A young woman who was always the life of the party, quick to tell a joke, always smiling and happy, tragically dies at age 23. What her mother found after her death reflected a much different young woman, her poetry. Her words showed a young woman crying out to feel loved, wanted, beautiful and worthy. Struggling to accept herself as the wonderful, happy, beautiful young woman everyone else saw her as. Her words reflect the pain and torment she allowed another to cause her. It is her mother's most heart felt desire to reach even one young person struggling to accept themselves. To encourage them to open up and talk to someone, to know they are never alone, to know their feelings are validated. She also hopes to reach a mother that perhaps feels her daughter is perfect and completely in charge of her life, as mothers often do. After reading her poetry, hopefully it will facilitate conversation, confirm unconditional love and help to end words that a mother never hears. I am her mother and these are her words.

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there. Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never have understood. Everyone wants to be perfect, but when perfection loses its meaning, how far will you go? What would you give up to be perfect? A riveting and startling companion to the bestselling Impulse, Ellen Hopkins’s Perfect exposes the harsh truths about what it takes to grow up and grow into our own skins, our own selves. ***Listen to the attached videos to hear the characters read an audio version of "Perfect", voiced by various actors.***