would draw immeasurable delight from making up for the two years they had lost.
The cicadas sang from the trees in the back yard. Soon enough they would be gone. The females would all be laden with eggs that would one day become larvae squirming around in the dirt, feeding on roots and whatever else might end up buried deep enough in the earth, biding their time for another thirteen years until they were again free to molt and live the lives they had dreamed of, if only for a single, glorious month.
And Vanessa would welcome them back when they did. In the meantime, she would honor the gift they had bestowed upon her by living with the same passion and intensity.
In her mind's eye, she envisioned her perfect moment, the one held close to her heart, and allowed herself a wistful smile.
Emma knelt in the mud in her filthy dress while Buddy raced around her. Her small hands formed mud into the shape of a bear that she imbued with the life that would one day save her own. Emma's features slowly metamorphosed into those of a girl with a slender face and short blonde hair, a girl Vanessa had only seen in photographs after the fact. The girl looked back at Vanessa and smiled the distant smile of a child who had never had the opportunity to truly live, the smile of a little girl who had never been properly mourned.
BONUS MATERIAL
The Generosity of Strangers
A Short Story
'I'm going to kill myself.'
That was how it began. Five simple words arising from the empty static.
Jared didn't know what he had expected when he rolled over and snatched the phone from the cradle, but that string of words was the furthest thing from it.
What in the world time was it anyway?
Groaning beneath the weight of his disrupted slumber, Jared rolled to his right and squinted to bring the red numbers of the digital clock into focus across the room.
3:16 a.m.
Silence hummed into his left ear.
'I think you must have the wrong number,' was all he could think to say.
'No,' a man's voice said. There was nothing familiar about it. 'There's no one else I can talk to.'
'Look...it's quarter after three and I've got class in the morn---'
'Would you rather I hang up?'
Silence.
'No,' Jared sighed, rubbing his palm into his eye. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the ceiling. He hated this old room. It was, after all, the same dormitory his grandfather had lived in fifty years prior. The walls were made of cinder block painted a chipping white, and the plumbing ran along the ceiling directly above his bed. Every time someone flushed one of the communal toilets down the hall, water pinged through the pipes, rattling them in their brackets against the ceiling. 'I guess not.'
Breathing from the distant end of the line.
'Do I know you?' Jared asked.
'I doubt it.'
'Then why did you call me?'
'I dialed your number at random.'
Jared rubbed the crusted sleep from the corner of his eye.
'I can't talk to any of my friends,' the voice continued. 'Not that I really have any.'
'Is that why you want to kill yourself?'
A dry chuckle.
'If only it were that simple.'
'Do you go to school here?'
'Yes.'
Jared rolled over onto his stomach and rested his chin on his elbows, staring through the parted curtains into the courtyard outside. The dumpster lid was already covered with a solid three inches of snow. Flakes fluttered against the windowpane like so many moths drawn to a flame. His roommate Matt snored from the bed across the small room. He was going to have to move the phone to Matt's side in the morning.
'What could possibly be so bad?' Jared asked, transfixed by the swirling snow tapping against the pane. 'I mean...what happened that you think killing yourself is the only option?'
'I can't say.'
'Then how am I supposed to talk you out of it?'
'Do you think that's why I called you?'
'Isn't it?'
Silence.
Jared envied Matt... sound asleep, dampening his pillow with slobber, while he was stuck on the phone with an Abnormal Psychology test in five hours. His graduate thesis was due in less than a month, and he hadn't the slightest clue what he was going to base it on. The prospect of not graduating---of never leaving this damned dorm room---summoned the same kind of thoughts this stranger was sharing with him now.
He needed to formulate his thesis.
'I just wanted to talk.'
'Then what do you want to talk about?'
Jared couldn't get a good feel for the person on the other end of the phone. At first he had thought it might have been a prank, but he wasn't sure now. The voice sounded serious enough, but from everything he'd learned about suicide, when the individual reached out for help, they usually turned to someone close...a friend...family...someone who could read into more subtle signals.
Since he didn't even know this person, did this suddenly make him responsible, or could he simply hang up the phone and absolve himself of any guilt whatsoever?
'I'm going to lose my scholarship,' the voice said.
'For sure?'
'My parents are going to kill me,' he chuckled humorlessly. 'I'm the first from my family to go to college.'
'Then don't you think they'd understand?'
'My father's working a second job down at the mill to pay for what the grants won't cover.'
'Have you talked to him about it?'
'Hell, no!' the voice snapped, and then drifted off into silence again. 'He thinks everything is going perfectly.'
'But it isn't.'
'No.'
Jared looked at the clock again. 3:42 a.m.
'What's your name?' he finally asked.
'I'd rather not say.'
'All right then,' Jared said, pausing to formulate his thoughts. He knew not to push people who were considering suicide, they had a tendency to fall quite easily. 'Don't you think it would upset your parents more if you killed yourself?'
'I don't know.'
'I'm pretty sure it would.'
'You don't know my parents like I do.'
'I know them well enough to know that they'd be hurt and upset if you killed yourself.'
