The final bell rang at 3:15 PM, its shrill echo bouncing off the worn linoleum floors of Blackridge High. I gathered my textbooks, shoving them haphazardly into my backpack that had seen better days—the zipper was broken on one side, held together by a safety pin I'd found in the school nurse's office last month. Around me, students burst into animated conversations about weekend plans, upcoming parties, and who was dating whom. The usual teenage symphony that I'd never quite learned to join.
I caught a glimpse of Nate across the hallway, surrounded by the volleyball jocks. We had three classes together but other than the morning encounter, we never talked again.
Nate has joined the volleyball team and now he is standing with his new teammates. They were all laughing at something he'd said, their faces bright with the kind of easy camaraderie I'd watched from the sidelines my entire life. And to be honest, I preferred it this way.
The volleyball team's announcement during last period had been typical—a group of athletic boys standing on desks, beating the tables like they'd just conquered a small nation instead of simply adding one more player to their roster. The thunderous applause and back-slapping that followed made my ears ring. I'd kept my head down, doodling meaningless spirals in the margins of my chemistry notes.
Good for him.
The walk to Mom's diner took exactly twelve minutes if I didn't stop for anything. I knew because I'd timed it countless times, on good days and bad days, on days when I was eager to help and days when I dreaded what I might find. Today felt like the latter, a heavy weight settling in my stomach with each step I took down the street.
The "Go-To Diner" sign flickered weakly above the entrance, the 'G' having burned out months ago. Mom always said she'd fix it when business picked up, but business never really picked up, and the sign remained a constant reminder of all the things we couldn't afford to repair.
I could smell it as I opened the glass door—that rotten, cloying scent that clung to everything when Mom was having one of her episodes. My heart sank like a stone dropped in deep water.
"Oh, isn't that my baby girl, Lili!"
Mom was stoned.
The voice that greeted me was pitched too high, too bright, like someone had turned up the volume on a radio that was already playing too loud. Mom stood behind the counter, her auburn hair falling in messy waves around her face, her eyes glassy and unfocused. She was wearing the pink waitress uniform that she'd bought from the thrift store years ago, but it was stained now with coffee and what looked like ketchup.
"My beautiful, wonderful, perfect daughter!" she continued, spreading her arms wide in a gesture that sent a coffee cup teetering dangerously close to the edge of the counter. "Come give Mommy a hug!"
I forced a smile, the muscles in my face feeling stiff and unnatural. "Hi, Mom. How was your day?"
But even as I asked, I was already assessing the damage. Two customers sat in the corner booth—an elderly man with a newspaper and a woman with a crying toddler. They both looked uncomfortable, the kind of uncomfortable that came from witnessing something private and painful in a public space. Steam was pouring from the toaster behind the counter, and I could hear the angry sizzle of something burning.
"My day? Oh, my day was magnificent! Stupendous! I made so many new friends!" Mom giggled, a sound that might have been charming if it weren't so hollow. "Everyone loves Stella's cooking, don't they, honey bun?"
I rushed past her to the toaster, yanking the plug from the wall just as smoke began to fill the air. The bread inside was charcoal black, completely ruined. That was probably three dollars worth of bread down the drain—three dollars we couldn't spare.
"Mom," I said quietly, turning back to face her. "What did those customers order?"
She blinked at me slowly, like she was trying to process a complex mathematical equation. "Orders? What orders, Lili poo?"
The pet name hit me like a physical blow. She only called me that when she was really far gone, when the chemicals in her brain had rewired themselves into something I didn't recognize.
The woman with the toddler was gathering her things, clearly preparing to leave. I couldn't let that happen—we needed every dollar we could get.
"I'm so sorry," I called out to her, my voice steady despite the chaos churning inside me. "What can I get started for you? Coffee? Something to eat?"
"We've been waiting for twenty minutes," she said, not unkindly, but with the weary patience of someone who'd clearly dealt with difficult situations before. "I just ordered a grilled cheese for Emma and a coffee for myself."
"Coming right up," I said, already moving behind the counter. "And it's on the house for the wait."
Mom had wandered over to where the elderly man sat, and I could hear her chattering at him about the weather, about the diner, about nothing and everything all at once. He nodded politely, but I could see the way his eyes darted toward the door, calculating his escape.
I worked quickly, my hands moving through the familiar motions of the job I'd been doing since I was thirteen. Grilled cheese for the little girl—butter on the outside of the bread, medium heat so it wouldn't burn, American cheese because kids always preferred it to the fancier stuff. Fresh coffee for the mom, not the bitter dregs that had been sitting in the pot all day.
