Callahan was my first friend back in pre-K and all the way through second grade, but that his family had moved away. I never heard from Tommy again, and now here he was.
Maybe if it was just Tommy we could have had some fun talking about the trouble we got into in first grade. But it wasn’t just Tommy.
It was eight other kids from grade school, the twins who used to live next door to me, several of my teachers from grade and middle school, the entire soccer team from our old neighborhood, and the old lady whose grass I used to mow. The girl who I liked in sixth grade, and the girl I liked after that, and the girl who introduced Izzy and me.
With Tommy it was a real surprise. Fun and heartbreaking, but mostly great.
Then the fun went away. Izzy kept trying to get between me and those people, and Herc did too. But Mindy owned this moment and we were under contract and the reunion went on and on.
The version you probably saw on TV was cut down to an hour. Less if you count commercials and the carnival montage. But the whole thing lasted for two or three thousand years. They call it ambush journalism. I call it mean. Mindy knew it embarrassed me too.
I remember once in English class, when the teacher was talking about the different kinds of journalism, she said there was an old expression news reporters used. It explained how they picked the kinds of stories that would get the best ratings:
“If it bleeds, it leads.”
And Mindy came at me with a knife.