A Depressing Job

I might have the most depressing job in the world.

It’s snowing outside. It’s been snowing for days, a week, almost. Not too hard or fast, just a fine, light dusting of tiny flakes that drift on the wind. It’s been piling up, though, and everything outside the window above my desk is white. Even when they poured salt on the roads, the snow blew through and smothered the slushy asphalt in drifts. I can see fuzzy warm lights from buildings through the hazy conditions. The high, faint whistling of the wind outside, it’s all so peaceful. It reminds me of something on a Christmas card.

I would know; there are over a dozen cards tacked up on the wall in front of my desk, most of them holiday-themed. Some are sparkly and some depict little cottages with thatched roofs and puffing chimneys. They’re all notes of gratitude: Thank you for the food basket. My family had a Thanksgiving dinner to eat because of the food bank!

I sit back at my desk, looking at all the shelves and tables lined with boxes and baskets of food. They’re all nonperishables, everything from cardboard boxes of pasta to cans of soups and stews. It’s a happy sight for me. People in this town are always more than happy to donate the goods they don’t need, and those who do need them are thankful for the help. Normally.

Not everyone is outspoken about their thanks. I think it comes from a place of embarrassment. I understand. We’re open from nine to five, seven days out of the week, except for Christmas and Christmas Eve. It’s December twenty-third—Christmas Eve Eve. Nobody’s come in all day. I’m a volunteer here. When I lean back in my leather swivel chair and cast a glance at the clock on the wall, it’s four o’clock in the evening. The short days and the conditions outside make it seem a lot later.

I’m here because there’s no one to go home to right now. Both of my parents serve overseas. Normally there’s an overlap, when my mom comes home and the three of us are all able to stay together for a week or two before my dad is deployed. That’s how it’s worked for years. I’m eighteen now, in my senior year of high school, and both of them will be able to retire next year. I’ll most likely be out of the house by then, but I’ve been looking forward to it for as long as I can remember.

It’s not a depressing job because of the work itself. Only sometimes. It’s depressing when I’m sitting here for hours on end, all my Christmas break homework finished, and I’ve read books until I’m dizzy; there are only so many dollar store paperback romances I can read until I’m done. I’ve organized all the food, strolling through the maze of nonperishables until I know the layout of the place like the lines on my palm. I’ve flipped through static-filled stations on the radio until I’ve had them all memorized. I’ll probably cook something for myself soon, one of those TV dinners in a plastic tray or some shrimp-flavored Cup Noodles I keep in a drawer in my desk. Over the school year, I only come on Saturdays and Sundays for a few hours, but over school breaks, this place is mine. In some ways it feels like a home away from home. Until I get cabin fever from it, that is.

All my joints stiff, I pull myself out of my chair and step through the shelf maze. There’s a corkboard beside the front door, flyers taped and tacked up with pins. It’s mostly local stuff. There’s an ad for fly fishing lessons, left from the summer. An elementary-school boy once posted a piece of crayon-colored construction paper, offering to mow lawns for five dollars each if they call; he even cut off fringe strips at the bottom with his phone number so people can tear them off. Beside it is a flyer for a suicide crisis hotline.

I take a closer look at it. There’s a silhouette of a woman’s profile on the paper, and the caption reads, “Struggling? Help is only a phone call away.” There’s a number at the bottom. No tear-away strips. 1-800-HELPFUL. I wonder if it would actually work.

Not that I’m in need of a mental health emergency lifeline. I don’t think so, anyway. I return to my desk, though, and I slowly pick up the phone from its handset, eyeing the chunky keys. I don’t know why it’s so enticing.

The building, if I remember correctly, is right across the street. I look out the window. It’s on the other side of a wide public parking lot, another little wooden building that looks like a cabin. There’s a sign out front above the door: PUBLIC CRISIS CENTER. The lights are on but I can’t see any movement inside. The poster said they’re open twenty-four-seven.

I look down and dial the number with the receiver up to my ear.

I think—correction, I know—I have the most depressing job in the world.

It seems like volunteer work, but it’s actually something I get a paycheck to do. That might be the only thing that keeps me here. I stay every day of the week except for Sundays, from early in the morning until late in the evening, and sometimes I grab my blanket and curl up on the couch if the graveyard shift people don’t show up on time. The phone is loud enough to wake me up.

