A Walk to Remember - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,5

working for him and went into the ministry, then came back to Beaufort and started ministering in the same church we attended. He spent his first few years perfecting his fire-and-brimstone act with monthly sermons on the evils of the greedy, and this left him scant time for anything else. He was forty-three before he ever got married; he was fifty-five when his daughter, Jamie Sullivan, was born. His wife, a wispy little thing twenty years younger than he, went through six miscarriages before Jamie was born, and in the end she died in childbirth, making Hegbert a widower who had to raise a daughter on his own.

Hence, of course, the story behind the play.

People knew the story even before the play was first performed. It was one of those stories that made its rounds whenever Hegbert had to baptize a baby or attend a funeral. Everyone knew about it, and that’s why, I think, so many people got emotional whenever they saw the Christmas play. They knew it was based on something that happened in real life, which gave it special meaning.

Jamie Sullivan was a senior in high school, just like me, and she’d already been chosen to play the angel, not that anyone else even had a chance. This, of course, made the play extra special that year. It was going to be a big deal, maybe the biggest ever—at least in Miss Garber’s mind. She was the drama teacher, and she was already glowing about the possibilities the first time I met her in class.

Now, I hadn’t really planned on taking drama that year. I really hadn’t, but it was either that or chemistry II. The thing was, I thought it would be a blow-off class, especially when compared with my other option. No papers, no tests, no tables where I’d have to memorize protons and neutrons and combine elements in their proper formulas . . . what could possibly be better for a high school senior? It seemed like a sure thing, and when I signed up for it, I thought I’d just be able to sleep through most every class, which, considering my late night peanut eating, was fairly important at the time.

On the first day of class I was one of the last to arrive, coming in just a few seconds before the bell rang, and I took a seat in the back of the room. Miss Garber had her back turned to the class, and she was busy writing her name in big cursive letters, as if we didn’t know who she was. Everyone knew her—it was impossible not to. She was big, at least six feet two, with flaming red hair and pale skin that showed her freckles well into her forties. She was also overweight—I’d say honestly she pushed two fifty—and she had a fondness for wearing flower-patterned muumuus. She had thick, dark, hornrimmed glasses, and she greeted every one with, “Helloooooo,” sort of singing the last syllable. Miss Garber was one of a kind, that’s for sure, and she was single, which made it even worse. A guy, no matter how old, couldn’t help but feel sorry for a gal like her.

Beneath her name she wrote the goals she wanted to accomplish that year. “Self-confidence” was number one, followed by “Self-awareness” and, third, “Self-fulfillment.” Miss Garber was big into the “self” stuff, which put her really ahead of the curve as far as psychotherapy is concerned, though she probably didn’t realize it at the time. Miss Garber was a pioneer in that field. Maybe it had something to do with the way she looked; maybe she was just trying to feel better about herself.

But I digress.

It wasn’t until the class started that I noticed something unusual. Though Beaufort High School wasn’t large, I knew for a fact that it was pretty much split fifty-fifty between males and females, which was why I was surprised when I saw that this class was at least ninety percent female. There was only one other male in the class, which to my thinking was a good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a “look out world, here I come” kind of feeling. Girls, girls, girls . . . I couldn’t help but think. Girls and girls and no tests in sight.

Okay, so I wasn’t the most forward-thinking guy on the block.

So Miss Garber brings up the Christmas play and tells everyone that Jamie Sullivan is going to be the angel that