I was inside on a perfectly cool summer night-- the type of night where everyone’s out with their friends pool hopping, drinking too much beer, and kissing people they’ll probably regret in the morning. I was spending my night watching marathons of the Real Housewives and listening to the lulling sound of a fan on high-speed.
I had almost closed my eyes when she called. We didn’t talk much anymore, but I told her that if she ever needed to call or text, I would be around to answer. I don’t break promises. I had barely clicked the neon green button to answer her call when I heard frantic noises that, if you listened closely enough, almost sounded like words. “OliviaIneedyourhelpsomethingterribleisgoingtohappen,” she blurted, gasping for air as she spit it out like foul tasting food. She could hardly breathe.

As she slowed her words down, my heart began to speed up, for she explained that a boy was in his car ready to put his foot on the gas. He wasn’t headed toward a party; he wasn’t headed for a joyride; he was headed toward a tree. She begged me to help, even though I barely knew the boy’s name. She gave me a series of numbers, and I was left with my own imagination to create a way to keep him sane.

My mother often says that cellphones are the ruination of the world. She thinks they’re carriers of evil, and they do nothing but provide ways for us to hurt ourselves and our peers. My mom doesn’t know that on July 17, 2013 a cell phone saved a 16 year old boy’s life.

With hands trembling like a minor earthquake, ripples of nerves ran up and down my body. “You know you don’t have to do this, right.” “It’s too late,” was the clockwork response. After hours of confessions and memories that took a hammer to my heart and crushed it into thin shards of glass, the boy breathed a deep sigh of sanity and opened the car door.

To this day, his parents don’t know about their son’s plan to hug a tree with their car. His friends don’t know that the confident kid who cracks jokes (at other’s expense) has his own insecurities that he can’t seem to control. I always wonder about the day afterward. I wonder if he hung out with his group and laughed like he always does. I wonder if anyone suspects that July 18th could’ve been a somber day of surprised gasps and surreal realization that he needed someone.

I never got a thank you; I never expected nor wanted one. After his safety was confirmed and the conversation began to hit its falling action, I asked if he wanted to know my name. Up until this point, he had been confessing to a ghost. He replied with a simple ‘no.’ A few minutes later he typed a response that I could never forget. ‘You are my guardian angel; you always will be. I’d like to remember you as just that.’

Ironically, this experience, one that I will always remember, slipped this boy’s mind rather quickly. In a typical teenage dispute about relationships and personal values on social media, the same boy told me to kill myself via Twitter. I can still remember thinking, ‘if only you knew.’ I still don’t resent or regret stopping him from taking his life. Instead, I learned that sometimes people don’t learn from their life experiences. Sometimes people are ignorant and unpredictable, but that’s what makes them human. That’s what makes them worth saving. This I believe.