'You answered the phone before it even started to ring on my end.'
'I was expecting your call.'
There was a long pause.
'Do you still think you can talk me out of it?'
'Yes,' Jared said, thumbing through his notes until he found the spot where he needed to be.
'Are you?'
The voice sounded amused.
'It's been three days. If you were going to do it, you would have done so by now.'
The silence from the other end of the line was sharp and poignant.
The pen shook in Jared's grasp as his lower lip slipped between his teeth to be gnawed.
'Maybe I should just hang up and do it right now.'
'No!'
'Tell me why I shouldn't!'
'Because---'
'Because why?'
'Because I don't want you to.'
Silence.
'Why not?'
'Because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you did.'
Dead air hung between them.
'You could hang up at any time and never know whether I did or didn't, you know. You could convince yourself that you'd 'saved' me, and never learn otherwise. This is a large campus, and the University certainly wouldn't like the kind of press that would be involved. I'd be surprised if it even made the campus paper.'
'I don't even read it.'
'See how easy it would be?'
'Is that what you want me to do?'
'Only if that's what you want to do.'
Silence.
'I don't want you to kill yourself,' Jared said.
'Then I suppose I'll be calling you again.'
Jared turned the phone off and on, and then hurriedly dialed *69.
'The number you are calling is blocked,' he repeated along with the computerized voice.
He set the phone back on the cradle.
Jared slept through his alarm the following morning, which annoyed Matt to the point that he had shut it off for him before storming off to the dining hall to get breakfast a full hour earlier than he had wanted.
By the time Jared awoke, all of his classes were through for the day, and students were already beginning to filter into the cafeteria for an early dinner while he was pouring himself a bowl of Apple Jacks.
He sat at the corner table, still only wearing his slippers over his socks, and shorts though it had to have been well below freezing outside. No one tried to sit by him, or even looked up from their meals for that matter. They were coming up on finals week and the tension was so thick that it lingered like a fog over the preoccupied faces of those shoveling their food unconsciously past their lips.
There wasn't a single thing about this school that he was going to miss when he graduated. Not only would his thesis paper be good enough to knock old Professor Witt on his ass, but he'd have the professional journals fighting over the print rights. Maybe he'd experiment a little with practicing psychology before debating the merits of medical school, or maybe they'd be clamoring to pay for his education.
He smiled and milk spilled from the corners of his lips down his chin.
Nobody looked up.
No one even noticed.
Jared stayed up all that night, watching the phone...waiting for it to ring.
But dawn came without the sound of the ringing phone.
Jared didn't sleep at all the following day...nor did he even bother getting dressed for class. He had already missed so much by now that what was one more day?
He made the requisite three trips down to the cafeteria, but had done little more than stare at the cordless phone that he had been unable to leave behind in the room. Minutes stretched endlessly into the hours that never passed as he scrutinized the clock with bloodshot eyes.
Matt came and went, pausing only long enough to deposit his backpack on his bed and tell Jared that he should try getting some sleep because 'he looked like shit.'
Jared had promised to take the suggestion under consideration, but hadn't even looked at his pillow. He had sat there with his back against the wall, legs stretched across the bed, watching the phone in his grasp.
He didn't even bother to get up to turn on the light when the sun set outside, the line of sunlight creeping across the floor back toward the window until it finally disappeared, leaving him alone in the darkness.
'Hello,' Jared answered breathlessly after deliberately allowing the phone to ring twice.
'Two rings this time.'
'The phone was across the room,' he lied, he had been staring down at it in his hand for the last fifteen minutes, trying to mentally make it ring.
Silence.
'You didn't call last night.'
'Did you think that I did it?'
'I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my mind.'
'How did that make you feel?'
'Hurt. Angry. Both.'
'Good.'
'Is that what you wanted?'
'I wanted you to question yourself, to plant the seed of doubt. I wanted you to know that I could actually do it.'
'I guess you made your point then.'
'Did I?'
'Clearly.'
'Good.'
Silence.
'I was worried about you last night,' the voice said.
'You were worried about me?'
'I know how much of yourself you've invested in this endeavor we share.'
Jared shook his head.
'Am I not right?'
'Yes,' Jared said, trying to keep the angry edge from cutting through his voice.
'What would you do if I didn't call you tomorrow night? Would you still be sitting there in your room, alone, waiting for the phone to ring to find out for sure whether or not I had decided to go through with it?'
Jared could think of nothing to say.
'Then I suppose I'll leave it at this...' the voice said, and Jared could hear the smile creeping into it. 'Perhaps I'll call you later.'
