I slowly open up the creaky door to my boarding school dorm room, careful not to wake up my roommate. It is eleven on a chilly Saturday night in New Jersey. I am returning from an evening hanging out in a friend's dorm, where we talked, ate, and tried to get our mind off of the stress of approaching midterms. Fumbling around in the dark, I switch on my phone flashlight, observe my roommate is not, after all, in the room, quickly pull on my favorite tattered sweatpants and a cozy t-shirt and curl up in bed to plug in my phone, and begin reading any missed texts or snapchats. I freeze as I stare at the smudgy screen, a feeling of total dread rising quickly through my stomach toward my throat and making it suddenly impossible to think clearly.

Piper has written me. Her text arrived in just the last few seconds, while I was racing back to my bedroom. Her text reads starkly: "I'm done with everything. Goodbye." Piper is my best friend away from boarding school. After so many years, I have no doubt at all what she means with these words. I instantly envision what she looks like as she types this horrible message. Her face is puffy, red and swollen, with bitter tears running down her defeated face. These are her last words, spit out over an impersonal text string.

Although Piper struggles with depression and anxiety, our relationship these last few months have been terrible. Piper now pins the blame on me for what was always inside her. She says her loneliness and isolation and the fact that she is failing in school are now all my fault. Some part of me knows better, but I'm also not strong enough to deal with the guilt and fear her words have put inside me. It is easiest for me not to think very hard about this.

As I settle into my new school and make new friends, she feels abandoned at home. Her parents are never around. They leave together on weekends, expecting her to stay at home and babysit her younger sister. Her parents never ask where she's going when she leaves at all hours to spend time with friends. While that means she has incredible freedom which many teenagers crave,she is also getting the message that they simply don’t care about her. Her frequent mood swings mean she has a hard time keeping friends around. I am one of her only constants, she always tells me. She texted me constantly in the weeks before I left for school, expecting me to respond at any time of day or night. With not much to do in the last days of August, I would always respond, and keep assuring her I would still be around for her once I left for school.

But the reality was a little different. School began and I was too preoccupied to focus hard on our daily conversations. I responded, but there were longer lags in between texts and less emotion in my replies. I was too busy readjusting to my new life to have a good sense of what she was dealing with. I brushed over everything, assuming it was "typical Piper drama.” I would just sit and listen when she would tell me about fights with her parents, bad grades, and abandoned college applications - casually assuming it was the same old story Piper was used to managing. I made the mistake of ignoring the realities of a slowly failing friendship, one which once meant the world to me.

Now here I am, literally sick to my stomach, heart pounding in fear at what is happening. I re-read this short text directed at me, the person who has let her down the most by leaving for boarding school. I consider briefly whether this is a cruel joke, then remember that she used to harm herself with cutting in middle school. Tears are now streaming down my face. I begin to call her, over and over again, each one going to voicemail. I leave a few messages pleading with her to respond. I really start to panic now, sure it is too late. I call my mother and my sisters, and when those calls also go to voicemail, I leave messages with them as well, begging them to return the call if they wake up and get the messages. Finally, I get up the courage to call the police station in Scarsdale, NY, where her family lives. A bored-sounding woman picks up the phone at the station and slowly collects what I know about Piper, in such a piecemeal way that my agony grows even worse.

As I wait for the police, or anyone, to call back, I struggle to reassure myself that she is okay. I am unable to imagine the intense pain she must be feeling as she makes this decision. I know she has a hundred voices screaming in her head, causing confusion and making the world feel like it has stopped spinning, that she is just falling rapidly into a black hole. I know those voices must be telling her that she is "better off dead" and "this will teach them." I squeeze my trembling hands over my own ears, trying not to listen to the silent screams coming from the other end of the phone - the accusatory message that I should not have gone away to boarding school, leaving her all alone. I imagine her sitting on the cold tile floor of her bathroom, alone in a house her mother and father abandoned to enjoy a weekend away alone. I try to empathize with the frigid loneliness and helplessness she must be feeling. The voices in my head just won't leave. "My friends are all gone now - you and even the ones at my school. They think I'm weird. No one loves me and no one can help me." I squeeze my childhood blanket next to my chest, hugging it hard. I close my eyes and pray. I squeeze harder, trying to find some thoughts that can keep me calm for a moment.

The vision that comes to me is reflexive, transporting me back in time to when I was a child. My mother is tucking me into bed, as she did so many nights before I left home. The book has been read. The light has been dimmed. She is whispering the same words to me she always does. I know the words by heart, but still need to hear them each night: "Simone, I want you always to remember three things." I respond as if I'd never heard this before - just because the words themselves, coming from her lips, are tradition. "What, Mom?" She smiles, leans in and murmurs: "I want you to always be kind to your family and friends because they are your safety net in life. I hope that you will always try your hardest at everything you do, because the journey is more important than the destination. And, most of all, always remember to love yourself and all that is good and unique about you as a person." These three bits of advice, whispered for so many years, are the cornerstones of my values. They are embedded in my subconscious. Whenever I feel stressed about Piper, I can inhale, think of this nightly conversation, pray that she will be okay, and remember similar values herself.

My breathing is slower. This process of personal prayer and remembrance of my core  values has calmed me. The moment is broken, however, when my phone starts to ring again. I answer and hear a man's deep voice. I expect to hear the worst: "I am sorry, but your friend is gone." But instead the voice says, without preamble: "Piper is going to be fine." I get no further details. It's none of my business, I assume. From here on out this will be between Piper, her family and her doctors.

I wrap my childhood blanket back around my shoulders, and think how Piper is now safely in her bed too, hundreds of miles away, with her own childhood blanket. As I drift off to sleep, I think about how Piper and I come from two different families, with two different sets of anchoring values. I know that there is no magical book that dictates the importance of values and growing up, but I do know that the values my mother taught me help me find a moment of peace in the worst possible situations, such as tonight.