Kate is the sort of person who will never show more than a little skin or say more than a few words at once, but will give one hundred percent at everything making sure it is perfect until being considered done. The dancer she’s become has made her like that. She has been trained that everything you do must be perfectly executed and synchronized or else wrong. To only show one emotion and facial expression; smiling and happy. That is what has made her so simple and elegant, yet humble and soft-spoken. For only sixteen, the ability she has to control her feelings, relationships, and pure talent, makes her seem like she has her life figured out and could possibly be going on thirty. Her long blonde hair and porcelain skin tends to tell us otherwise. She sticks to the same routine, school then dance, which she likes. Her schedule gives her a sort of pattern and reliability to her day. When plans are in place, so is she -  a sort of OCD factor. She thinks this is normal and how everyone should live. At a quick glance she is just a normal teenager going to high school, but the thoughts she has, as well as the self-discipline and perfectionist woman she has become makes her different. Because of how easy it is for her to make friends, everyone knows everything about her. Kate fears that one day she’ll have nothing left to tell and her life will become meaningless.
She is melting in the pressure every day. You can tell by the way she always uses her phone to check her hair and practices pointing her toes under her desk. It’s not obvious because she pretends she’s fine. Her family, friends, clothing, looks, and grades all seem normal. Seem. No one can tell what’s really going on. Her body seems healthy. Maybe a little too healthy. Skinny like a stick and has always been that way. Rumors float around school of Kate having an eating disorder, but no one knows for sure. Why would such a pretty girl do such a horrible thing to herself? No one knows. Only her immediate friends have learned some things about her but even they don’t know what her whole life is really like. They tend to be fair-weather friends, only there for Kate through the good times. That’s something she always keeps to herself. Her kindness to everyone takes over any bad thoughts that students would have about her; so they believe her life’s a breeze. What they don’t know is what goes on at home and in the dance studio.
Every day she awakes to the sound of her father knocking the smelly beer bottles he drank last night onto the floor. The pounding of her mother’s forceful yet controlled footsteps to pick them up and throw them away. Her family rushes to each bathroom and tries to hide their ripped clothes and dark under eye circles. This family is normal, this family is normal, they think inside their head as they rush out the door, not to be seen until late that night. No one talks; they just let each other do their own thing. The thought of her bringing more tension into this routine would have unknown consequences, so she continues to stay quiet and keep her feelings to herself. Her sister always did this too. They were so much alike, only one year apart. The pressure was similar for both of them. Extreme and constant. Kate uses dance as her escape, though it may not always be. “Straighten your knees, point your toes, keep your chin up, Kate!” as well as her own thoughts run around in her mind all day. Only to be reinforced when she rushes through that old, chipped of pink paint door. For a brief moment she can stretch and dance out all her problems until her teacher comes in to find every detail wrong with her. She can only take this constant bringing down for so long, but cannot think of a way to speak up and stop it. She knows it is for the best and that there is always room for improvement, but one day, this open-hearted and understanding girl will have had enough. Her strength can shine through and fight this, but more and more each day it looks as if it is eating her up inside. Continuing until there's nothing left of her and creating a lost cause in her family; though God never planned on wasting a life through her soul. 
All this attention to herself when there was someone else whom she should have been worrying about instead. If only she wasn't so caught up in how she was handling her own stress. Another member of her family was going through exactly the same thing, yet Kate had failed to notice. Her sister and she were so much alike that they both hid how they were feeling, just to give off the false impression that they were mentally strong and happy. In one moment everything changed...
It had just been another day. Six am wake up and off to school. However, it wasn’t just another day. It would be the day that her life would be changed forever, but Kate didn’t know that until she woke up and walked into the bathroom. Her face had gone pale, ghost-like. Her mouth dropped and her eyes rolled back in the same way her sister’s were. Kate fainted and was out cold for about two minutes. What she saw, her sister lying peacefully in the shower with an empty pill bottle in her hand, would be a moment she would never forget. It had become too much for her sister; so much that she couldn't deal with it anymore and decided to end her life. She was dead. Just like that.
Unexpected moments hit us hard and all at once. No one can prepare for a death or a last goodbye. Especially not Kate for her sister. Though they were never that close, they shared an inseparable bond. Not in the sharing secrets kind of way, but more in the reliability they had to cheer each other up when they needed it most. They never really expressed what their true feelings were to each other, just kept them bottled up inside. So that’s what made them not understand they were both going through the same thing. She never knew that her sister was feeling this way. But it was too late now.
After the shock of her sister’s death wore off, about three months later,  loneliness started to kick in. More and more every day she realized all the ways they were similar to each other; personality, interests, mannerisms - even the way they looked. Kate took her sister for granted and never realized how much she relied on the late night conversations they had in the kitchen over the mint chocolate chip ice cream, their favorite, loaded with whip cream and chocolate sauce.