"Tell me the orders and go home," I said to Mom when she finally drifted back toward the counter. "Take rest."
My words came out soft but I saw her face crumple slightly. The bipolar disorder had been diagnosed when I was five, but it had taken me years to understand what it really meant. The good days, when she was present and loving and felt like the mother I remembered from my earliest memories. The bad days, when depression wrapped around her like a heavy blanket she couldn't throw off. And days like today, when mania lifted her so high that she couldn't see the ground anymore.
These were the times when I wouldn't be able to recognize her anymore. She would drown herself in weeds, booze, and molly. And I-----I would just stand on the sidelines, trying to limit the harm she does to herself, and waiting for it all to get over.
"Just go home," I repeated, more gently this time. "I'll take care of everything here."
I grabbed a dishrag from the drawer and began wiping down the counter, trying to clean up the coffee that had spilled everywhere. The familiar motions were soothing, giving my hands something to do while my mind raced.
Mom leaned against the counter, shifting her weight onto one hip in a pose that she probably thought looked casual and alluring. In her manic episodes, she sometimes regressed to behaving like she was still in her twenties, still the beautiful young woman who could turn heads when she walked into a room.
"Oh, don't be like that," she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest in a way that made me cringe. "Mommy can take care of this. You go home and rest. You just came from school, baby girl."
The thing about loving someone with bipolar disorder is that you learn to see past the illness to the person underneath. Mom wasn't a bad person—she was sick. When she was stable, she was the most caring, creative, funny person I knew. She could make up stories that had me laughing until my sides hurt. She remembered every little detail about my life, asked about tests I was worried about, noticed when I got my hair cut or wore a new shirt.
But when she was like this, it felt like that person had been locked away somewhere deep inside, and I was left talking to a stranger wearing her face.
"Mom, please—"
She tried to shift positions, but her hip slipped from where she'd been resting it on the counter. I watched in slow motion as she lost her balance, her arms wind-milling frantically as she fell backward onto the checkered linoleum floor.
"Mom!" I dropped the dishrag and rushed around the counter, my heart hammering against my ribs.
But instead of crying or looking hurt, she began to laugh. Not the nervous laugh of someone who was embarrassed, but the wild, uncontrolled laughter of someone whose brain chemistry had gone completely haywire. The sound echoed off the walls of the empty diner, sharp and brittle as breaking glass.
I knelt beside her on the floor, my hands hovering uncertainly over her body, not sure if she was hurt. "Are you okay? Did you hit your head?"
She just kept laughing, the sound growing more and more manic until it didn't sound human anymore. And then, suddenly, tears were streaming down her face even as the laughter continued, and I felt something inside my chest crack open like an egg.
This was my mother. The woman who used to read me bedtime stories and make Mickey Mouse pancakes on Saturday mornings.
And there was nothing I could do to help her.
I was seventeen years old, barely keeping us afloat financially, watching my mother disintegrate in front of me, and I couldn't even afford the medication that might make her better. The weight of that failure pressed down on me like a physical thing, making it hard to breathe.
I reached for her arms, trying to help her sit up, when another pair of hands appeared beside mine.
"Easy there, Stella."
Jeremy's voice was calm and steady, the way it always was in a crisis. He knelt on the other side of Mom, his hands gentle but sure as he helped her into a sitting position.
Jeremy Chen had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. He lived on Elm Street, one block over from our small rental house, and we'd grown up playing in the same parks, riding the same school buses. But where I'd stayed in Millbrook, attending the underfunded public school and working at the diner, Jeremy had been accepted to Westfield Prep, the prestigious private school in the next town over.
His father was some kind of executive—I'd never really understood exactly what he did, but it involved a lot of business trips and a salary that allowed them to live in the big house with the circular driveway and the three-car garage. Jeremy never talked about money, never made me feel different because of it, but the contrast was always there between us like an invisible wall.
"I'm such a bad mom," Mom said suddenly, her laughter cutting off as abruptly as it had started. Now she was just crying, her whole body shaking with the force of her sobs. "I'm such a terrible, awful mother. Lia deserves so much better than me."
The words hit me like physical blows. Because part of me—the tired, frustrated, seventeen-year-old part—sometimes thought the same thing late at night when I was lying in bed listening to her stumble through the front door with whatever loser she'd picked up at the bar. But hearing her say it out loud made me want to gather her in my arms and promise her that everything would be okay, even when I wasn't sure it would be.
