A Walk to Remember

The play was going to be performed that Friday and Saturday, and lots of people were already talking about it. Miss Garber had been so impressed by Jamie and me that she kept telling everyone it was going to be the best play the school had ever done. She had a real flair for promotion, too, we found out. We had one radio station in town, and they interviewed her over the air, not once, but twice. "It's going to be marvelous," she pronounced, "absolutely marvelous." She'd also called the newspaper, and they'd agreed to write an article about it, primarily because of the Jamie—Hegbert connection, even though everyone in town already knew about it. But Miss Garber was relentless, and just that day she'd told us the Playhouse was going to bring in extra seats to accommodate the extra-large crowd expected. The class sort of oohed and aahed, like it was a big deal or something, but then I guess it was to some of them. Remember, we had guys like Eddie in class. He probably thought that this would be the only time in his life when someone might be interested in him. The sad thing was, he was probably right. You might think I'd be getting excited about it, too, but I really wasn't. My friends were still teasing me at school, and I hadn't had an afternoon off in what seemed like forever. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I was doing the "right thing." I know it's not much, but frankly, it was all I had. Occasionally I even felt sort of good about it, too, though I never admitted it to anyone. I could practically imagine the angels in heaven, standing around and staring wistfully down at me with little tears filling the corners of their eyes, talking about how wonderful I was for all my sacrifices.

So I was walking her home that first night, thinking about this stuff, when Jamie asked me a question.

"Is it true you and your friends sometimes go to the graveyard at night?"

Part of me was surprised that she was even interested. Though it wasn't exactly a secret, it didn't seem like the sort of thing she'd care about at all.

"Yeah," I said, shrugging. "Sometimes."

"What do you do there, besides eat peanuts?"

I guess she knew about that, too.

"I don't know," I said. "Talk . . . joke around. It's just a place we like to go."

"Does it ever scare you?"

"No," I answered. "Why? Would it scare you?"

"I don't know," she said. "It might."

"Why?"

"Because I'd worry that I might do something wrong."

"We don't do anything bad there. I mean, we don't knock over the tombstones or leave our trash around," I said. I didn't want to tell her about our conversations about Henry Preston because I knew that wasn't the sort of thing Jamie would want to hear about. Last week Eric had wondered aloud how fast a guy like that could lie in bed and . . . well . . . you know.

"Do you ever just sit around and listen to the sounds?" she asked. "Like the crickets chirping, or the rustling of leaves when the wind blows? Or do you ever just lie on your backs and stare at the stars?"

Even though she was a teenager and had been for four years, Jamie didn't know the first thing about teenagers, and trying to understand teenage boys for her was like trying to decipher the theory of relativity.

"Not really," I said.

She nodded a little. "I think that's what I'd do if I were there, if I ever go, I mean. I'd just look around to really see the place, or sit quietly and listen."

This whole conversation struck me as strange, but I didn't press it, and we walked in silence for a few moments. And since she'd asked a little about me, I sort of felt obliged to ask her about herself. I mean, she hadn't brought up the Lord's plan or anything, so it was the least I could do.

"So, what do you do?" I asked. "Besides working with the orphans or helping critters or reading the Bible, I mean?" It sounded ridiculous, even to me, I admit, but that's what she did.

She smiled at me. I think she was surprised by my question, and even more surprised at my interest in her.

"I do a lot of things. I study for my classes, I spend time with my dad. We play gin rummy now and then. Things like that."

"Do you ever just go off with friends and goof around?"

"No," she said, and I could tell by the way she answered that even to her, it was obvious that no one wanted her around much.

"I'll bet you're excited about going off to college next year," I said, changing the subject.

It took her a moment to answer.

"I don't think I'm going to go," she said matter-of-factly. Her answer caught me off guard. Jamie had some of the highest grades in our senior class, and depending on how the last semester went, she might even end up valedictorian. We had a running pool going as to how many times she would mention the Lord's plan in her speech, by the way. My bet was fourteen, being that she only had five minutes.

"What about Mount Sermon? I thought that's where you were planning to go. You'd love a place like that," I offered.

She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye. "You mean I'd fit right in there, don't you?"