Stanford. Yale. Brown. Princeton. Harvard. New York University. These were only some of the college's the young McFadden had applied to. She had been standing in the middle of her bedroom staring at the college letters laid out on her bed spread. They were all large envelopes, and she knew what that meant. Kara had free range to go where ever she wanted; she could leave Tree Hill in her past and move on with the rest of her life. The brunette could get everything she ever wanted, and the life she had planned since she was eight years old. Kara was so close. Sure, she would miss her brothers, she would miss her best friends, and her support system but it had always been the plan. So then why did she feel sick to her stomach as her brown eyes scanned over the letters? Once Kara finished her junior year at Tree Hill High she knew that she desperately wanted out of Tree Hill, she was tired of the small town life, and she had been feeling suffocated for too many years. But things changed. Kara had become more independent in the last six months than she had ever felt possible. Her brothers had returned home, something she deemed was never going to happen. Her friendships with her friends had grown, but also at times felt extremely distant, and she wasn't so sure she wanted to leave off to college and face the real possibility of losing them. The bright eyed girl had also fallen in love; something she had once sworn wasn't for her.

Kara felt like she was swimming in thoughts as she finally made her way over to her bed, ripping open the envelope closest to her. Accepted. Kara's eyes scanned over the letter from Harvard, it read accepted. As she continued on tearing through envelopes she felt more and more confused. This moment was when she should have been on top of the world. All Kara's hard work over her teenage life, all the long hours in the library, and countless of clubs she had made it. Kara hadn't been rejected from a single college she had applied to. So why did it leave her feeling so out of sorts? Why didn't she feel the joy she had waited for all her life? In the last six months Kara had come to wonder if the life she had planned out for herself was her dream, or her parents.