A Walk to Remember

by Nicholas Sparks

Jamie helped everyone—she was one of those equal opportunity saints.

“You have to promise that you won’t fall in love with me.”

She could twist you every way but normal, I’d come to learn.

The “right thing,” I realized, wasn’t so bad after all.

She smiled at me and I smiled at her and all I could do was wonder how I’d ever fallen in love with a girl like Jamie Sullivan.

“I know the Lord has a plan for us all, but sometimes, I just don’t understand what the message can be. Does that ever happen to you?”

There was something nice when I kissed her, something gentle and right, and that was enough for me.

The truth is always the truth, and I’d just promised her that I would never lie again.

“I’m frightened all the time.” “Then why don’t you act like it?” “I do. I just do it in private.” “Because you don’t trust me?” “No,” she said, “because I know you’re frightened, too.”

“What’s your heart telling you to do?” “I don’t know.” “Maybe,” she said gently, “you’re trying too hard to hear it.”

“When I told you that I prayed for you,” she finally said to me, “what did you think I was talking about?”

It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.