A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks Page B

years. Along the wall next to the Ping-Pong table were a set of shelves, with a few toys here and 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.” I shrugged 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 Maurice’s Tavern, which was a hangout for people like Lew, by the way. For an hour or so it caused quite a stir, and phone lines buzzed all over town while nervous women wondered about the possibility of a crazed lunatic wandering the streets, preying on innocent victims. Doors were locked, guns were loaded, men sat by the front windows, looking for anyone out of the ordinary who might be creeping down the street. But the whole thing was over before the night was through when the guy walked into the police station to give himself up, explaining that it was a bar fight that got out of hand. Evidently the victim had welshed on a bet. The guy was charged with second-degree murder and got six years in the state penitentiary. The policemen in our town had the most boring jobs in the world, but they still liked to strut around with a swagger or sit in coffee shops while they talked about the “big crime,” as if they’d cracked the case of the Lindbergh baby.
    But Jamie’s house was on the