The Confession or "Sometimes Roller Blading can KILL you."

Let’s talk Confession. We know from the back of the book that this kid Al dies and one of the main characters confesses to the murder. This seems … kinda straightforward for a Fear Street mystery… O wait the kids are worried their friend will kill again. Well, YEAH, that’s a pretty practical worry once your friend realizes what a liability you are!

The cover: soooo good. Sooo good! They appear to be ROLLER BLADING judging by the heroine’s (Julia) outfit of striped tank, kneepads and helmet. I’m assuming the guy lying on the ground is dead Al. Dead Al is described as a real “goth” who only wears black and Fucks Shit Up all the time. Yet on the cover … Al is wear a plaid long sleeved shirt, rolled up and tucked into his pants, which are held up with a BRAIDED LEATHER BELT. Bad ass. The tagline you ask? “Sometimes the truth can kill you.” What the…? No it can’t!

This one wasn’t a fave of mine, so I’ll try to just hit the awesome highlights. It’s also randomly divided into three parts… who knows why! So basically part one goes like this: Julia, BFF Hilary, Crush Vincent, Friend Sandy (boy) and Sandy’s new GF Taylor sit around at various hangouts and get pushed around by SuperGoth Al. (Goth kids were totally the emo kids of the 90s) For some reason, Al has managed to blackmail ALL of them at different times so they all hate him. And that’s about it. Part one doesn’t even end with the murder of Al! Totally useless.

Part Two isn’t much better (in my opinion). Al finally gets murdered (at the roller rink!). He was strangled to death by the laces of some blaaaades. Of course Julia finds him and everyone thinks that she did it. I’ll let you in on a secret… she didn’t do it! Thanks for some useless chapters R.L.! Anyways, Sandy confesses to the murder of Al, saying he did it for all of them. Now they’re not being blackmailed anymore! BTW, they were being blackmailed for things like: cheating on a test, smoking, driving their parent’s car WITHOUT permission! …Yeah, I’d say that justifies murder. Everyone is understandably skeeved out by Sandy but they decide not to tell anyone. “No sense in ruining TWO lives!” they all say. Well… Al’s life isn’t so much ruined as it is … done. So I think their logic MIGHT be faulty!

Part Three: Sandy pervs around, peering through Julia’s windows and basically creeps everyone out. Hilary, Julia’s BFF, decides to take matters into her own hands and goes to confront Sandy. When she gets back she calls a friend meeting at her house, were she confesses that she just killed Sandy. O noes! Taylor, Sandy’s GF jumps up yelling that Hilary killed the wrong person, because it was SHE that killed Al! Taylor had been sneaking around with SuperGoth Al and then killed him when he tried to bum money off her. WHAT?! Anyways, Sandy jumps out and is all “A HA!” Hilary and Sandy concocted the trick to get Taylor to confess to the murder and to let Sandy off the hook! Taylor goes to jail and the rest of the friends move on with their lives way too fast.

Here’s the thing. Why would Sandy confess to the murder in the first place? He said it was to “protect Taylor” but he obviously didn’t care TOO much about her since he gave her up like 2 days later. He didn’t even do it in a reasonable way, like tell her first, and then quietly go to the police. No, he needed to humiliate her in front of his friends first. WTF Sandy? I also noticed that a character in “Lights Out” is also named Sandy. Same Sandy? Lights Out Sandy ends up being a psycho murderer, so I’m going to guess YES, same Sandy. 4 SuperGoths out of 8, and that’s being nice. And because there was awesome ROLLER BLADE action.

A. M. Stine

P.S. There's a contest on the inside to submit ideas for "The Best Friend 2"! I'm totally going to enter guys!! Contest ends... August 1st, 1996. Dammit.