You Look Different in Real Life

do the people who loved the first two films. I know that’s hard for you to hear.”
    A line from one of the reviews my mother keeps in a scrapbook ticker-tapes across my mind: The real breakout star of Five at Six is the sharp-tongued yet funny and sweet Justine, whose early rebellion gives you a sign of things to come.
    Things to come. Gah.
    “The intrusion will be a problem,” I say. Grasping. “I’m supposed to be getting my school act together, remember?”
    “It’ll just be for a month or two.”
    “Why is it so important to you?” I’m curious to hear what she’ll actually admit.
    Mom thinks for a moment, her expression warm but a little pained, and I’m glad for the pained part.
    “I guess I still believe in it. The original idea of it. From the very beginning, it seemed like such an honor.”
    That sounds sincere but I know there’s more. After the last time, her custom birthday cake business got a nice bump from the exposure. Now she’s branched out into cupcakes and what she calls “food art,” which mostlymeans bananas on sticks with candy faces, and she could use the free advertising. Then there’s the thing she won’t mention:
    It made us all kind of famous for a while.
    “You’ll feel better after the whole idea settles in,” says Mom now. I can see she’s hiding a flash of excitement behind the concern. “I have to get started on a T. rex with red frosting.”
    I go upstairs to my room and open my laptop, unable to shake that dark-shadow feeling.
    The original idea of it.
    My hands, which seem to be much more motivated than the rest of me, open a Web browser and type the address I know so well but refuse to bookmark.
    Here it comes, loading into place: the website for the Five At movies. I used to go on here a lot, watching video clips of the films or interviews with Lance and Leslie. Every time I went back, I’d expect to see something new. Like it might tell me secrets I didn’t already know about myself. When I realized it never would, I stopped. But now I’m here again, and it’s like the site has been waiting for me all this time, that home page with the familiar logos of the first two films. Dangling them. You know you want to.
    Five at Six. The word six is carefully designed to look like some kid’s doodle, colored faux-sloppy withred crayon. In the Five at Eleven logo, the word eleven is written in chunky block letters with alternating polka dots and stripes.
    Then there’s the tagline:
    The award-winning documentary film series that’s captured hearts and minds everywhere.
    As corny and cringeworthy as ever. But I click on the Five at Six logo, which brings up a page of information about that movie, and start to read.
    Five six-year-olds, all assigned to the same table in their kindergarten classroom in a college town in New York’s Hudson Valley . . .
    For the record, that’s bullshit. I remember us getting moved to that table together right before the cameras came in. After they’d interviewed a hundred kids in a converted janitor’s closet, then twenty-five, then twelve, before finally finding five in one class who they liked best. Five of us, with the right shapes to fit together and make some bigger picture.
    Who are they? What do they care about? What are their hopes and plans, and what are their families’ hopes and plans for them? What can five kids and their families, their school and community, tell us about our times? Filmmakers Lance and Leslie Rodgers create a brilliant portrait of these children and their world, and ultimately our world . . . and begin what will become a most amazing journey for all of us.
    The “most amazing journey” thing always makes me want to laugh, or barf, or larf . Maybe Lance and Leslie think it’s amazing. First, their humble credit-card-funded documentary was the toast of the film festival circuit and hit theaters in several big cities. After it ended up on cable TV and won a bunch of little statues, they announced their idea—and the big funding to go with it—to do a follow-up documentary every five years until we were twenty-one.
    They never asked us to commit for three more films. They just assumed we would. So far, they’ve assumed right.
    On the page titled “The Kids,” there’s a picture of each of us at six years old, paired with one from when we were eleven. At six, I have shoulder-length, straight light brown hair with a barrette to keep it off my face. I’m looking at something above the