To whomever discovers this letter:

My name is Joseph, most people call me Joe and my closest friends call me Jay. I think it would be fine if you went with Jay. Everyone has something they want to forget. Maybe it's something embarrassing like when your pants ripped in gym class on the day you forgot to wear underwear. Or maybe it's something horrible like the time you threw a rock at Mr. Barrots dog. It seems these are the things we are least likely to ever forget. Sure, we bury them away in unmarked graves and never plan on visiting them again, but these graves have a way of shifting. The dirt erodes, exposing the skeletons to us. We may forget for a while but it always comes back. We just throw more dirt on the grave and hope this time it stays buried. I guess I'm writing this because I want someone to know what happened if my fears are true. On the other hand, I could be completely and utterly insane. Maybe I should start from the beginning and let you decide.

It all started about 11 years ago. I would have been 12 or maybe 13 years old at the time. I lived with my mother in this small town and I had little friends, as I was home schooled and rarely ventured out. I did have one friend though, a neighbor girl who kept at me. That would be Amy. Amy Pizer. Of all the things I've forgotten in my lifetime, Amy would not be one of them. Amy and I used to play together at the town park. In a small town such as this, there isn't much else to do. We would push each other on the swings, chase each other across the monkey bars, and build castles together in the sand box. We were inseperable. Had the tragedy I'm about to describe not happened, we quite possibly could have been boyfriend and girlfriend in our later years. As it is, something terrible did happen.

I had known Amy for a year or more and we were in the park, as usual. It was early spring, still a bit cold outside and we were running, chasing each other, and having a great time when Amy climbed to the top of the spiral slide. I know you've seen these, great big structures which twist around as you slide down the smooth metal. Amy climbed to the very top and taunted me to come and get her. I climbed the ladder rungs as quickly as I could, panting and out of breath from chasing her around the park already. As I neared the top, Amy turned to run and her feet slipped out from under her. I watched, seemingly in slow motion, as she flipped over the hand bar at the top and fell from the slide. After I was finally able to shake myself from a stupified daze, I called out to her. I screamed over and over but it was to no avail. Now, I was raised to know right from wrong and I know what I did next was wrong but I felt at the time that I had no choice. Television had taught me that murderers go to jail and that's what I was then, a murderer. I couldn't let anyone know that I had killed Amy. I can go on into detail and tell you how I snuck Amy into my house while my mother slept her afternoon nap and hid her in the attic. I could also tell you how I made up a story about feeling sick and leaving the park while Amy stayed behind when the police questioned me but I feel time is running short.