Free A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu , Eric?
    “It was Landon’s idea?” she asked,furrowing her brow. She looked at me, and I could tell she was still mulling it over.
    But Eric wasn’t about to let me off the hook that easy. Now that he had me flopping on the deck, the only thing left to do was gut me. “You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you, Landon?” he said. “Helping the orphans, I mean.”
    It wasn’t exactly something you could answer no to, was it?
    “I reckon so,” I said under my breath, staring at my best friend. Eric, despite the remedial classes he was in, would have been one hell of a chess player.
    “Good, then, it’s all settled. That’s if it’s okay with you, Jamie.” His smile was so sweet, it could have flavored half the RC cola in the county.
    “Well . . . yes, I suppose I’ll have to talk to Miss Garber and the director of the orphanage, but if they say it’s okay, I think it would be a fine idea.”
    And the thing was , you could tell she was really happy about it.
    Checkmate.
    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.

Chapter 6

     
    T he first thing we did was talk to Miss Garber about our plans for the orphans, and she thought it was a marvelous idea. That was her favorite word, by the way— marvelous —after she’d greeted you with “ Hellooooo .” On Monday, when she realized that I knew all my lines, she said, “Marvelous!” and for the next two hours whenever I’d finish up a scene, she’d say it again. By the end of the rehearsal, I’d heard it about four zillion times.
    But Miss Garber actually went our idea one better. She told the class what we were doing, and she asked if other members of the cast would be willing to do their parts as well, sothat the orphans could really enjoy the whole thing. The way she asked meant that they really didn’t have a choice, and she looked around the class, waiting for someone to nod so she could make it official. No one moved a muscle, except for Eddie. Somehow he’d inhaled a bug up his nose at that exact moment, and he sneezed violently. The bug flew out his nose, shot across his desk, and landed on the floor right by Norma Jean’s leg. She jumped out of her chair and screamed out loud, and the people on either side of her shouted, “ Eww . . . gross!” The rest of the class started looking around and craning their necks, trying to see what happened, and for the next ten seconds there was total pandemonium in the classroom. For Miss Garber, that was as good of an answer as she needed.
    “Marvelous,” she said, closing the discussion.
    Jamie, meanwhile, was getting really excited about performing for the orphans. During a break in rehearsals she pulled me aside and thanked me for thinking of them. “There’s no way you would know,” she said almost conspiratorially, “but I’ve been wondering what to do for the orphanage this year. I’ve been praying about it for months now because I want this Christmas to be the most special one of all.”
    “Why is this Christmas so important?” I asked her, and she smiled patiently, as if I’d asked a question that didn’t really matter.
    “It just is,” she said simply.
    The next step was to talk it over with Mr. Jenkins, the director of the orphanage. Now I’d never met Mr. Jenkins before, being that the orphanage was in
Morehead
City
, which was across the bridge from Beaufort, and I’d never had any reason to go there. When Jamie surprised me with the news the following day that we’d be meeting him later that evening, I was sort of worried that I wasn’t dressed nice enough. I know it was an orphanage, but a guy wants to