A Walk to Remember - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,23

that she had a glass eye, and that was something I just couldn’t ignore. Her bad eye reminded me of something you’d see stuffed into the head of a mounted owl in a tacky antique shop, and to be honest, it sort of gave me the willies.

I guess that was when I started to resent Jamie again. I know it wasn’t her fault, but I was the one who was taking the arrows for Hegbert, who hadn’t exactly gone out of his way the night of homecoming to make me feel welcome. I began to stumble through my lines in class for the next few days, not really even attempting to learn them, and occasionally I’d crack a joke or two, which everyone laughed at, except for Jamie and Miss Garber. After rehearsal was over I’d head home to put the play out of my mind, and I wouldn’t even bother to pick up the script. Instead I’d joke with my friends about the weird things Jamie did and tell fibs about how it was Miss Garber who had forced me into the whole thing.

Jamie, though, wasn’t going to let me off that easy. No, she got me right where it hurts, right smack in the old ego.

I was out with Eric on Saturday night following Beaufort’s third consecutive state championship in football, about a week after rehearsals had started. We were hanging out at the waterfront outside of Cecil’s Diner, eating hushpuppies and watching people cruising in their cars, when I saw Jamie walking down the street. She was still a hundred yards away, turning her head from side to side, wearing that old brown sweater again and carrying her Bible in one hand. It must have been nine o’clock or so, which was late for her to be out, and it was even stranger to see her in this part of town. I turned my back to her and pulled the collar up on my jacket, but even Margaret—who had banana pudding where her brain should have been—was smart enough to figure out who she was looking for.

“Landon, your girlfriend is here.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Your fiancée, then.”

I guess she’d talked to Sally, too.

“I’m not engaged,” I said. “Now knock it off.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see if she’d spotted me, and I guess she had. She was walking toward us. I pretended not to notice.

“Here she comes,” Margaret said, and giggled.

“I know,” I said.

Twenty seconds later she said it again.

“She’s still coming.” I told you she was quick.

“I know,” I said through gritted teeth. If it wasn’t for her legs, she could almost drive you as crazy as Jamie.

I glanced around again, and this time Jamie knew I’d seen her and she smiled and waved at me. I turned away, and a moment later she was standing right beside me.

“Hello, Landon,” she said to me, oblivious of my scorn. “Hello, Eric, Margaret . . .” She went around the group. Everyone sort of mumbled “hello” and tried not to stare at the Bible.

Eric was holding a beer, and he moved it behind his back so she wouldn’t see it. Jamie could even make Eric feel guilty if she was close enough to him. They’d been neighbors at one time, and Eric had been on the receiving end of her talks before. Behind her back he called her “the Salvation Lady,” in obvious reference to the Salvation Army. “She would have been a brigadier general,” he liked to say. But when she was standing right in front of him, it was another story. In his mind she had an in with God, and he didn’t want to be in her bad graces.

“How are you doing, Eric? I haven’t seen you around much recently.” She said this as if she still talked to him all the time.

He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at his shoes, playing that guilty look for all it was worth.

“Well, I haven’t been to church lately,” he said.

Jamie smiled that glittery smile. “Well, that’s okay, I suppose, as long as it doesn’t become a habit or anything.”

“It won’t.”

Now I’ve heard of confession—that thing when Catholics sit behind a screen and tell the priest about all their sins—and that’s the way Eric was when he was next to Jamie. For a second I thought he was going to call her “ma’am.”

“You want a beer?” Margaret asked. I think she was trying to be funny, but