A Walk to Remember - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,15

you very much,” she said, as if knowing what I was thinking.

I nodded without saying anything.

“He thinks you’re irresponsible.”

I nodded again.

“He doesn’t like your father much, either.”

I nodded once more.

“Or your family.”

I get the picture.

“But do you know what I think?” she asked suddenly.

“Not really.” By then I was pretty depressed.

“I think that all this was in the Lord’s plan somehow. What do you think the message is?” Here we go, I thought to myself.

I doubt if the evening could have been much worse, if you want to know the truth. Most of my friends kept their distance, and Jamie didn’t have many friends to begin with, so we spent most of our time alone. Even worse, it turned out that my presence wasn’t even required anymore. They’d changed the rule owing to the fact that Carey couldn’t get a date, and that left me feeling pretty miserable about the whole thing as soon as I found out about it. But because of what her father had said to me, I couldn’t exactly take her home early, now, could I? And more than that, she was really having a good time; even I could see that. She loved the decorations I’d helped put up, she loved the music, she loved everything about the dance. She kept telling me how wonderful everything was, and she asked me whether I might help her decorate the church someday, for one of their socials. I sort of mumbled that she should call me, and even though I said it without a trace of energy, Jamie thanked me for being so considerate. To be honest, I was depressed for at least the first hour, though she didn’t seem to notice.

Jamie had to be home by eleven o’clock, an hour before the dance ended, which made it somewhat easier for me to handle. Once the music started we hit the floor, and it turned out that she was a pretty good dancer, considering it was her first time and all. She followed my lead pretty well through about a dozen songs, and after that we headed to the tables and had what resembled an ordinary conversation. Sure, she threw in words like “faith” and “joy” and even “salvation,” and she talked about helping the orphans and scooping critters off the highway, but she was just so damn happy, it was hard to stay down for long.

So things weren’t too terrible at first and really no worse than I had expected. It wasn’t until Lew and Angela showed up that everything really went sour.

They showed up a few minutes after we arrived. He was wearing that stupid T-shirt, Camels in his sleeve, and a glop of hair gel on his head. Angela hung all over him right from the beginning of the dance, and it didn’t take a genius to realize she’d had a few drinks before she got there. Her dress was really flashy—her mother worked in a salon and was up on all the latest fashions—and I noticed she’d picked up that ladylike habit called chewing gum. She really worked that gum, chewing it almost like a cow working her cud.

Well, good old Lew spiked the punch bowl, and a few more people started getting tipsy. By the time the teachers found out, most of the punch was already gone and people were getting that glassy look in their eyes. When I saw Angela gobble up her second glass of punch, I knew I should keep my eye on her. Even though she’d dumped me, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She was the first girl I’d ever French-kissed, and even though our teeth clanked together so hard the first time we tried it that I saw stars and had to take aspirin when I got home, I still had feelings for her.

So there I was, sitting with Jamie, barely listening as she described the wonders of Bible school, watching Angela out of the corner of my eye, when Lew spotted me looking at her. In one frenzied motion he grabbed Angela around the waist and dragged her over to the table, giving me one of those looks, the one that “means business.” You know the one I’m talking about.

“Are you staring at my girl?” he asked, already tensing up.

“No.”

“Yeah, he was,” Angela said, kind of slurring out the words. “He was staring right at me. This is my old boyfriend, the one I told you about.”

His eyes turned into little slits,