A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks Page A

neurotically clean of anything personal. There wasn’t a single picture or anything.
    Jamie introduced me, and I shook Mr. Jenkins’s hand. After we sat down, Jamie did most of the talking. They were old friends, you could see that right off, and Mr. Jenkins had given her a big hug as soon as she’d entered. After smoothing out her skirt, Jamie explained our plan. Now, Mr. Jenkins had seen the play a few years back, and he knew exactly what she was talking about almost as soon as she started. But even though Mr. Jenkins liked Jamie a lot and knew she meant well, he didn’t think it was a good idea.
    “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
    That’s how I knew what he was thinking.
    “Why not?” Jamie asked, her brow furrowed. She seemed genuinely perplexed by his lack of enthusiasm.
    Mr. Jenkins picked up a pencil and started tapping it on his desk, obviously thinking about how to explain himself. In time, he put down the pencil and sighed.
    “Even though it’s a wonderful offer and I know you’d like to do something special, the play is about a father who eventually comes to realize how much he loves his daughter.” He let that sink in for a moment and picked up the pencil again. “Christmas is hard enough around here without reminding the kids of what they’re missing. I think that if the children see something like that . . .”
    He didn’t even have to finish. Jamie put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my,” she said right away, “you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that.”
    Neither had I, to tell you the truth. But it was obvious right off the bat that Mr. Jenkins made sense.
    He thanked us anyway and chatted for a while about what he planned to do instead. “We’ll have a small tree and a few gifts—something that all of them can share. “You’re welcome to visit Christmas Eve. . . .”
    After we said our good-byes, Jamie and I walked in silence without saying anything. I could tell she was sad. The more I hung around Jamie, the more I realized she had lots of different emotions—she wasn’t always cheerful and happy. Believe it or not, that was the first time I recognized that in some ways she was just like the rest of us.
    “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I said softly.
    “I am, too.”
    She had that faraway look in her eyes again, and it was a moment before she went on.
    “I just wanted to do something different for them this year. Something special that they would remember forever. I thought for sure this was it. . . .” She sighed. “The Lord seems to have a plan that I just don’t know about yet.”
    She was quiet for a long time, and I looked at her. Seeing Jamie feeling bad was almost worse than feeling bad because of her. Unlike Jamie, I deserved to feel bad about myself—I knew what kind of person I was. But with her . . .
    “While we’re here, do you want to stop in to see the kids?” I asked into the silence. It was the only thing I could think to do that might make her feel 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