melancholia ✔︎

talking

"Kyle?"

"Amy?" he answers.

"Hi."

"Hey. What's up?"

"Same, same."

"Oh. Need cheering up?"

"Badly. But I'm always sad anyways. What difference does it make? Nothing."

"Well... Talk about it. Talking about it always helps me at least."

"I barely slept, I'm tired as hell and all I want to do is crawl up in a hole and die."

"Like literally?"

"Yes, Kyle. Literally."

I hang up before he can.

Two minutes later, I call back.

"Teen Help Service, what can we.." I cut him off.

"It's me, Amy."

"I thought you just hung up."

"I did."

"Oh. Okay, so what do you want to talk about."

"Not me. Not depression. Or anything like that."

I hold the phone under my ear, my sounds muffled into a pillow.

"Pardon?"

I repeat slowly.

"And, by the way, you say 'Pardon?' I'm just like I don't even really give a crap about what you said."

"Well, be like that, but I'd rather be polite," replies Kyle. "Unlike you."

"Talk about you," I instruct. "Talk about you, because that would distract me from my World War III problems inside my head."

"I'm an only child. So, I have no sisters. No brothers. No siblings."

"Me neither."

"My real parents died. So, my uncle took me in. I live with my uncle. He runs the Teen Help Service. Therefore, I'm here," he heaves it out like a big burden on his chest.

His parents are dead?

"Um, uh, I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I guess I'm pretty self-centred and self-hating and self everything. I don't really notice everyone else's problems, just my own."

"It's fine," he replies. "I'm okay. I didn't even know them, so..."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Can we talk about something else?" I ask. It's getting awkward again, and the subject 'Families' seem to be a dangerous, walking-on-thin-ice topic.

"Would be glad to," he replies.

"And how do you think Teen Help Service has helped you during the course of our calls so far?" he suddenly says cheerfully.

"Um... Why...?"

"Nothing. My boss... My uncle came by," he explains.

"Oh. That accounts for it," I say.

"But I'll answer."

"Well... Sure. Go ahead."

"Teen Help Service has helped by giving me something to do in my day... Which is usually empty. Thanks?"

I hear him scribbling it down, the scratchy sound of a pencil on paper.

"Why are you writing it down?"

"So I remember," he answers.

I hang up. And think about his words.