Dear Colin

Ever since she was ten, Kimberley Porter felt like she’d been living a double life. On the surface, around her friends and family, Kimberley was the social, fun loving, quirky little bouncing monkey. She laughed and made jokes constantly with her friends and anyone who was around and everyone loved “Kimmie”.

However on the inside, Kimberley was screaming for help. She didn't know how or when, but the image Kimmie had of herself had changed. She started trying to avoid mirrors at the age of fourteen, claiming that she didn't like them because she hated looking at herself. She was self-conscious, always comparing herself to people, especially girls she considered prettier than herself.

Kim became withdrawn. Her bursts of spontaneity became less frequent and she’d suddenly started caring about what other people thought of her. When she was alone, Kim felt empty. When she was with company, Kim felt smothered. She just felt like she could never win.

She couldn’t explain it, but Kim either wanted to cry constantly or she was crying constantly (whenever she was alone, that is). Her aspirations of becoming a writer seemed suitable one day and then just dumb the next. One day she loved the way she wrote her poems and short stories and the next day she wanted to burn every single one of them to ashes.

Kim’s parents didn't notice the change in personality. They assumed Kim, at sixteen, was just being a teenager. Locking herself in her room and trying to avoid them was normal. They didn't like it, but it was normal.

Having parents who worked irregular hours meant a lot of self-parenting for Kim and her parents provided the resources for it. Kim would spend hours a day playing Farmville on Facebook and even more time watching TV, listening to music on her iPod or trying to mash out creative prose in front of her computer.

When her parents were around, Kim avoided them, preferring to speak to her best friend Cassia Fitzgerald instead. Kim and Cassia had been best friends since they thirteen. Cassia had moved to Johannesburg from Port Elizabeth. They didn't talk to each other for about three months after Cassia arrived until they were placed next to one another in one of their classes. Once the two of them got talking, Kim and Cassia became close friends and they shared everything with each other.

Kim was the product of interracial parents. Tall with skin the colour of milk chocolate and raven coloured hair, Kim was shy and preferred not to say much. She didn't need to anyway; blond-haired, blue-eyed, spunky and bubbly Cassia said enough for everyone.

They were a perfect match, Kim and Cassia; on the one hand you had Kim who was a shy, quiet writer who’d read Gone With The Wind almost a hundred times. On the other you Cassia, painter and sketcher who’d watched Gone With The Wind almost a hundred times. Cassia liked to illustrate Kim’s stories and Kim liked to put a story to Cassia’s drawings.

You could never forget Zane, though (probably because he was always pushing his camera in your face), with the beautiful pictures he took. Kim and Cassia were more than willing models and when it came to the clothes he designed, they were even more willing.

Another thing that Kim did while her parents weren’t around was surf the Internet. Because her parents never monitored her usage of the Internet, Kim found herself on the Internet almost every day. Sites like Facebook and Twitter were obvious sites that Kim joined and paid lots of attention to. In total she had close to three hundred friends on Facebook, nearly half of which she had no personal contact with. She had thirty-six followers on Twitter and three lists following her. She followed about two-hundred and twelve people, mainly celebrities and organisations that fought against abuse and teen depression and suicide. She also followed some of her friends; Cassia and a bunch of other people in her school that in turn followed her back.

However Kim’s social networking didn't stop there. She had a MySpace page that she didn't pay very much attention to, an account to a pen pal site that she neglected too. She often signed up for strange role-playing games that usually left tons of spam messages in her inbox informing her of new game features. There was an account to set up her own website, an idea she quickly ditched and another for a self-publishing site.

Kim didn't know why she joined these sites, maybe it was because she was trying to fill her inbox with messages other than those from her brother Ben who was out exploring the world.