For the next few months, she barely went to school or any social gatherings. Her parents wouldn’t even notice because they left before she did in the morning and stayed at work all day. Many nights were spent with a constant flow of tears sliding down her face and tissues covering her bed. One night Kate sat on her bed in deep thought remembering the times her sister was there comforting her. She turned on the TV and Dancing With the Stars came on, a show she used to watch every Monday night with her sister. She would envision them rushing into the room with a fresh bowl of popcorn, turning the show on right as the opening number started. They would look at each other with wide eyes and a smile and laugh. In between commercials they would guess on which couple would be voted off this week, and whoever was wrong had to do the chores for that night. Inside their heads they dreamed about how much they wanted to be one of the professional dancers on the show. It was a life goal for both of them; dancing on live tv. But now Kate couldn’t bear to think about that far into the future. Right now all she had was a pile of makeup work growing on her bed and no motivation to complete any of it. If she could get through that night, that would be good enough. She slowly drifted off to sleep with the theme song of the show repeating in her head and the warm comfort of her sister’s presence.
That morning she woke up from a dream about her sister; believing so faithfully that she was still alive. She felt her sister was still in her room and all throughout the house. Why are all bad things happening to me? Why me? What did I ever do to deserve the world to turn against me? How am I, a sixteen year old girl, supposed to deal with all this? Her thoughts and emotions were trapped inside her body about to explode. The fear that she would come to live the same life as her sister seemed unbearable, but somewhat of a relief. If only she had someone whom she could talk to and share everything with now that her sister was gone.
But was her sister really gone? That same morning Kate got out of bed and walked to the same bathroom she used everyday. She stared at herself in the mirror with a deep gaze. It had been three months since she last went to school and today was the day she was scheduled to go back. She went through the same routine she had every other day of high school she had attended. Though when she went to grab her perfume bottle she realized it was empty. It was her favorite and only scent she would wear.
Remembering that her sister wore the same kind, she walked to her room and slowly turned the doorknob. Kate never thought about even stepping a foot in her room until now. The door swung open and Kate was drawn back by the stillness of it all. Her room was identical to the way it was left, as if time had stopped since her sister was still alive. It had a sort of worn in feeling like her sister was still living in it followed by a ghostly coldness to the perfectly made bed and untouched desk.
She walked over to the bookshelf holding the cases of makeup and perfumes. There it was. Kate picked up the purple and gold bottle labeled “Love Spell By Victoria's Secret”. In that moment she thought of nothing but her sister. These waves of grief came over Kate every once in awhile. They’ve made her constantly think more about how hard her own life has became, and less about how much longer she wanted to live it.
She quickly dismissed these thoughts from her head, sprayed the perfume, and gently put it back in the tray with all the rest. As she turned to leave the room, she noticed a wrinkly piece of white paper sticking out of a book on the third shelf. Thinking it was just a loose page about to fall out of the old book, Kate tried to ignore it, but something about the small black writing on it started to intrigue her. Quickly looking at the faded, light pink clock on the wall, Kate realized that she was going to be late. She left the room exactly the same as it was before, and quietly shuts the door.
Going to school that day was going to be hard and she knew it. The strange faces she would get in the hallway would be a lot to take in, but she knew she had to get through just one day and the rest would be a breeze. However, it wasn't like she expected. No one even noticed that she was back, which made her a little mad. She had been out of school for a long time and no one cared enough to welcome her back or ask why she was gone. Her first day back was spent struggling to make it through each class and eating lunch in the girl’s bathroom. Every time she opened a notebook or binder to write on a piece of paper, she thought back to the one she saw in her sister’s room. The idea of seeing what was actually on it and figuring out why it was there stayed in her mind all day. 
Once the two o’clock dismissal bell rang she sprinted out of the class to catch her bus and sat uneasy the whole ride back. Missing dance today was a choice she didn’t have to think twice about. She got off at her usual stop, but today she was in such a rush to get home that she ran down the street and up her driveway; not stopping until she was standing outside her sister’s room. Again.
In that moment Kate didn’t know that once she walked in that room and over to the bookshelf, her life would be changed forever. Kate didn’t know that when she took out the book with the piece of paper hanging out the side, it would be the very same book her sister would read to her every night when she was a child. Kate didn’t know that when she read the first two words on the page, “Dear Kate”, that she would never feel the same way again. Kate didn’t know that when she finished reading the letter her sister wrote to her, that she would be lying on the floor with tears dripping down her face and all the weight finally lifted off her chest. Most of all, Kate didn’t know that getting out of her room and going into her dead sister’s would give her the reasons she had been so desperately needing to continue on with her life and appreciate everything she has.
Kate went back to being a more confident and overall “perfect” girl. She slowly joined into her old routine of going to dance and school everyday and trying extra hard to please her teachers as well as herself. Living up to high standards is tough, but sometimes it’s just a challenge to become the best person one can be.