A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks Page A

better. “I could wait out here while you talk to them, or go to the car if you want.”
    “Would you visit them with me?” she asked suddenly.
    To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could handle it, but I knew she really wanted me there. And she was feeling so down that the words came out automatically.
    “Sure, I’ll go.”
    “They’ll be in the rec room now. That’s where they usually are at this time,” she said.
    We walked down the corridors to the end of the hall, where two doors opened into a good-size room. Perched in the far corner was a small television with about thirty metal folding chairs placed all around it. The kids were sitting in the chairs, crowded around it, and you could tell that only the ones in the front row had a good view of the thing.
    I glanced around. In the corner was an old Ping-Pong table. The surface was cracked and dusty, the net nowhere to be seen. A couple of empty Styrofoam cups sat on top of it, and I knew it hadn’t been used in months, maybe years. Along the wall next to the Ping-Pong table were a set of shelves, with a few toys hereand there—blocks and puzzles, a couple of games. There weren’t too many, and the few that were there looked as if they’d been in this room for a long time. Along the near walls were small individual desks piled with newspapers, scribbled on with crayons.
    We stood in the doorway for just a second. We hadn’t been noticed yet, and I asked what the newspapers were for.
    “They don’t have coloring books,” she whispered, “so they use newspapers.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke—instead her attention was directed at the kids. She’d begun to smile again.
    “Are these all the toys they have?” I asked.
    She nodded. “Yes, except for the stuffed animals. They’re allowed to keep those in their rooms. This is where the rest of the things are kept.”
    I guess she was used to it. To me, though, the sparseness of the room made the whole thing depressing. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a place like this.
    Jamie and I finally walked into the room, and one of the kids turned around at the sound of our steps. He was about eight or so, with red hair and freckles, his two front teeth missing.
    “Jamie!” he shouted happily when he saw her, and all of a sudden all the other heads turned. The kids ranged in age from about five to twelve, more boys than girls. After twelve they had to be sent to live with foster parents, I later learned.
    “Hey, Roger,” Jamie said in response, “ how are you?”
    With that, Roger and some of the others began to crowd around us. A few of the other kids ignored us and moved closer to the television now that there were free seats in the front row. Jamie introduced me to one of the older kids who’d come up and asked if I was her boyfriend. By his tone, I think that he had the same opinion of Jamie that most of the kids in our high school had.
    “He’s just a friend,” she said. “But he’s very nice.”
    Over the next hour, we visited with the children. I got a lot of questions about where I lived and whether my house was big or what kind of car I owned, and when we finally had to leave, Jamie promised that she’d be back soon. I noticed that she didn’t promise I would be with her.
    While we were walking back to the car, I said, “They’re a nice bunch of kids.” Ishrugged awkwardly. “I’m glad that you want to help them.”
    Jamie turned to me and smiled. She knew there wasn’t much to add after that, but I could tell she was still wondering what she was going to do for them that Christmas.

Chapter 7

     
    B y early December, just over two weeks into rehearsals, the sky was winter dark before Miss Garber would let us leave, and Jamie asked me if I wouldn’t mind walking her home. I don’t know why she wanted me to. Beaufort wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity back then. The only murder I’d ever heard about had occurred six years earlier when a guy was stabbed outside of