I found it odd when it rang on that cool Wednesday evening. It wasn’t strange that someone called me; I was almost as familiar with a telephone ring as my own voice. It was that the call came on my cell phone. As far as I knew, only two people had that number. One was my roommate, who was sleeping in the other room. Naturally, I wanted him to have my number in case of an emergency.

The other was my boss. To be honest, I wasn’t too thrilled at the idea that he had unlimited access to me. However, because I was rarely home, I gave him that number in case something important came up. After all, I was even less thrilled about having to find another job.

In short, my cell phone was mainly used for emergencies. In fact, more often than not, the person calling would be a wrong number. The number that appeared on the screen was unfamiliar, so I figured it must’ve been another wrong number. For some reason, I was compelled to answer anyway.

"Hello?" I asked.

The answer came as a quiet, rather hoarse-sounding girl’s voice. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Well, you called me. Who are you trying to reach?"

"Umm…is Linda Bell there?" Now I was sure this was a wrong number. For a while after I purchased the phone with the new number, I got several calls for a Ms. Linda Bell, who must have owned the number before me. A familiar surname. I often wondered if she was related to someone I knew in high school…

"I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number."

"Are you sure?" She read back the number to me, and it was correct.

"That is the right number, but there’s no Linda Bell here."

"Oh…I guess…I won’t be able to say goodbye to her after all." There was a terrible saddness in her voice as it became shaky and broken.

There was a pause as I decided what to say next. "Can I help you at all?"

"No," she said weakly. "No one ever tried. I won’t see anyone again. I don’t want to."

"I want to help you if I can. To whom do you want to say goodbye? Are you going somewhere?"

"You don’t understand anything."

"You haven’t told me anything!" My concern grew almost as quickly as my frustration.

There was a short pause, and then she said, almost inaudibly, "Here I sit, staring at a piece of rope dangling from the ceiling. Here I sit, looking at a pink vase sitting on a small wooden table against the wall, and I believe that that vase will be the last thing I’ll ever see…" Her voice trailed off; she said a few other things, but too quietly to understand.

But I understood enough. "Wait, dear, wait. You’re saying you intend to kill yourself? Why?"

There was a silence for a long while, and I was afraid I’d lost her. "I’ve given it lots of thought. Years. Nothing changes. Just…"

"Changes? How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Do you think seventeen is old enough to realize how much things can change?"

She chuckled sarcastically. "I’ve learned enough."

"Are you even out of high school yet?"

She chuckled again. "I was supposed to graduate in May."

"May isn’t for a few more months. Who says you won’t graduate?"

"Because…tonight is it."

"It doesn’t have to be."

"It does. I know you don’t understand, but it does."

"Well, what’s your name?"

"Aura."

"That’s a beautiful name. I once knew a girl named Aura in high school."

"Really? It’s not a very common name."

"No, it’s very special, and so was she. She was very pretty and well-liked. She had a handsome boyfriend, and I envied the hell out of him." I began to recall a photograph from my high school yearbook from freshman year. She was among the seniors. On the shelf between viewings, that book collects dust as if it’ll be a valuable commodity someday.

"You liked her?" she asked.

"Very much. I think I loved her."

"That’s all very nice, really, but that’s not me. My boyfriend’s a jerk. He only goes out with me because I look good on him. Everyone else is just distant. I might be thought of as ‘popular’ or ‘pretty,’ but nobody seems to care. Even my mother is hardly ever around."

"You have to realize that everyone else has their own problems and worries. They may try, but they can’t constantly think of what you might be feeling. If you’re hurting, you need to tell someone, and keep telling until you find someone who can help you." There was a reflective pause, and then, "Whether you realize it or not, a lot of people would be hurt if they lost you. It always hurts when someone you know dies, even if you hardly knew them. I learned that when I lost Aura." Nothing was said for at least a minute, then Aura showed a hint of curiosity.

"What happened to her?"

"Well, one evening, her mother came home late from work, and found her hanging from the ceiling."

"Did she leave a note or anything?"

"Oh, she called her mother, who tended to work late on Wednsday nights. However, her mother was away from her desk, so she ended up leaving a message on her machine."

