The next day, Sunday, I was in my room, working on my application to UNC. In addition to the transcripts from my high school and other personal information, they required five essays of the usual type. If you could meet one person in history, who would that person be and why? Name the most significant influence in your life and why you feel that way. What do you look for in a role model and why? The essay questions were fairly predictable—our English teacher had told us what to expect—and I’d already worked on a couple of variations in class as homework.
English was probably my best subject. I’d never received anything lower than an A since I first started school, and I was glad the emphasis for the application process was on writing. If it had been on math, I might have been in trouble, especially if it included those algebra questions that talked about the two trains leaving an hour apart, traveling in opposite directions at forty miles an hour, etc. It wasn’t that I was bad in math—I usually pulled at least a C—but it didn’t come naturally to me, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I was writing one of my essays when the phone rang. The only phone we had was located in the kitchen, and I had to run downstairs to grab the receiver. I was breathing so loudly that I couldn’t make out the voice too well, though it sounded like Angela. I immediately smiled to myself. Even though she’d been sick all over the place and I’d had to clean it up, she was actually pretty fun to be around most of the time. And her dress really had been something, at least for the first hour. I figured she was probably calling to thank me or even to get together for a barbecue sandwich and hushpuppies or something.
“Landon?”
“Oh, hey,” I said, playing it cool, “what’s going on?”
There was a short pause on the other end.
“How are you?”
It was then that I suddenly realized I wasn’t speaking to Angela. Instead it was Jamie, and I almost dropped the phone. I can’t say that I was happy about hearing from her, and for a second I wondered who had given her my phone number before I realized it was probably in the church records.
“Landon?”
“I’m fine,” I finally blurted out, still in shock.
“Are you busy?” she asked.
“Sort of.”
“Oh . . . I see . . . ,”she said, trailing off. She paused again.
“Why are you calling me?” I asked.
It took her a few seconds to get the words out.
“Well . . . I just wanted to know if you wouldn’t mind coming by a little later this afternoon.”
“Coming by?”
“Yes. To my house.”
“Your house?” I didn’t even try to disguise the growing surprise in my voice. Jamie ignored it and went on.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Can’t you just tell me over the phone?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Well, I’m working on my college application essays all afternoon,” I said, trying to get out of it.
“Oh . . . well . . . like I said, it’s important, but I suppose I can talk to you Monday at school. . . .”
With that, I suddenly realized that she wasn’t going to let me off the hook and that we’d end up talking one way or the other. My brain suddenly clicked through the scenarios as I tried to figure out which one I should do—talk to her where my friends would see us or talk at her house. Though neither option was particularly good, there was something in the back of my mind, reminding me that she’d helped me out when I’d really needed it, and the least I could do was to listen to what she had to say. I may be irresponsible, but I’m a nice irresponsible, if I do say so myself.
Of course, that didn’t mean everyone else had to know about it.
“No,” I said, “today is fine. . . .”
We arranged to meet at five o’clock, and the rest of the afternoon ticked by slowly, like the drips from Chinese water torture. I left my house twenty minutes early, so I’d have plenty of time to get there. My house was located near the waterfront in the historic part of town, just a few doors down from where Blackbeard used to live, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. Jamie lived on the other side of town, across the railroad tracks, so it would take me about that long to get there.
It was November, and the temperature was finally cooling down. One thing I really liked about Beaufort was the fact that the springs and falls lasted practically forever. It might get hot in the summer or snow once every six years, and there might be a cold spell that lasted a week or so in January, but for the most part all you needed was a light jacket to make it through the winter. Today was one of those perfect days—mid-seventies without a cloud in the sky.
I made it to Jamie’s house right on time and knocked on her door. Jamie answered it, and a quick peek inside revealed that Hegbert wasn’t around. It wasn’t quite warm enough for sweet tea or lemonade, and we sat in the chairs on the porch again, without anything to drink. The sun was beginning to lower itself in the sky, and there wasn’t anyone on the street. This time I didn’t have to move my chair. It hadn’t been moved since the last time I’d been there.
“Thank you for coming, Landon,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but I appreciate your taking the time to do this.”
“So, what’s so important?” I said, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Jamie, for the first time since I’d known her, actually looked nervous as she sat with me. She kept bringing her hands together and pulling them apart.
“I wanted to ask you a favor,” she said seriously.
“A favor?”
She nodded.
At first I thought she was going to ask me to help her decorate the church, like she’d mentioned at homecoming, or maybe she needed me to use my mother’s car to bring some stuff to the orphans. Jamie didn’t have her license, and Hegbert needed their car anyway, being that there was always a funeral or something he had to go to. But it still took a few seconds for her to get the words out.
She sighed, her hands coming together again.
“I’d like to ask you if you wouldn’t mind playing Tom Thornton in the school play,” she said.
Tom Thornton, like I said before, was the man in search of the music box for his daughter, the one who meets the angel. Except for the angel, it was far and away the most important role.