That’s what the entire job is; I wait for the landline to ring and I try to help people through crises. I’ve been told I’m pretty good at what I do. Even if I don’t feel like it.

I’m homeschooled. While I’m waiting on people to have a mental health emergency and call the hotline, I log in on the desktop computer here and get my schoolwork done. I’m supposed to be a junior, but I’m taking senior classes because I got ahead pretty quickly. It’s just like real school, classes and quizzes and tests and grades, and even teachers I can call if I have a question, but it’s all online. I used to attend the public school in town, when I was in junior high. I hated it.

I even get my own Christmas break through my online school. My feet propped up on the desk, I sit back and sort through my emails, a movie playing in a minimized browser at the bottom corner of the screen. It’s some dumb holiday feature about a girl and her horse at Christmastime. It’s not like we have enough horses and Christmas in a middle-of-nowhere Montana town. From November until February, every time I glance outside, it either looks like a scene from a Christmas movie or a total whiteout from a blizzard.

I have a little over five-hundred emails left to go, mostly of little importance. News and newsletters and subscriptions and advertisements. In the corner of my screen, the girl dresses her horse in a red blanket before putting a saddle on it and riding it out into the snow. I can’t handle this anymore. In a single swift movement, I move my mouse over the X and click out of the movie tab. Silence.

It’s a sound, or an absence of sound, that I’m used to. I’ve always told myself that I prefer the quiet. Everyone knows me as the introverted kid. It’s a label I’m fine with. The problem is, the longer I work at this place, the more jaded I get. I’ve been able to sense it happening for months. But I can’t really think of anything to do.

I don’t know. Go outside. Get some fresh air. Talk to another human, someone who isn’t trying to kill themself while I try to coax them out of it. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Oh, well. I’ve been here too long to change any of it.

It’s four in the evening, but I’m already thinking about getting out my quilt and taking a nap—one of those naps that you don’t wake up from until the morning. It’s just too pathetic to think I’m going to bed this early. My boss told me I could go home on the twenty-second, spend some time with my family, but I haven’t. I don’t know why. I don’t hate them or anything. Sometimes I get so tired, a deep, permeating type of exhaustion, that I can’t bring myself to go home. It sounds stupid. It’s especially around this time of year, when the days are shorter and the nights are longer, and the sun surrenders to the moon without as much of a fight. No matter how rested I am, I can never seem to get enough sleep.

I’m starting to sound like the people who call this hotline in the first place. Sometimes I get repeat—customers? Clients? Offenders? Whatever you’d call it—and they recognize who I am. This is how most people know me; I’m the suicide hotline guy.

I’m about to get up and do something else, anything else, when the phone rings.

“Hello?”

I freeze.

It wasn’t the greeting I was expecting. Come to think of it, I don’t know what I was expecting. At first silent, holding the receiver up to my face, I don’t have a clue what to say.

The words come out of me like marbles spilling onto a hardwood floor.

“Hi, this isn’t an emergency,” I stammer. This whole thing was a mistake. “I’m sorry. I just really needed someone to talk to. Not about mental health or whatever. I’m fine in that way. I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

“No, it’s alright,” the voice says, and I peer out the window again, straining to see if there’s any movement inside the building across the parking lot. “It’s a relief, if I’m being honest. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

It’s a boy. It’s hard to tell how old he is, but he doesn’t sound too old, maybe around my age. He’s not here to see, but I shake my head.

“Not really.” I pause. It’s so much easier to be honest to complete strangers. “I’m alone. Both of my parents are in the military and my mom just got deployed early. My dad is supposed to be here tomorrow. I don’t know. And I mean, I’m technically a grown adult. I’m eighteen. But it sucks to be alone this close to Christmas. If his flight is delayed, since the weather’s getting pretty bad, he might not even be here on Christmas Day. That scares me a little bit.”

