Brood XIX (10 page)

"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."

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.
No!
he wanted to say, washing his hands clean of the entire
mess, but what kind of person would that make him?

"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."

Click
.

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.

Click
.

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:

Senior Thesis

Contemplating Suicide: What Drives Man to
Take His Own Life?

* * *

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?"

"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.
Testing their
resolve
, the header on the top of the page read. "I'm confident
that I can."

"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."

Click
.

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."

Click
.

Jared growled through his ground teeth and
raised the phone over his shoulder to spike it into the wall.

"Damn it!" he shouted, catching himself
before shattering his only lifeline into a thousand plastic
shards.

He turned the phone off and then back on
again, and dialed *69.

"The number you are calling..." he started to
say before the voice had even responded.

"The last number to call your line was..." the
voice began. Jared dashed to the desk and grabbed the pen to
frantically take down the number. "...three five one, four six eight
nine."