Heading into summer with her closest friends, Maggie feels like she has it all, including a perfect boyfriend.
She even plans to step up the level of intimacy with Joey. The day after a wild party, they're at one of their favorite hangouts—a gorge where everyone but Maggie has leapt off a cliff into a swimming hole. This time Maggie decides she's ready, if Joey holds her hand. Something about the bracelet on Joey's wrist tugs at the back of her mind as they climb, and in the moment before they leap, she stops. Joey doesn't, twisting in midair as he falls to his death. Adam finds Maggie cowering in the bushes on the trail with no memory of what happened. Maggie's first-person account meanders between comforting flashbacks of Joey and her struggle to confront her fear that she caused his death. Fragments of the incident return, revealing some unwelcome truths about Joey and their friends, some of whom are grieving for very different reasons from those she could have imagined. Like a puzzle, pieces of Joey's life start to fall into place, making Maggie realize that there might have been a reason not to trust him after all.
Good, solid drama about the power of secrets to test the bounds of friendship, with just enough tension to satisfy teen readers. (Fiction. 14-17)
