An Odd Kind Of Wonderful

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE
THE MORNING BEFORE THE NIGHT
(NINE DAYS AFTER THE INCIDENT)
"Will the fighting ever cease? / Mankind's almost out of luck." (The Ramones)

It's then, laying on my bed, whilst The Ramones radiate from my CD player, that I have an idea. Not to say that I don't often have ideas, but for most of them, I let them flutter out of my head and into the air, never to be remembered. But this time, I write it down. Doctor Joseph once said that 'a word written is one less worry', which didn't really make sense since I was sure one word couldn't fathom an entire worry—I get it now, though. I have to thank Doctor Joseph one day. It's two minutes past four in the morning, so I'm extra quiet as I tiptoe across my room, picking up my grid-paper-journal and turning to my a bucket list of sorts page. I was fearing that having a notebook might remind me of the counsellors that have thrown me around for years, but this journal's different to theirs. Theirs is a dot-point presentation noting every nervous reflex I've ever made. Mine is a book of lists, like;

My favourite movies (September, 1998)
○ Pulp Fiction
○ Stop Making Sense
○ The Outsiders

I've been keeping it for a year and a bit, per the request of David Bennet, my year 9 school counsellor. I don't know why he got me to keep a journal. I suppose he wanted me to fill it with feelings and confusions and anxieties. What are those? I wrote lists of favourite movies, and drew sketches of trees, limbs stretched across my page, branches laced with tiny, red apples. Sometimes I drew people, but people were weird. I learned how to draw a basic outline of an adult human in Art class, year nine, but what is the basic outline? Don't we all have different outlines? I wrote song lyrics in weird shapes, so you had to turn the page to read them. Nobody has ever had to, of course.

I look over my bucket list of sorts. How can I achieve these? That's where my idea comes in. Last night, after coming inside for dinner and listening to mum be her usual quiet self, Dad turned on the wireless and tuned it to ABC news, after hovering over triple j, and my ears pick up an ad for a Silverchair gig at the Bridge. Maybe I could do that tonight. "Widespread panic is reaching all over Sydney," said the concerned newsreader. "The last day of the year nineteen-ninety-nine will be tomorrow. People all over Australia and indeed the world are planning for either the biggest new year's party they'll ever plan or they are hunting for the latest technology in computers and software. We cross live to Melissa Marshall, who is at the scene..."

Dad coughed and switched it off. He attempted to make vague conversation at me, but I was evasive, already thinking over the newsreader's words. The biggest New Year's party they'll ever plan. Widespread panic. I interrupted Dad while he was speaking about how he watched Kieran score the first goal of a game, to say, "Are we having a new year's party?"

Dad seemed to stare at me like there was suddenly an extra eye protruding from between my nose and my top lip. "Nathan, what makes you say that?"

"Well," I said, "I was just thinking, 'cause it's the end of the world and that."

Dad seemed positively outraged at the mere thought. "For God's sake! It isn't the end of the world. It's simply the century going from the nineteen-hundreds to the two-thousands. It's happened nineteen times before, and I think our planet can deal with it another time. Do you know how much utter chaos that rumour has caused at my work. People are rushing about, complaining every three seconds about their computers. Honestly, Nathan, I thought you were above those things."