Chapter 63

Friday 31st December 1999

I’d lived through seventeen previous New Years (not that I remember the first handful, being a baby or toddler), and one change of the decade when I was seven, but when I awoke on December 31st, I was facing not only both of those, but the end of a century and a millennium… and the start of a new everything.

It’s a strange feeling, like having no choice but to abandon everything you know, to say goodbye to it and venture on to boundless new pastures… Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that I’m not leaving anything behind at all. I know I’m being a sentimental idiot, and the changing of one year to another is no less arbitrary than the distinctions we draw of 1999 and 2000, the 1990s and the 2000s, the 20th century and the 21st century… All that said, there’s still something of a difference, and a sentimental idiot will be a sentimental idiot.

“Hey, did you know technically 2000 is still the 20th century? And I guess still the 90s? Because the first century started on year 1, there wasn’t a year 0, so the first century was 1 to 100, so… did I already tell you this?” Bao asked us as we lounged in Dakota’s decorated front room.

“A few times, yeah…” Zahid smirked. “Go on, tell us about how there were two year 1s in a row.”

“I know you’re kidding but I want to just to spite you…!”

The period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve was broadly uneventful. No monsters or Melody appearances. Dakota went away to Ireland for a couple of days and returned with gifts for all of us. Lucy was barely at home any more than I was, so any tensions between her and our parents didn’t get much of a chance to boil over. Other than the days when Dakota was away, where Kitty and I stayed over at my house, I’d spent every night at Dakota’s, so aside from stopping by or spending a little time with my family, I wasn’t around a huge amount even at night. I maybe felt a little guilty for it (more than usual), but it’s hard to feel bad when hanging out with my friends. Unless the overall mood is down, of course, but you know what I mean…

Really, “uneventful” is relative when I’m with them.

Case in point: Kendal had bought Bao a colourful jacket for Christmas, the kind that was at least five years out of fashion. Supposedly it had all six of our colours on it, though it had orange instead of yellow. He’d been wearing this ostentatious jacket every day since Christmas, and every day, it would repeatedly catch my attention when I’d forgotten it.

That’s not an event, but it’s the kind of thing that keeps the days interesting and unique.

“Bao,” Zahid continued, “if you think I haven’t learnt how to zone your rambling out by now, you don’t know me at all.”

“He thinks about naked ladies!” Kendal insisted loudly. “And guitars!”

“Naked ladies with guitars,” I added with almost as much enthusiasm (it’s hard to match her, after all).

“Playing Smoke on the Water, yeah,” he nodded with a smirk. “It’s my happy place.”

“Mine’s the time I 100-percented Ninja Gaiden,” Bao told us with a proud smile; then, it faded as fast as it had appeared. “Man, I wish Harriet was here…”

I assumed the connection was the idea of happiness.

“Awwwwhh…”

Kendal immediately bear-hugged him.

“I know it still hurts. But you’ve got us and we’re neeeever leaving you.”

“Thanks, Kendal…” he sighed softly, returning the hug.

“And to prove it, I’m not letting go until 2999!”

“No, you can let go sooner than- ow!”

“That’s the pain of love between friends, Bao!”

“I don’t like it!”

“Tough! It’s tough love!”

It took three of us to pull her off of him. Once he was free from her vice-like embrace, he sprawled out on the sofa, wincing.

“How strong are you, Kendal…?” Dakota asked in earnest surprise; Kendal grinned brightly.

“I hugged Keaton so hard one time that he had a bruise.”

“Aaah, that’s why he was limping last time we saw him…” I joked, earning myself a playful cushion to the face.

“Hey…” Kitty began, with the air of a child worried about hearing “no” for an answer. “Do you think we could try and get some of those… funny glasses in the shape of ‘2000’?”

“I don’t see why not,” Dakota replied happily.

“Wait, I have an idea!” Kendal declared, reaching a hand out and summoning her bow. With that familiar blast of colour, she donned her Painter clothing, and then proceeded to use her weapon to craft a pair of glittery pink novelty glasses.

“Ta-da!” she finished while putting the glasses on.

“Won’t they disappear as soon as you power down?” I asked. “Unless we can just… will them not to.”

