A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

you a ride, but it wouldn’t be half as nice as actually walking under the stars, and I wouldn’t want you two to miss it.” He said this like he was doing us both a favor.
    “Oh, we’re almost to my house anyway,” Jamie said. “I was going to offer Landon a cup of cider. Would you like to meet us there? We have plenty.”
    A cup of cider? At her house? She hadn’t mentioned that. . . .
    I put my hands in my pocket, wondering if this could get any worse.
    “Oh, no . . . that’s all right. We were just heading off to Cecil’s Diner.”
    “On a school night?” she asked innocently.
    “Oh, we won’t be out too late,” he promised, “but we should probably be going. Enjoy your cider, you two.”
    “Thanks for stopping to say hello,” Jamie said, waving.
    Eric got the car rolling again, but slowly. Jamie probably thought he was a safe driver. He really wasn’t, though he was good at getting out of trouble when he’d crashed into something. I remember one time when he’d told his mother that a cow had jumped out in front of the car and that’s why the grille and fender were damaged. “It happened so fast, Mom, the cow came out of nowhere. It just darted out in front of me, and I couldn’t stop in time.” Now, everyone knows cows don’t exactly
dart
anywhere, but his mother believed him. She used to be a head cheerleader, too, by the way.
    Once they’d pulled out of sight, Jamie turned to me and smiled.
    “You have nice friends, Landon.”
    “Sure I do.” Notice the careful way I phrased my answer.
    After dropping Jamie off—no, I didn’t stay for any cider—I started back to my house, grumbling the whole time. By then Jamie’s story had left me completely, and I could practically hear my friends laughing about me, all the way from Cecil’s Diner.
    See what happens when you’re a nice guy?
    By the next morning everyone at school knew I was walking Jamie home, and this started up a new round of speculation about the two of us. This time it was even worse than before. It was so bad that I had to spend my lunch break in the library just to get away from it all.
    That night, the rehearsal was at the Playhouse. It was the last one before the show opened, and we had a lot to do. Right after school, the boys in drama class had to load all the props in the classroom into the rented truck to take them to the Playhouse. The only problem was that Eddie and I were the only two boys, and he’s not exactly the most coordinated individual in history. We’d be walking through a doorway, carrying one of the heavier items, and his Hooville body would work against him. At every critical moment when I really needed his help to balance the load, he’d stumble over some dust or an insect on the floor, and the weight of the prop would come crashing down on my fingers, pinching them against the doorjamb in the most painful way possible.
    “S-s-sorry,” he’d say. “D-d-did . . . th-th-that hurt?”
    I’d stifle the curses rising in my throat and bite out, “Just don’t do it again.”
    But he couldn’t stop himself from stumbling around any more than he could stop the rain from falling. By the time we’d finished loading and unloading everything, my fingers looked like Toby’s, the roving handyman. And the worst thing was, I didn’t even get a chance to eat before rehearsal started. Moving the props had taken three hours, and we didn’t finish setting them up until a few minutes before everyone else arrived to begin. With everything else that had happened that day, suffice it to say I was in a pretty bad mood.
    I ran through my lines without even thinking about them, and Miss Garber didn’t say the word
marvelous
all night long. She had this concerned look in her eyes afterward, but Jamie simply smiled and told her not to worry, that everything was going to be all right. I knew Jamie was just trying to make things better for me, but when she asked me to walk her home, I told her no. The Playhouse was in