Sandy Miller, another good friend, has been going out with Taylor for about a month. I don’t think Vincent has the tiniest idea that I have a major thing about him. I really think Vincent and I could be a great couple. I have to confess that recently I’ve wished he were more than a friend. Vincent Freedman is another one of our group. We settled around the round, yellow kitchen table, with cans of Mountain Dew and a bowl of tortilla chips.Īnd naturally we started talking about boys. And the three of us dragged our backpacks into the house. She reminds me of one of those wind-up toys that’s been wound up too tightly and goes off-too fast-in all directions at once.Īnyway, she tugged me to my feet.

She is smart and nice and funny and… intense. How her eyes are always darting back and forth behind those white plastic-rimmed glasses she wears. But I think other people are surprised by how tense she is.

Hillary and I have been friends since junior high. “Can’t you ever stay in one place for more than five minutes?” I scolded her. I raised my hand so that Hillary could help pull me up. “Julie, could we go inside?” she asked me. The long, single braid she always wears swayed behind her head. Hillary climbed to her feet, her dark brown skin glistening with sweat. “And did you take off your swimsuit?” Hillary asked. Croix, and we went to a nude beach there,” Taylor said, eyes still shut, smiling at the memory. “One winter, my parents took me to an island in the Caribbean called St. Sometimes I had the feeling she didn’t really like me that much. She had no patience for my dumb questions. “Julie, have you ever sunbathed nude?” she asked me. She shut them and tilted her face to the sun. Taylor tugged her wavy, white-blond hair back from her face. Hillary, Taylor, and I dropped our backpacks on the grass and sat on them, stretching out our legs, raising our faces to the sun. The whole backyard shimmered under the bright afternoon sunlight. And rows of red and yellow tulips swayed gently in the flower bed beside the garage. Bright green leaves were uncurling on the old trees in my backyard. I’ll tell you one thing: On that warm spring day last May when my friends Hillary Walker and Taylor Snook came to my house after school, we did not have murder on our minds. But when a really close friend called our group to his house and confessed to a murder in front of all of us-well… what could we do? Not an easy choice- is it? I’m seventeen and sometimes I think I know a lot of answers. Tell his parents? Call the police? Try to convince him to tell his parents? Tell your parents? He begged you to keep his horrible secret.

What if your friend confessed to you that he killed someone? And he begged you not to tell anyone. What would you do if one of your best friends took you aside and said he had a confession to make?

The confession rl stine