"Hey, none of that," Jeremy said firmly, helping Mom to her feet. "You're not a bad mom. You're sick, and that's not the same thing."
He was taller than me by several inches, and broader through the shoulders from playing tennis at his fancy school. His black hair was always perfectly styled, and today he was wearing khakis and a button-down shirt that probably cost more than I made in a week at the diner. But his eyes were kind, the same dark brown that had been looking out for me since we were kids building blanket forts in his backyard.
"Thank you," I managed to say, my voice barely above a whisper.
I wanted to help get Mom home, wanted to be the one taking care of her, but I couldn't leave the diner. The elderly man was still sitting in his booth, pretending to read his newspaper while obviously listening to every word. The woman with the toddler was waiting for her food. If I closed early, we'd lose what little money we might have made today, and tomorrow there might not be enough for groceries.
Jeremy seemed to understand without me having to explain. He always did.
"Come on, Stella," he said gently, wrapping one of Mom's arms around his shoulders. "Let's get you home so you can rest."
I watched through the window as he helped her into his car—a silver BMW that his parents had bought him for his sixteenth birthday. Such a different world from mine, where I was still saving up for a bus pass.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of routine tasks. I made the grilled cheese and coffee for the woman and her daughter, who left a generous tip and a sympathetic smile. I took the elderly man's order for meatloaf and mashed potatoes, served it with the last of the decent coffee, and listened as he told me about his late wife who used to love coming to the diner.
"Your mother's lucky to have you," he said as he paid his check. "Not many kids your age would be so responsible."
I wanted to tell him that I didn't feel responsible. I felt scared and overwhelmed and completely out of my depth. But instead I just smiled and thanked him for coming in.
By the time I locked up the diner at 10:30, my feet ached and my uniform smelled like grease and coffee. The walk home felt longer than usual, each streetlight casting long shadows that seemed to reach for me as I passed underneath.
Our house was dark when I arrived, which wasn't unusual but still sent a spike of anxiety through my chest. I fumbled for my keys, the metal cold against my fingers in the October night.
"Mom?" I called as I stepped through the front door, but the silence that greeted me felt heavy and complete.
I checked her bedroom first, pulling back the faded blue comforter to make sure she wasn't just sleeping deeply. Then the bathroom, where her pills sat in their orange prescription bottles, most of them empty because we couldn't afford to refill them. The kitchen, where dirty dishes sat in the sink like a monument to all the normal family dinners we never had. The small backyard, where Mom sometimes sat on the rusty lawn chair when she needed air.
She wasn't anywhere.
I sank onto the couch in our living room, the springs creaking under my weight. The television remote sat on the coffee table next to a stack of unopened bills, and I could see the red "FINAL NOTICE" stamp on at least three of them. The weight of everything—Mom's illness, our debt, the constant struggle just to keep our heads above water—settled over me like a thick blanket.
I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Jeremy: "You left her at home, right?"
His response came almost immediately: "Yes. She isn't home?"
"No."
A pause, then: "You had dinner? Want me to bring you some?"
It was such a Jeremy thing to ask.
"No. It's okay. I will cook. Thanks for taking her home today."
He sent back a sticker—a cartoon bear giving a thumbs up.
I climbed the narrow stairs to my bedroom, passing the family photos that lined the walls. Me as a gap-toothed seven-year-old, sitting on Mom's lap while she smiled at the camera. The two of us at the county fair when I was twelve, both of us laughing at something outside the frame. A more recent photo from last Christmas, where you could see the strain around Mom's eyes even as she tried to smile.
These were all on the days when she will feel better.
In my room, I peeled off my uniform and dropped it in the hamper. The smell of grease and coffee had seeped into my hair, my skin, everything. I pulled on an old t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, then collapsed onto my bed with my headphones.
James Arthur's voice filled my ears as "Say You Won't Let Go" began to play, the gentle guitar melody washing over me like warm water. I closed my eyes and let the music carry me away from the worry, the responsibility, the constant fear that tomorrow would be worse than today.
Met you in the dark, you lit me up...
I'm gonna love you 'til my lungs give out...
It was just me and Mom against the world. And tomorrow, I'd get up and do it all again, because that's what love looked like sometimes—not grand gestures or perfect moments, but showing up every day even when it felt impossible.
The music played on as I drifted toward sleep.