The Old Year was like a map, with explored territory colored yellow, and high mountains in certain places. The New Year was like a map also, but it was perfectly flat and dark and unexplored. I was afraid of it. I leaned across the table to speak to Clara.

"How long will it take you to remember to write the new year instead of the old one on your school papers?"

Clara looked up from the newspaper - she liked reading them, like the grown-ups. "How long? I don't know, a day or so."

A day or so! Did she have such disregard for the lovely old year? "Didn't you like this year?"

"Oh, sure. It was fine."

"What was your favorite part?"

Clara looked at me like I was crazy. "I don't remember."

She didn't remember! I leaned farther across the table in my earnestness. "None of it? What about going to Grandfather's grave with Aunt May and Shirley and Hugo? What about the church picnic? What about seeing the fireworks on Independance Day? What about -"

"Yes, all of that was nice," Clara said dismissively and buried her face in the newspaper again.

Nice. Maybe for Clara it wasn't so hard, leaving behind a year that was merely "nice." But I had loved and lived the Old Year with such a fire that it seemed to have become a part of me. I didn't want to say goodbye yet. The New Year - who knew what would happen in it? Maybe I would die. Maybe terrible things would happen, closer to me than the faraway terrible things people wrote about in Clara's newspaper. Maybe everything would change, and life would never be as happy as it was that Old Year.

I climbed onto the tabletop and peered over Clara's newspaper, struck by a sudden question.

"Clara?"

"H'm?"

"Why can't we know what's going to happen to us ahead of time?"

Clara was clearly stumped. "I don't know," she said slowly, sounding as if she didn't much care and didn't like to think about it. "Only God can, I guess."

My heart skipped a beat at that powerful name, as unnerving and unknown to me as the New Year. "God... Does he really know everything? Everything that's going to happen?"

"Of course."

I thought about it for a while. If that was so, God had known that I would go to the opera with my Daddy. He had known about the fireworks. He had known about the church picnic, and my secret club, and my diary that I loved to write in so much. He had known all the good things that had happened in the Old Year, before I even thought of them - He must have, if Clara knew what she was talking about. Just in case she was wrong, I ran to Daddy's study and poked my head in the door. He knew everything - almost as much as God, I figured.

"Daddy? Does God know everything before we do? Everything, really and truly?"

"Everything. Really and truly." He smiled at me, and I knew he must be right.

I ran back to the kitchen table and climbed onto it again, and sat silently for a while. The more I thought of that New map, with all its shadows and mysteries, the more I wanted to explore those unknown lands. "God..." I said quite softly to myself. If He knew what was going to happen to me, maybe the New Year wouldn't be so bad after all.

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Just a little something I wrote for the New Year. :) It's very rough, and hasn't been edited. General constructive criticism would be appreciated, though I'm not really planning on revising it.