Kendal poised her fingers over the emblem port of her bow.

“Please let them stay, Harmony, please let them stay…”

“Not exactly what I was thinking…” I noted (quietly, as though I might distract her otherwise).

With a light double-tap, her costume dissipated, but the glasses remained. Once she realised, she whooped and jumped.

“Well, there we go,” Dakota smiled.

“And I figure you’re gonna rope me into wearing a pair too…” Zahid grumbled, even as he brought forth his axe.

“Man, we really have worn you down, haven’t we?” I chuckled, similarly drawing my sword.

“You wouldn’t catch pre-Lokon Zahid dead in stupid glasses,” he confirmed with a light, disbelieving shake of the head.

And so there the six of us were, together on the last evening of the year and the millennium, wearing silly “2000” glasses, eating and drinking and laughing. And of course, I couldn’t let this day go without a photo to commemorate it, so we all huddled together (except for Zahid, who loitered behind us), with Dakota’s big “Happy New Year!!!” banner in view, and I reached as far as I could to snap the moment. Us together, on that day, immortalised on a piece of film.

“Is anybody else… kinda worried?” Bao asked us at one point.

“About the Millennium Bug…?” Kitty responded cautiously.

“No… but now I’ve remembered that again…”

He tapped his brow a couple of times in an apparent attempt to refocus.

“I mean… Melody’s still out there, and we never know when Harmony’s going to make some kind of monster for us to fight, and we’ve got exams in the summer and then we leave school, and that’s just the first six months…”

“Hey now,” Dakota began, “we’ve made it this far, haven’t we? We just take it one step at a time.”

“Yeah, we can do anything!” Kendal insisted. “We’ll pull through!”

“You think so…?” Bao asked uneasily. “Because it all seems… there’s so much ahead of us, y’know? How much stuff’s gonna happen in the next ten or twenty years? Imagine us in 2009 or 2019 or something…”

“Let’s get through 2000 first, man,” I advised him. “Like Dakota said, one step at a time. And whatever comes our way, we’re-”

“No, don’t say it, Alex,” Zahid interrupted me. “Don’t do the whole ‘we’re together’ shtick…”

“I won’t. Thanks for saying it for me,” I told him with a thumbs-up.

“That doesn’t count and you know it,” he scowled (though I know he meant it jokingly).

At some point during that exchange, Kitty had wandered over to Bao, and proceeded to pat his back.

“We’ll all be fine in the end, I think…” she assured him. Naturally, he brought her into a hug, bringing forth another nervous squeak from her.

“Thanks… all of you…” he spoke with growing warmth. “It’s sort of crowding my head right now. I’m just being stupid…”

“None of us are stupid,” Dakota chimed in with sudden severity. “We aren’t bad people just because of… what’s wrong with us. You’re not being stupid, Bao. It’s okay to worry. But I’m sure we can pull through. We’re the Painters. And I think we’re stronger than we give ourselves credit for.”

“Well said,” Zahid remarked, raising his glass. That prompted the rest of us to do the same, and suddenly, we were calling a toast to ourselves.

Midnight steadily approached, and of course, we filtered back to our families, Dakota and Kitty once again coming back to my place with me. But that wasn’t where we were going to be celebrating the start of the new millennium: with half an hour or so to go, we donned warm coats (Dakota double-checked my scarf was well-wrapped) and headed out to the centre of town. The place was absolutely bustling – half the town seemed to be here – and the six of us squeezed through to a reasonable spot, the stage and its huge countdown screen just about visible. Kendal’s family was pretty close, and the Thomsons happened to make their way close to us too (Bao seemingly spotted us and led his parents over). With about seven minutes left, even Zahid turned up, noting that his family wasn’t too far away… though trust him to wander off from them.

The countdown hit five minutes, and Jennifer Lopez’s Waiting for Tonight began playing, which got a big cheer from Kendal; and as that faded out, the final minute commenced.

I was boiling under the layers of clothing and the number of people crowding around, and my heart was racing with unnecessary nerves. Dakota took hold of my hand.

“You look worried,” she told me over the dramatic countdown music.