“Oh, man,” he breathes, and it’s the first time I’ve let myself get upset over the whole thing; sudden, unexpected tears are stinging my eyes. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.” I keep my tone as neutral as I can and quickly dab at the corner of my eye. “It sucks. But thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lily,” I tell him. “Lily Hughs. I’m a senior in high school. I’m actually right across the parking lot from you—I’m at the food bank. I volunteer here.”

Looking out the window, I hold my breath when I see some movement inside the crisis center building. There’s too much haze outside to make out much more than a person-shaped figure in the window.

“I can see you,” I tell him, and I wave my hand at the window. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah, I did,” he says. “My name’s Eugene. I’m a junior. Homeschooled, though. I pretty much live here.”

“Oh. That’s…”

“Depressing? Yeah.” His shape vanishes in the window as he walks away. “It’s alright. It’s not too bad.”

“Are you sixteen or seventeen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Is it even legal for a minor to be working at a job like that?” I ask him. “That seems crazy. Wow. Does it… Affect you in any way?”

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Not too badly,” he finally says. “It’s a lot of practice. You get used to it.”

“Are you alone for the holidays, too?”

There’s an even longer silence this time.

“I… No,” he says quietly. “I’m just working.”

“Are you as bored as I am?”

A dramatic sigh crackles over the phone speaker. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Let’s play Twenty Questions.”

“The guessing game one or the get-to-know-the-other-person one?”

“Get to know the other person. Maybe the guessing one after that, if we’re still bored,” I tell him—then I pause. “Shoot. I forgot this was the lifeline. Is there another number we can talk on?”

“No, this one’s fine,” he says. “Nobody’s called in days. If someone does, I’ll hang up this line and answer the other one.”

“Alright. Tell me your favorite song.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Imagine it rephrased as a question.”

He must be thinking. After a few seconds, he says, “My theme song. ‘Don’t Try Suicide’ by Queen.”

“Oh, my God.”

“No, seriously, it’s a good song,” he says. “You should listen to it. It’s really happy and upbeat.”

“I’m familiar with the song,” I tell him through a smile. “I don’t think it’s my place to laugh.”

“Well, it’s my place because it’s my job,” he says. “Ha-ha. I guess it’s my turn.”

“Go for it.”

“What are your hobbies?”

This is fun; it almost feels like a blind date.

“Puzzles,” I reply. “It’s an old woman thing. I know. But they’re so much fun. I like to read, too. I don’t even care if they’re good books or bad books, because it’s all entertaining to me. I like the crappy paperback novels you get at the dollar store, the romance stories.”

“The smutty ones?”

“Yes.”

“No judgment here.”

“Have you found your one true calling in life?”

He laughs. It’s a nice sound. “We’re asking the philosophical questions now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize,” he says. “I don’t mind at all. My one true calling is definitely not this—being a crisis hotline dispatcher. At least I have that ruled out. You?”

“No.” I trace designs in the opaque condensation on the window, curlicues and snowflakes. “Professional puzzler is not a career. I’ll have to find something different.”

“Is it like this every year for you?”

My hand stops. I stare out the window, trying to see him through the fog and snow. He’s not there anymore.

“Not normally, no,” I tell him. “Their deployment rarely overlaps like this. Most of the time, it’s just one of them home. We’ve only celebrated Christmas together as a family a handful of times.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I lean back in my chair, stretching the coiled rubber phone cord. “Do you have siblings or are you an only child?”

“I’ve got five siblings.”

“Dang.”

“Yeah, I’m the oldest,” he says. “The rest of them are younger. And they’re my sisters; I’m the only boy. The next oldest is in the sixth grade.”

“Big age gap.”

“I don’t think they were planned,” he admits. “But it’s alright. They all go to school.”

“I probably know them.”

“They’re the little girls who all have the same blue eyes and dark hair,” he says. “We all look like clones of each other.”

“Are you homeschooled for a reason?”

This time, he’s quiet for so long, I almost fear that the line went dead.

“I’m not a huge fan of people,” he confesses.

“Isn’t your job nothing but talking to people?”

“Yeah, but it’s different,” he says. “I don’t mind it when they’re strangers and it’s on the phone. At least, I didn’t at first. Now I’m getting tired of it.”

“I’d say come join me at the food bank, but this is volunteer work. You probably want a paycheck instead.”

