New Millennium
The apartment smelled like burnt popcorn and nervous sweat, a claustrophobic mix that clung to the air no matter how many windows were cracked open. It was December 31, 1999, and the TV in the corner kept looping the same grainy footage of tech experts pacing in front of flowcharts, warning about something called Y2K.
The gist was simple, terrifying, and oddly mundane: at midnight, computers worldwide might mistake the year 2000 for 1900. Planes could fall from the sky. Bank accounts might vanish. Nuclear plants could go rogue. All because of two missing digits. Someone had scribbled “THE END IS NEAR” on a pizza-stained posterboard propped against the wall, then promptly passed out on a beanbag beneath it, as if irony alone could ward off oblivion.
Most of the party guests had chosen denial as their coping mechanism. They’d crammed the living room with off-beat dancing, their shadows jerking across walls plastered with panic-soaked tabloid headlines about the bug. A girl in smudged eyeliner kept refilling her plastic cup with boxed wine, loudly listing ex-boyfriends she should’ve kissed harder. Her laughter was too sharp and her eyes too bright, like a flickering bulb about to blow.
“If the grid fries at midnight,” she slurred to no one in particular, her voice cracking, “I’m gonna haunt my third-grade teacher. Bitch gave me a C in cursive.”
Nearby, a guy in a wrinkled suit jacket chain-smoked Marlboros, his eyes glued to a disconnected rotary phone on the wall. He’d dialed his mother’s number seven times, each digit punched harder than the last.
“Pick up, pick up,” he muttered, the unlit cigarette between his fingers snapping in half. He’d been trying to call his mother in Iowa for an hour, convinced the lines would jam forever once the clock struck twelve.
In the kitchen, a philosophy student folded origami swans from yesterday’s newspaper. The front page warned of air traffic meltdowns and gas line explosions, but his fingers moved calmly, creasing the grim headlines into wings. He chose stock market panic and water failure stories first as if folding them could contain their doom.
“It’s meditative,” he told a skeptic, though his hands shook just enough to betray him. When a swan’s neck crumpled, he balled it up and swallowed hard, like he’d glimpsed a bad omen.
On the balcony, two teenagers leaned against a rusted railing, lightning sparkles they’d stolen from a Fourth of July clearance bin fizzing in their fingers. Their breath ghosted in the cold. They held the sparklers over the edge, watching each spark dissolve into the indifferent city below.
“What if we’re the last people to ever see this view?” one whispered. Her friend laughed, but it came out thin, like a plea.
The couple in the bathroom hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes. She sat on the edge of the sink, tear-streaked mascara pooling under her eyes and her fists clenched around a wad of toilet paper she’d shredded to confetti. He rubbed her back in slow, guilty circles. Earlier, they’d fought about whether to spend their “last night on Earth” at this party or her parents’ basement in New Jersey.
Now, with the sink dripping like a metronome, she kept repeating, “I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to forget this.” He didn’t mention the Y2K survival kit in this trunk with the canned beans and flashlight heavy with the shame of hoping too much or not enough.
At 11:58 p.m., someone killed the music. The TV blared the Times Square countdown, the crowd’s roar flattening into static as the cable signal wavered. Numbers flickered on the screen.
10… 9… 8…
A few people joined in, their voices uneven, half-hearted, as if afraid to tempt fate. The origami swans trembled in a sudden draft. The girl with the wine cup clutched a stranger’s sleeve.
3… 2… 1…
Nothing.
The lights stayed on. The fridge kept humming. A car alarm wailed outside, ordinary and obnoxious. For a breath, the room hovered in collective disbelief—then erupted. Someone blasted “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang. The couple stumbled out of the bathroom, their laughter edged with hysteria, fingers interlaced like they’d pulled each other from the wreckage.
By 12:30 a.m., the party had shed its apocalyptic skin. Someone ordered lukewarm lo mein and argued about whether The Matrix got Y2K right. The origami swans lay trampled near the door, their inky wings smeared with soy sauce.
On the fire escape, two girls shared a cigarette, shivering in the dark. “Kind of anticlimactic, huh?” one said. The other flicked ash into the wind. “Nah. We’re always waiting for the end. Turns out the scary part is that things keep going.”
…
Strike Out,
Digital Director: Kate D’Amario
Assisted by: Katie Perdomo, Sophia Poole
Digital Staffers: Aidan Smale, Olivia Izquierdo, Gabriella Martinez, Olivia Hill Models: Timothy Clouden, Alex Herndon, Angela Das, Izzy Durante, Dawson Vause, Harmony Pham, Aman Myrsten
Beauty: Erinlyn Tirado, Zoe Trafton, Ella Strickland, Brelan Ferrell
Styling: Dalton Lain, Kat Davis, Pablo Floyd, Dani Acosta, Taylor Farscht, Eva Carbonara, Asia Boyd
Photography: Maria Penalver
Videography: Jackson Tessmer, Elli Aristegui
Writing: Salette Cambra / Editor: Lindsey Limbach
Tallahassee