I learned what suicide was in the fifth grade, after seeing a news report about a 14-year-old girl who hung herself after being cyber-bullied. I asked my dad what that meant, and when he told me, I was shocked. I couldn't believe someone could be so miserable that they wanted to end their own life. After that, suicide became one of those things that happened occasionally, but never to people I knew. I saw stories about it on the news, but it never really affected my life in any way.

Until a week before my senior year of high school, when the valedictorian of the class above me jumped out of a 14th-storey window her first night at Columbia. She seemed so excited, she couldn't wait to leave.

I vividly remember the day I heard about it. It was a beautifully clear day, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I was lifeguarding at my local pool, stretched out on a towel, tanning during my break. A younger guard walked over and sat down next to me.

"Did you hear about Martha?", she asked. She scanned my face for a reaction. I lazily rolled over and propped myself up on my elbows.

"What about her?", I replied. She was a brilliant girl, and I remembered she left for Colombia the day before. I ran into her in town a week or so before, when I went to get coffee — we talked briefly.

"You didn't hear? She killed herself last night." I shot up, and stared at her in disbelief.

"Are you serious? How do you know?" I demanded, refusing to believe that it was actually true.

As she filled me in on the news articles being published and the news crew on Martha's front lawn that morning, the other lifeguard stopped making eye contact. She fidgeted and looked down a lot. When she finally looked up, I met her eyes and I knew she wasn't joking.

I couldn't believe it. Martha and I were never good friends, but we were friendly all throughout high school. I walked to school every day with her next door neighbor, and sometimes she would join us. She was in my spanish class until she realized she would learn more doing independent study. We had the same free period, and would wave and say hi to each other in the library. We talked during the free period sometimes, too. The day she got into Columbia, we sat together. She couldn't hide her uncontrollable smile. I think it was the happiest I've ever seen her.

Martha was so kind, caring, and brilliant. Everyone in our community knew that she would go on to finish her education and do great things. I firmly believe that any life path she chose would have been so successful, and would have the potential to change the world.

Whether she knows it or not, Martha changed my world, and that of our small, tight-knit community. Much like everyone else in my 10,000-person town, I was sad, distraught, and more than anything else, confused.

I didn't understand how nobody saw the pain she was going through.

I didn't understand how someone with such a bright future could cut it so short.

I didn't understand how someone so smart and so kind could be so sad.

I didn't understand what thoughts could be so dark, what pain could be so deep, and what future could be so heartbreakingly unimaginable that it could lead a beautiful 18-year-old girl to look down from a 14th-storey window and decide to jump. I still don't, and I'm not sure if I ever will.

But what I did begin to understand after Martha's passing is that everyone is fighting a battle that you have no idea about. I'm sure you've heard this in some cliché (yet valid) saying about being always kind to others. But that's not enough.

Sure, smiling at another person as you pass them in the hall, or waving when you see someone in your class is a great start. But it's just not enough.

The truth is that there are 3 simple words that have the potential to save a life:

"How are you?"

In those 3 short words, you can let someone else know that you care. You care about them, and you care about how they're feeling. And that might just make a difference — THE difference — between life and death.

I wonder if someone had asked Martha how she was if she would still be here today. So many people cared about her, but I don't think that she knew it. If I learned anything from Martha's passing, it's that life moves quickly and it's easy to get wrapped up in yourself. It's easy to not see any of what's going on around you, down the block from your house, in your spanish class, or at the same table as you during free period.

It's important to slow down, and care enough to ask a singular, three-word question that could make a world of a difference to someone who feels alone and isolated, fighting to stay afloat in a sea of pain.

"How are you?" Everyone should know people care.

This article is dedicated to Martha Corey-Ochoa