A Walk to Remember - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,20

since the last time I’d been there.

“Thank you for coming, Landon,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but I appreciate your taking the time to do this.”

“So, what’s so important?” I said, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Jamie, for the first time since I’d known her, actually looked nervous as she sat with me. She kept bringing her hands together and pulling them apart.

“I wanted to ask you a favor,” she said seriously.

“A favor?”

She nodded.

At first I thought she was going to ask me to help her decorate the church, like she’d mentioned at homecoming, or maybe she needed me to use my mother’s car to bring some stuff to the orphans. Jamie didn’t have her license, and Hegbert needed their car anyway, being that there was always a funeral or something he had to go to. But it still took a few seconds for her to get the words out.

She sighed, her hands coming together again.

“I’d like to ask you if you wouldn’t mind playing Tom Thornton in the school play,” she said.

Tom Thornton, like I said before, was the man in search of the music box for his daughter, the one who meets the angel. Except for the angel, it was far and away the most important role.

“Well . . . I don’t know,” I said, confused. “I thought Eddie Jones was going to be Tom. That’s what Miss Garber told us.”

Eddie Jones was a lot like Carey Dennison, by the way. He was really skinny, with pimples all over his face, and he usually talked to you with his eyes all squinched up. He had a nervous tic, and he couldn’t help but squinch his eyes whenever he got nervous, which was practically all the time. He’d probably end up spouting his lines like a psychotic blind man if you put him in front of a crowd. To make things worse, he had a stutter, too, and it took him a long time to say anything at all. Miss Garber had given him the role because he’d been the only one who offered to do it, but even then it was obvious she didn’t want him either. Teachers were human, too, but she didn’t have much of an option, since no one else had come forward.

“Miss Garber didn’t say that exactly. What she said was that Eddie could have the role if no one else tried out for it.”

“Can’t someone else do it instead?”

But there really wasn’t anyone else, and I knew it. Because of Hegbert’s requirement that only seniors perform, the play was in a bind that year. There were about fifty senior boys at the high school, twenty-two of whom were on the football team, and with the team still in the running for the state title, none of them would have the time to go to the rehearsals. Of the thirty or so who were left, more than half were in the band and they had after-school practice as well. A quick calculation showed that there were maybe a dozen other people who could possibly do it.

Now, I didn’t want to do the play at all, and not only because I’d come to realize that drama was just about the most boring class ever invented. The thing was, I’d already taken Jamie to homecoming, and with her as the angel, I just couldn’t bear the thought that I’d have to spend every afternoon with her for the next month or so. Being seen with her once was bad enough . . . but being seen with her every day? What would my friends say?

But I could tell this was really important to her. The simple fact that she’d asked made that clear. Jamie never asked anyone for a favor. I think deep down she suspected that no one would ever do her a favor because of who she was. The very realization made me sad.

“What about Jeff Bangert? He might do it,” I offered.

Jamie shook her head. “He can’t. His father’s sick, and he has to work in the store after school until his father gets back on his feet.”

“What about Darren Woods?”

“He broke his arm last week when he slipped on the boat. His arm is in a sling.”

“Really? I didn’t know that,” I said, stalling, but Jamie knew what I was doing.

“I’ve been praying about it, Landon,” she said simply, and sighed for the second time. “I’d really like this play to be special this year, not for