A Walk to Remember

by Nicholas Sparks

There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever I can. This happens more often than I let on.

My name is Landon Carter, and I’m seventeen years old. This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out. First you will smile, and then you will cry— don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Life, I’ve learned, is never fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.

She wasn’t bad looking, I told myself, and she’s really sweet. She’d probably say yes, I thought. . . . I closed the yearbook. Jamie Sullivan? Hegbert’s daughter? No way. Absolutely not. My friends would roast me alive. But compared with dating your mother or cleaning up puke or even, God forbid . . . Carey Dennison?

One time my friends and I decided to learn what we could about the Preston family, and we went to the library to find out if anything had been written about them. I mean, if you’re going to sit on someone’s tombstone, you might as well know something about them, right?

The next day I spent fourteen hours memorizing my lines, cursing my friends, and wondering how my life had spun so out of control. My senior year certainly wasn’t turning out the way I thought it would when it began, but if I had to perform for a bunch of orphans, I certainly didn’t want to look like an idiot.

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.

Even when I was mean to her face and said the most spiteful things, she could find some reason to thank me. She was just that kind of girl, and I think I actually hated her for it. Or rather, I think, I hated myself.

“You’re beautiful,” I finally said to her, and I think everyone in the whole auditorium, from the blue-haired ladies in front to my friends in the back row, knew that I actually meant it. I’d nailed that line for the very first time.

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.

all I can remember about the moment is that when our lips first touched, I knew the memory would last forever.

I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.

There was something nice when I kissed her, something gentle and right, and that was enough for me. The more I did it, the more I realized that Jamie had been misunderstood her entire life, not only by me, but by everyone.

Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.

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

this is okay. I smile slightly, looking toward the sky, knowing there’s one thing I still haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.