“I don’t know. I’d sacrifice a lot to get out of this place. They’re pretty dependent on me, though.”

“How does it all work? Is it just a local thing?”

“Yeah, mostly just the county,” he says. “We pretty much run off donations to pay the phone bills and the employees. I don’t make a lot of money doing this.”

“Oh.”

“We do fundraisers and charity stuff every once in a while,” he explains. “My boss is a rich guy, though. He’s mostly doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He lost his only son to suicide, so he started this—but he quickly realized that no one in this town wants to volunteer twenty-four-seven at a crisis center.”

“Is he really making you work this close to Christmas?” I ask.

“It’s my own choice,” he admits.

“Oh. Family stuff?”

“I… Not really.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s alright,” he says. “It’s just… It’s complicated. I don’t know the best way to describe it. It’s not that I don’t want to be around them; I don’t want to be around anyone. I get so tired and it feels like I’m heavy, in a way, like I can hardly move or drag myself out of bed in the morning. Things get like this in the winter, and it happens like clockwork every year. I’ve come to accept it at this point.” He sighs, and I listen closely, breath hitched in my throat. “Sometimes, I… It feels like I’m turning into the people who call the hotline and need my help.”

I’m the one who doesn’t speak this time. After some silence, he asks, “Hello? You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I tell him. “I hate that for you. I’m really sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not that I know of. I’m sorry for oversharing. It’s like, it’s…”

“Easier when the person is a stranger,” I say softly. “Yeah. I get what that’s like.”

“Somebody gets it.”

“Do you have to stay there?” I ask, and I sit up to look out the window. “When can you leave?”

“Technically I can leave whenever,” he says. “But… I don’t know. I feel bad. Sometimes people call the most around the holidays.”

I think about it, sitting back in my chair.

“You should come over here,” I suggest. “Leave a voicemail and tell them to call the food bank instead. I’d like to meet you.”

The line goes dead.

I don’t know why I hung up the phone. My fingers are still wrapped around the handset, but it’s resting in the cradle. I shouldn’t have done any of this. It was all nothing but a bad idea.

It’s not a fear of people, but it’s definitely some kind of aversion. I get up and walk over to the window. The lights are on inside the food bank. That was rude of me. Arms crossed over my chest, I begin to pace—then I go back to my desk and pull the phone book out of the drawer.

It’s easy to find the number for the food bank. When I sit down and pick up the phone again, instead of making a call, I change the voicemail.

“Hi, this is Eugene,” I say, putting on my best customer-service voice. “I’m not at the crisis center right now, but you can call the number four-oh-six, three-eight-nine, four-oh-three-four. Thank you and have a merry Christmas.”

I pull on my coat after that and step outside into the snow.

It’s snowing, but everything is calm and still; the gently drifting flakes make it seem like time is a little slower than normal, some kind of movie-esque wonderland; not the dark, cold winter I’ve been trudging through. Looking around in awed wonder, I made my way across the parking lot, kicking snow off my shoes when I get to the porch of the food bank. I knock on the door.

Lily answers it, and her face lights up when she sees me.

It’s all so simple, but it’s perfect. It feels like meeting a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, grinning, laughing, pulling him into a hug even if he’s covered in snow. I make hot chocolate on the stovetop in the kitchen and we work on a puzzle for the rest of the afternoon. It makes me wonder how we haven’t met before; he’s already a close friend.

When he leaves that evening, after it gets dark outside, I give him my number and tell him that we should keep in touch. He walks back over to the crisis center and turns off all the lights inside, locking the doors, and then he gets in his car and leaves.

I’m still alone at home the next morning. It’s Christmas Eve. I get a phone call as I’m making a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and it’s Eugene.

“Hey… I was wondering if you’d want to come over tonight for Christmas Eve dinner. If your dad got home, obviously spend the day with him, but… The offer’s open. Really. We’d love to have you over.”

He gives me his address and all. I tell him that I’ll have to play it by ear, if my dad comes home unexpectedly; I’d like to be here for him.

When I show up on Eugene’s front lawn that evening, though, and knock on the big oak front door, it only takes him a few seconds to answer.

I remember what it’s like to be happy again. It’s a wonderful thing.