Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

the call of the void

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.