The North Pole Emergency Hotline occupied a corner of the Burlington Community Center that smelled perpetually of burnt coffee and synthetic pine. I sat in the cramped booth, surrounded by tangled Christmas lights that hadn’t worked in two years and a plastic tree that leaned perpetually to the left, as if trying to escape through the narrow window behind it.
The clock on the wall read 11:43 P.M. Seventeen minutes until my shift ended. Seventeen minutes until I could go home to my silent apartment and pretend I’d done something meaningful with my evening.