"So, in the end, even her mother wasn’t there."

"She wished she was. She desperately believed that if only she’d been at her desk when she called, if only her daughter could’ve spoken to someone…"

"I wished I had someone to talk to, too. I tried many times, but…no one would listen. They’d say things like, ‘It’s not a big deal’ or ‘It’ll be okay.’ No one understands.

"Did they not understand, or did they not know what to say?"

"I don’t know. Both maybe."

"Well Aura, now I am here, and I am listening."

"Why do you care so much? You don’t even know me."

"It doesn’t matter. If I was hurting this badly, I would want someone to listen to me, too. Besides, the world has already lost one Aura. It’d be even more terrible to lose another.

"Maybe it’s for the better. I’m not worth much anyway."

"So you think that you’re worthless and don’t have a place in the world? Do you often tell yourself things like that?"

"Only when it’s true."

"Thoughts like that are never true, and they don’t help you much either. Do you think anything good about yourself?"

"Well, yeah."

"Like what?"

"Well…people tell me I have pretty eyes.

"What color are they?"

"You know, I’m not sure!" she began to laugh a little. They’re kind of green, but sometimes they look bright blue."

"See, your eyes change color. That’s cool! What else?"

"Well, people seem to like to be around me."

"I thought you said they were distant."

"They seem that way sometimes. I don’t know. Maybe it’s me."

"Do you like being around those people?"

"Yeah. Um, what did you like about the Aura that you knew?"

"You know, I really didn’t know much about her."

"Really, but I thought you loved her. How could you if you didn’t know her?"

"I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t really love, but it felt like it. By some stroke of luck toward the end of my freshman year, I ended up sitting next to her at lunch. It was totally unintentional, mind you. My friends and I sat at one end of the table, and she and her friends at the other. She and I sat near the middle, where the two groups met."

"Did you ever talk to her?"

"Oh, no. I was far too shy. She was a senior, pretty, and with her friends. I’d often wondered if she even realized I was there. I didn’t really care though. It was good just to be around her."

After a short pause, I continued, "I often wondered if I was even a speck in the sea of people she might’ve thought about before she died. I’m sure she never gave me a thought, but I still think about her, everyday."

"I wonder if anyone would think of me that way."

"I can guarantee that a lot of people would. You can never know what kind of effect your life has had on others."

The conversation went on a while longer, and we discussed our own good experiences, as well as ones we try to forget. We talked of how people tend to glorify people they knew after those people had died, and that we don’t really even know what will happen tomorrow. You never really know what life will send your way. Finally, I asked her for the biggest and most important favor that I’ve asked of anyone. "Aura, I want you to promise me that tonight will not be it. I want you to live just one more day. Can you promise me that?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Don’t suppose, promise me."

"I promise."

After the conversation ended, I might have thought of other things to say. I might have hoped that I said enough to convince her to keep living. Fortunately, I never got the chance to worry about that.

Shortly after I pressed the button to hang up the phone, I heard my roommate’s bedroom door creak open. It was a rather abrupt sound that seemed to accompany the beep from the phone. I was glad that he was awake, as I wanted to talk to someone about the strange call. Soft footsteps slowly approached from the hallway. They rounded the corner and…

The creature who appeared before me was not my roommate. The features of this girl looked vaguely familiar, like a face in an old high school yearbook that was collecting dust on a shelf. Suddenly, my life as it was began to feel like a dream from which I had suddenly awakened.

Aura indeed lived through that cold Wednesday night, and the next day she talked to that sheepish boy who sat next to her at lunch. He would eventually lead her in the direction of finding help for her emotional ailments. Soon, the next day turned into the next week, and she was again tempted to tie the rope to the ceiling. However, the voice of the stranger kept telling her, "Promise me, just one more day."

She looked forward to seeing that boy at lunch every day up to her graduation, and she stayed in touch with him long afterward. In college, they began to develop a more serious relationship, and after several years, they got married. On this particular night, Aura Bell finally got to meet the man who saved her life almost a decade ago. Indeed, you never know how much things can change.