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A Walk to Remember
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NICHOLAS
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SPARKS
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Prologue
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When I was seventeen, my life changed forever.
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I know that there are people who wonder about me when I
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say this. They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom
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what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to
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explain. Because I've lived here for most of my life, I don't
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feel that I have to unless it's on my terms, and that would
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take more time than most people are willing to give me. My
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story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't
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be packaged into something neat and simple that people would
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immediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years,
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the people still living here who knew me that year accept my
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lack of explanation without question. My story in some ways
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is their story because it was something that all of us lived
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through.
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It was I, however, who was closest to it. I'm fifty-seven
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years old, but even now I can remember everything from that
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year, down to the smallest details. I relive that year often
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in my mind, bringing it back to life, and I realize that when
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I do, I always feel a strange combination of sadness and joy.
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There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and
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take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I
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did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as
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they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever
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I can. This happens more often than I let on.
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It is April 12, in the last year before the millennium,
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and as I leave my house, I glance around. The sky is overcast
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and gray, but as I move down the street, I notice that the
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dogwoods and azaleas are blooming. I zip my jacket just a
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little. The temperature is cool, though I know it's only a
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matter of weeks before it will settle in to something
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comfortable and the gray skies give way to the kind of days
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that make North Carolina one of the most beautiful places in
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the world. With a sigh, I feel it all coming back to me. I
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close my eyes and the years begin to move in reverse, slowly
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ticking backward, like the hands of a clock rotating in the
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wrong direction. As if through someone else's eyes, I watch
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myself grow younger; I see my hair changing from gray to
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brown, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begin to smooth, my
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arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons I've learned with age grow
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dimmer, and my innocence returns as that eventful year
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approaches.
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Then, like me, the world begins to change: roads narrow
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and some become gravel, suburban sprawl has been replaced
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with farmland, downtown streets teem with people, looking in
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windows as they pass Sweeney's bakery and Palka's meat shop.
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Men wear hats, women wear dresses. At the courthouse up the
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street, the bell tower rings. . . .
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I open my eyes and pause. I am standing outside the
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Baptist church, and when I stare at the gable, I know exactly
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who I am. My name is Landon Carter, and I'm seventeen years
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old.
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This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out.
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First you will smile, and then you will cry-don't say you
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haven't been warned.
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Chapter 1
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In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the
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coast near Morehead City, was a place like many other small
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southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity
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rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail
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made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked
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around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees
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draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever
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they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not,
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and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to
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the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the
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Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of
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life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal
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Waterway. Only three channels came in on the television,
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though television was never important to those of us who grew
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up there. Instead our lives were centered around the
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churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits
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alone. They went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian
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Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church of
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Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist
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churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most
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popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches
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on practically every corner of town, though each considered
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itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of
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every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists,
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Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent
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Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.
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Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the
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Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to
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know-in conjunction with the local high school. Every year
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they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort
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Playhouse, which was actually a play that had been written by
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Hegbert Sullivan, a minister who'd been with the church since
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Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old, but
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he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy's
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skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and
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translucent-kids would swear they actually saw the blood
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flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those
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bunnies you see in pet stores around Easter.
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Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel,
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because he didn't want to keep on performing that old Charles
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Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. In his mind Scrooge was a
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