Hushed breathing in his ear.
'I've got to go,' the voice said.
'What?' Jared snapped, looking again to the clock and realizing just how wide-awake he suddenly was. How was he supposed to go back to sleep now? 'You call me in the middle of the ni---'
'Can I call you again?' the voice interrupted.
This time it was Jared's turn to be silent.
'Can I call you again?'
'Yes,' Jared whispered, jerking his hand away from his head and pounding his fist into his pillow. He grated his teeth, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and silently cursed himself.
There was a click from the other end of the line.
Jared pressed the off button on the cordless phone, and stared down at the handset. Finally he turned it back on and dialed *69.
A computerized female voice answered immediately. 'The number you are calling was blocked, and cannot be called back using your last call return service.'
He set the phone back down in the cradle.
The burgeoning hint of an idea began to take shape in his mind.
Jared had been thinking about it all day. He could barely even remember sitting through class. It wasn't like he had failed his test, but he certainly hadn't aced it either.
He had sat there in his dorm room for the entirety of the afternoon, scrawling hurried thoughts into his notebook... waiting for the phone to ring.
Waiting.
By the time the phone actually rang, it was 2:42 a.m.
Bolting back to consciousness as he had drifted off against the wall with his chin lolling against his chest, his feet sprawled over the side of the bed, he immediately pressed the 'Talk' button on the cordless. He had fallen asleep with it in his hand.
'Hello,' he said anxiously, writing the time down in the notebook.
'I didn't think you'd answer,' that same voice said.
'I was starting to think you wouldn't call.'
Silence.
Jared flipped back several pages and traced his finger across the page---squinting in the wan light trickling in slanted arcs across the room from the window---until he found the string of questions.
'Are you still thinking about suicide?' he asked, poising the pen in the margin he had left beneath.
'Would I be calling if I weren't?'
He scribbled it down quickly, finding the second question.
'How would you do it?'
'Do what?'
'You know...'
'I take it I've piqued your curiosity.'
'How can I talk you out of it if I don't know how you intend to do it?'
There was the momentary sound of breathing on the opposite end of the line.
'Is that what you intend to do?'
'Would it work?'
'I doubt it.'
'Then what's the harm in trying?'
'If I were you, I don't know if I'd be willing to invest that much of myself knowing the outcome in advance.'
Jared smiled and scribbled down the words.
'If the outcome were guaranteed, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.'
'Are you challenging me?' the voice asked with a dry chuckle.
'I believe that you're challenging me.'
Silence.
'Maybe.'
'Do you have a girlfriend?' Jared asking, moving down the line.
'No,' the voice whispered and then faded into the barely audible hum of static. 'Do you?'
'Not at the moment.'
'Is that why you're willing to talk to a stranger in the middle of the night when you could otherwise be sleeping or partying?'
'I like to think of myself as a caring person.'
Silence.
'Then maybe I shouldn't call again.'
'No!' Jared snapped, and then more softly: 'Please.'
'Why do you care?' the voice asked in little more than a whisper.
'Maybe I think I can talk you out of it.'
'Do think that would make you a better person? Get you into heaven?'
Jared stared down at his notes in his lap.
'I suppose I'll call you again tomorrow then,' the voice said.
Jared turned the phone off and then right back on, and dialed *69 again.
That same tinny voice... 'The number you are calling is blocked, and cannot---'
Jared hung up and immediately lunged from the bed and switched on the lamp at his desk, setting the scribbled pages of notes directly beside the keyboard. He turned on the monitor and instantly began to type onto the white page where he had primed the flashing cursor beneath the title:
He had gone to school the following morning only long enough to sit through a single lecture in his Psychology of Addiction class before stopping in to talk with his faculty liaison, Professor Witt. For the last month and a half he had been dodging the good doctor, as Witt had been demanding to know the thesis to the all-important paper that would be due in less than three weeks.
Jared felt a swell of pride when he walked right into Dr. Witt's office and told him all about his idea.
Witt had lowered his spectacles from the wrinkled crescents beneath his aged brown eyes, and shook his head.
'To know what's going through the mind of someone poised to take their own life, you would have to find a way to get into their psyche,' the old man had said dubiously.
Jared hadn't been able to take his eyes off of the stringy white hairs stretched over the top of the man's liver-spotted scalp.
'I've got it under control,' he had said.
'If you don't, Mr. Danner, then you will be watching your classmates graduate from the audience,' was all the old man had said, dismissing him with a disinterested wave of the hand.
'Oh yeah,' Jared had said the moment he pulled the heavy door closed behind him. 'Everything is under control.'
'Hello,' Jared answered in the middle of the first ring. He had been typing his paper with the phone sitting directly beside his right hand.
'That was quick.'
'What was quick?'
