The year started out weird. You know that.

This past February, it got up to seventy-five degrees. I put away my snow boots and found my tank tops and my running shorts in my dresser, and Abby and I took a drive about forty minutes out of town to this spot of Appalachian desolation. There's a ledge on a mountain out there that juts out over a huge swath of countryside. In the summer, teenagers like to climb up to that ledge and sit and drink and consider their lives and their future prospects and talk loudly about things the adult world has gotten too old understand.

Since Abby and I are overgrown teenagers, we climbed up onto that ledge, swung our feet over the edge and pretended we were still seventeen. Because it was February, the kids were still in school. We were one-month out of graduation then, and not even looking for work yet. We could afford to be there alone. The country was singularly quiet. You couldn't even hear a bird song. The patchwork fields below us were dead, brown and gray. The forested mountainside was purplish: you could see the brush-stroke trunks and the bare branches of trees that hadn't yet budded this year's canopy. And maybe it was the dissonance of the summer sun on our bare shoulders and the sight of the winter beneath our dangling feet that confused my mind- but the earth looked somehow inviting to me. I felt as if I could spring myself from that ledge and fall into a fuzzy purple blanket. I wondered if somehow the plunge wouldn't have killed me, should I have jumped.

If Abby hadn't been there, I think I might have jumped.

The French have a name for that feeling- the call of the void. When you wonder what it might feel like to completely destroy yourself.

It's not suicidal ideation. You don't actually want to die. You just want to know what it feels like.

It's an involuntary curiosity.

And it's something I battle a lot.

For example. At 2:30 this afternoon, I heard the call of the void in Dr. Helena Moreno's office, in the north wing of the second floor of the Newton Science center.

Dr. Helena Moreno's a short woman with ruddy cheeks and auburn hair. She talks very quickly, has a slight Spanish accent, and the Colombian flag hanging on the wall behind her large,  dark cherry wood desk. While she talked about the importance of public science education, and the dwindling earth and environmental science programs in our district's schools, all I could think about is what would happen if I kicked off my Calvin Klein heels and stretched my legs out over the side of that desk.

My hypothesis was that she would be baffled, and either ask me to put down my feet or, more likely, just end the interview that moment and demand I leave the premises. Whatever the case, I would not get the job at the Newton Science center's new planetarium.

Or would I?

I started to wonder if the Buzzfeed quizzes worked like the McFly's family photograph in Back to the Future. Would my quiz results change with my actions? Was the future predestined, or was there such a thing as free will? This was a question that had confounded theologians and philosophers and scientists and filmmakers since time immemorial. And I realized, as I stared at Dr. Moreno's rapidly-moving lips, I had something none of those theologians and philosophers and scientists had. The chance to answer this question scientifically. I had the chance to do some very real science.

And what kind of real science would I be doing at the Newton Center anyway?

I took a deep breath and stuck up my left index finger.

"I'm gonna have to stop you there, Doc," I said, and kicked off my heels. "I haven't been listening to a word you've been staying."

And then I set my feet on the edge of Dr. Moreno's cherry wood desk.

For a moment, I thought Dr. Moreno's head might have popped off her neck. Her right eyelid opened and shut almost imperceptibly quickly and the corners of her smile twitched.

"I suppose I do I have a tendency to ramble on about things no one cares about," she said, and kept her gaze rigid on my eyes and away from my feet, "at least that's my husband says." 

"He's not wrong." I pretended there was some food stuck between my teeth and picked at my incisor with my thumbnail, "what is this place, anyway?"

I watched Dr. Moreno's gaze briefly fall to my mouth. She shuddered.

"The only reason why I'd even consider a job in your joke of a planetarium is because I've already hit rock bottom." That should do it, I figured. Dump on her career, dump on the job, dump on the new planetarium.

"Rock bottom?" Dr. Moreno repeated.

"Is there an echo?" I wondered why she hadn't called security. "I could be working for NASA, you know, if it weren't for these fat-cats in Washington. Women finally get enough education to become astrophysicists, and now they want to dismantle the whole damn space program. Have you ever seen Hidden Figures?" I didn't let her answer. "It's just like that."

Dr. Moreno blinked. The superiority and persecution complexes had to be enough to get me kicked out of there.

"You're very, uh," Dr. Moreno stammered, "honest?"

"Actually, half the shit on my resume I made up." I was now getting concerned. Dr. Moreno seemed disgusted, but she also didn't seem to want to do anything about it. I had visions of the fates from ancient myth, spinning the story of my life completely without any input from me at all. "I never technically graduated from college. I refused to get my meningitis shot because vaccines are the devil's work, so the stupid administrators wouldn't let me walk. Red tape, I tell ya."

"Really?" Dr. Moreno gaped, "that shows, uh, conviction-"

"I don't have any," I waved my hands, "the trick is to get an excellent defense lawyer. I should really be a felon by now."

"Oh," Dr. Moreno nodded.

"Yeah, mostly small things. I've killed a few of my neighbors' cats here and there," I watched Dr. Moreno bend over in her chair and open a lower desk drawer. "Sometimes I like to purposely drive over people's mailboxes," I said, as Dr. Moreno pulled out a glass flask filled with an amber liquid and a tumbler and set them on her desk. "One time, I punched a homeless man in the back of the head, just to say I did it-" I watched her pour herself a drink, down it, and pour herself another. She looked at me before she took a gulp.

"Is there anything else you'd like me to know about you?"

"Yeah," I squinted. "I'm not actually a sex offender, but sometimes I think I could be one, you know?"

***

 Dr. Moreno said she would 'let me know.'

I was walking through the parking lot to my car, my eyes fixated on my phone, my fingers scrolling through Buzzfeed's quiz section as quickly I as could move them.

Just as I had clicked on the link to the Pick four 80s movies and we'll tell you how you're life will be different next week quiz, my phone rang. Dr. Moreno.

"Hi Dr. Moreno, good to hear from you," I said, but I was annoyed she had interrupted my experiment. I just wanted her to reject me so I could get off the phone already and test my hypothesis. "Before you say anything, I want you to know that I understand completely-"

"Leela, I want you to take the job." Dr. Moreno said, flatly.

"What?"

"I need you to take the job. It was my idea to build a planetarium and the astrophysicist I had on board got a TV show in Japan and I haven't been able to fill the damn spot for six months. I need someone with an astrophysics degree, and I need someone now or the board of executives is going to have my ass."

I couldn't speak.

"I'm going to be honest with you," Dr. Moreno continued, "my life is in shambles and I have nothing to live for. If you don't take this fucking job, I'm going to fucking kill myself."

I still couldn't speak.

"I can't have the board of executives on my ass again, Leela." Dr. Moreno was now actually sobbing. "I'm going to fucking kill myself. So are you gonna take the fucking job or not?"

I thought about the mountain ledge and the call of the void.

I don't want to kill myself, I just wanted to know what it feels like.

I don't want to be a sociopath, I just wanted to act like one.

"Uh, wow, Dr. Moreno," I heard myself say, "I'll take the job. Don't kill yourself."

***