The Perfect Other

Kyleigh Leddy's memoir tells the story of her older sister Kait's struggle with schizophrenia, from an idyllic seaside childhood through years of escalating crisis to Kait's disappearance from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, after which police concluded she likely jumped but no body was ever recovered. The book traces the family's trajectory through color-coded phases mirroring the clinical stages of schizophrenia: prodromal (the early warning period before full psychosis), active (the period of acute symptoms), and residual (the phase after acute symptoms lessen).

The memoir opens with the central fact Kyleigh returns to throughout: On January 8, 2014, three days before Kyleigh's 17th birthday, Kait walked to the peak of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge wearing a red North Face jacket and vanished. Three years later, at 20, Kyleigh visited a psychic who suddenly asked what the number 11 meant to her. Since childhood, she and Kait had made wishes every day at 11:11, and Kyleigh was born on January 11. This moment frames the memoir's central tension: Kyleigh's effort to understand her sister and the guilt she carries over failing to save her.

Kyleigh describes their early years as a fairytale. Kait, five years older, had prayed for a baby sister and doted on Kyleigh so completely that the younger girl rarely needed to speak as a toddler. The family lived in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a seaside town that became their emotional touchstone. Their father, a network engineer, traveled often for work. Their mother, a former stockbroker who left her career to raise them, was warm and devoted. The sisters shared a blue bedroom, adopted a dog named Sailor, and invented superstitions together: avoiding cracks in sidewalks, kissing something blue if separated by a pole, knocking coded messages through their bedroom wall. Even then, subtle signs emerged. At six, Kait manipulated her parents into firing a babysitter and bit her own arm to fabricate evidence in a kindergarten dispute. Their mother kept a florist on speed dial for apology notes after Kait's frequent conflicts.

In 2003, the family moved to Philadelphia. After a fight led to Kait being asked to leave her Quaker school, they relocated to the Main Line, a wealthy suburb west of the city. A child psychologist evaluated Kait and dismissed any concerns. On her seventh birthday, Kyleigh invented a wish she would repeat for years: "I wish my dreams come true, my family is healthy, and my sister gets better."

Kait's behavior escalated through high school. She fell from her bedroom window while sneaking out to a party, sustaining what Kyleigh later recognizes as a possible concussion, citing research linking head trauma to behavioral changes and suicidal thinking. When Kyleigh was around 11, she crept downstairs during a sleepover to find her mother clutching her face after Kait had struck her. Kait was briefly hospitalized but released without a diagnosis. From that point, it was no longer safe to have friends over.

Everything accelerated in October 2010, when Kait, 18 and taking classes at Drexel University, fell from a brownstone stoop and hit her head on concrete. She suffered traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhaging, bleeding near the surface of the brain, and was sedated for three days. The doctor warned the family she would not be the same. Kait began hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations: She saw Santa Claus in the sky, a man fixing her television, and a woman cutting her hair in her sleep. She was expelled from multiple apartments by frightened roommates.

Their father did not believe in mental illness, viewing Kait's behavior as the result of partying. Their mother made treatment decisions alone. After hospitalizations and tests ruled out other causes, doctors diagnosed schizophrenia through a process of elimination. Kait enrolled in a research program at the University of Pennsylvania and began receiving the antipsychotic risperidone by injection. During one visit, she had a psychotic break, accusing their mother of being an undercover assassin, and had to be restrained by security.

The active phase brought relentless violence. The family cycled through psychiatric facilities, group homes, and treatment centers in Pennsylvania and California, each ending with Kait's expulsion for violent outbursts. At home, Kait threatened to burn the house down, chased the family with an iron poker, threw a heavy bronze mirror at their mother, and struck their father with a weight while he slept. Kyleigh and her mother packed hidden suitcases, memorized escape routes, and fled to hotels. At school, Kyleigh wore bright colors in defiance and told only one friend. She endured years of verbal abuse from Kait during the adolescent years she was forming her identity, developing body dysmorphia and thoughts of suicide. Yet Kait intermittently returned to herself, hiding apologetic Post-it notes in Kyleigh's textbooks, perpetuating an agonizing cycle of hope and devastation.

When Kyleigh visited Kait in a group home, she found her medicated into vacancy, staring blankly at a television alongside other women. The antipsychotics suppressed the hallucinations but stripped Kait's personality. As desperation grew, Kyleigh narrowed her 11:11 wish to its final clause: "I wish my sister gets better."

The night before Kait disappeared, she sat in her mother's car, withdrawn and defeated. Kyleigh had called her mother home in a panic over an exam, and her mother left Kait alone. When Kait did not answer her phone the next day, their mother found the apartment in shambles. Notebooks contained to-do lists alongside confessions that the television and radio seemed to speak directly to Kait. On tracing paper, she had written repeatedly: "Kait goes to heaven. Edie in heaven," a reference to Edie Sedgwick, the 1960s socialite and Andy Warhol muse who died young. On Kait's laptop, Kyleigh found searches for "What happens when we die?" and "How to kill yourself?"

Security photographs from the bridge showed a figure in a red jacket; one minute later, the path was empty. A taxi driver confirmed dropping Kait at the bridge's base. No body was recovered from the frozen river. Without remains, there could be no funeral and no death certificate, creating what Kyleigh later learns is called "ambiguous loss."

In the aftermath, Kyleigh returned to school within days, lying to classmates that she was an only child. Her father left shortly after, beginning a new relationship and initiating a divorce that lasted five years. The family of four became two.

In college in Boston, Kyleigh double-majored in psychology and writing, volunteering at a homeless shelter where she recognized symptoms of schizophrenia in the men she served and working at a group home for women with psychiatric disorders on Nantucket. She sought therapy and began to forgive herself. During her senior year, she wrote an essay about texting Kait's old phone number and receiving a reply from a stranger who had inherited the recycled number. The essay won the New York Times Modern Love college contest, leading to a book contract.

In her research, Kyleigh discovers that anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a treatable condition whose symptoms can mimic schizophrenia, was first identified at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, three years before Kait was treated there. She argues that the greatest change would come from treating mental illness as a physical brain disorder rather than a character flaw.

At 23, surpassing her sister's age for the first time, Kyleigh confronted the fear that she might develop schizophrenia herself. She discovered the name "Kaitlyn Leddy," her sister's exact spelling, on the call box of a New York City apartment building. She knocked on the door and met a stranger who shared the name but was not her sister. Walking home, she felt something release: an acceptance that she must stop searching.

The memoir closes on Nantucket, where their mother now lives near the ocean of their childhood. Old friends of Kait contact Kyleigh, confirming that Kait always spoke of how proud she was of her little sister. Kyleigh acknowledges that the memoir cannot resurrect her sister but can bury her properly, and closes with a quiet insistence: "Still, she goes on."