“Just a little nervous, I guess,” I assured her, and then my god, the smile on her face washed it all away. I remembered, in that moment, that this wasn’t about what I was about to leave behind – not that it was really getting left behind anyway – but about what lay ahead of me. All the days yet to be lived, all the happiness and madness and surprises that were ahead of me, my best friends, and the girl I love.

“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!”

And here it was. The end, and the beginning. Just the changing of a clock and the turning of the Earth, a single second, leaping us all forward on the next step of our lives.

“Six! Five! Four!”

I clasped Dakota’s hand tightly and smiled at her.

“Three!”

All of us, the entire crowd, my parents, my sister, my friends, my lover and me, counting down together.

“Two!”

United in celebration.

“One!”

Goodbye, 1999. Goodbye, 1990s. Goodbye, 20th century. Thank you for everything you gave me.

And I know I never usually do this whenever one of these runs past midnight, but…

Saturday 1st January 2000

We cheered and roared as the new millennium dawned upon us all. Dakota and I kissed adoringly. More music played, but it was almost drowned out by a flurry of fireworks launching up into the dark sky and splashing it with momentary light. I can take or leave fireworks normally – if you’ve seen one display, you’ve kind of seen them all – but I couldn’t help but be enthralled here. Perhaps it was the atmosphere, that countdown tension unleashed in fire and fury? And being here with so many other people?

I felt a tug on my sleeve, on the arm that wasn’t adjoined to Dakota’s. When I turned, I found Kendal grinning at me.

“We’re gonna suit up and storm the stage!” she told me excitedly.

“We are?!” I called out over all the noise, and instead of saying anything else, Kendal dragged me off. Dakota, of course, came right along with me, without the benefit of knowing why, and I’m pretty sure Kitty followed after us once she saw we were leaving. Bao and Zahid were up ahead and it seemed like they were sourcing out the route to the stage.

It took us a few minutes, but we found a way up just as the fireworks were hitting their crescendo. The six of us dove into a little alley and transformed into our Painter gear, and then, in a wordless rush of adrenaline and “this seems like a great idea”, we charged up onto the stage. I couldn’t tell you if all eyes were suddenly on us – it was a little too dark to be sure and I wasn’t even thinking about that – but we got straight into the swing of things all the same. We all began launching streams of colour and a range of patterns and shapes into the sky, not only upwards but above the gathered crowd, letting it all fall harmlessly down upon them like multi-coloured rain. I let snake-like patterns writhe and spiral about, small spheres bounce across the air, fuzzy lines spread out like lightning. And beside me, and above me, green and yellow and pink and red and purple moved all around too, our impromptu show spreading colour across town.

The crowd cheered and “oooh”ed and “aaah”ed just like they did with the fireworks, maybe even more so. For those few minutes, we wowed them all, and every second felt like crazy out-of-the-blue freedom.

We pretty much kept going until we’d exhausted ourselves, and bowed for the crowd as they applauded us (Zahid took a little convincing to bow, of course). A dash off-stage saw us back in that little alley, and we decided to head through the other side and take a long route back so we wouldn’t be noticed in our civilian clothes. Once we returned to our families, we said our cheery farewells and wished each other a happy new year.

Back home, and just a little alcohol (some Buck’s Fizz) to celebrate before bed summoned us all.

“That was wild…” Kitty muttered as she settled down in her sleeping bag on the bedroom floor. She’d had some lemonade instead of Buck’s Fizz, understandably.

“I know… what a way to start things,” Dakota exhaled sweetly beside me. “I might have to scold Kendal tomorrow for springing it on us, though…”

“She won’t…”

A huge yawn cut me off.

“I guess not…”

“You don’t know what I was gonna say…” I pointed out, and she giggled.

“‘Kendal won’t’ is already a fair argument,” she told me, and snuggled up to me. “Happy New Year, Alex. Happy New Year, Kitty.”

“Happy New Year, girls…” I smiled back at her.

“Happy New Year…” Kitty mumbled before yawning herself.

We talked for a little while as sleep steadily embraced us, until first Kitty, and then Dakota and I drifted off together. I’d never been so aware of the future lying ahead of me, and never so eager to live it. Welcome, 2000, 21st century: I’m Alex Matthews, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.