But Jamie didn’t stop there. Because of all her Bible reading, or maybe because of Hegbert’s influence, Jamie believed it was important to help others, and helping others is exactly what she did. I knew she volunteered at the orphanage in Morehead City, but for her that simply wasn’t enough. She was always in charge of one fund-raiser or another, helping everyone from the Boy Scouts to the Indian Princesses, and I know that when she was fourteen, she spent part of her summer painting the outside of an elderly neighbor’s house. Jamie was the kind of girl who would pull weeds in someone’s garden without being asked or stop traffic to help little kids cross the road. She’d save her allowance to buy a new basketball for the orphans, or she’d turn around and drop the money into the church basket on Sunday. She was, in other words, the kind of girl who made the rest of us look bad, and whenever she glanced my way, I couldn’t help but feel guilty, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever came across a wounded animal, for instance, she’d try to help it, too. Opossums, squirrels, dogs, cats, frogs . . . it didn’t matter to her. Dr. Rawlings, the vet, knew her by sight, and he’d shake his head whenever he saw her walking up to the door carrying a cardboard box with yet another critter inside. He’d take off his eyeglasses and wipe them with his handkerchief while Jamie explained how she’d found the poor creature and what had happened to it. “He was hit by a car, Dr. Rawlings. I think it was in the Lord’s plan to have me find him and try to save him. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
With Jamie, everything was in the Lord’s plan. That was another thing. She always mentioned the Lord’s plan whenever you talked to her, no matter what the subject. The baseball game’s rained out? Must be the Lord’s plan to prevent something worse from happening. A surprise trigonometry quiz that everyone in class fails? Must be in the Lord’s plan to give us challenges. Anyway, you get the picture.
Then, of course, there was the whole Hegbert situation, and this didn’t help her at all. Being the minister’s daughter couldn’t have been easy, but she made it seem as if it were the most natural thing in the world and that she was lucky to have been blessed in that way. That’s how she used to say it, too. “I’ve been so blessed to have a father like mine.” Whenever she said it, all we could do was shake our heads and wonder what planet she actually came from.
Despite all these other strikes, though, the one thing that really drove me crazy about her was the fact that she was always so damn cheerful, no matter what was happening around her. I swear, that girl never said a bad thing about anything or anyone, even to those of us who weren’t that nice to her. She would hum to herself as she walked down the street, she would wave to strangers driving by in their cars. Sometimes ladies would come running out of their house if they saw her walking by, offering her pumpkin bread if they’d been baking all day or lemonade if the sun was high in the sky. It seemed as if every adult in town adored her. “She’s such a nice young lady,” they’d say whenever Jamie’s name came up. “The world would be a better place if there were more people like her.”
But my friends and I didn’t quite see it that way. In our minds, one Jamie Sullivan was plenty.
I was thinking about all this while Jamie stood in front of us on the first day of drama class, and I admit that I wasn’t much interested in seeing her. But strangely, when Jamie turned to face us, I kind of got a shock, like I was sitting on a loose wire or something. She wore a plaid skirt with a white blouse under the same brown cardigan sweater I’d seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her chest that the sweater couldn’t hide that I swore hadn’t been there just three months earlier. She’d never worn makeup and she still didn’t, but she had a tan, probably from Bible school, and for the first time she looked—well, almost pretty. Of course, I dismissed that thought right away, but as she looked around the room, she stopped and smiled right at me, obviously glad to see that I was in the class. It wasn’t until later that I would learn the reason why.
Chapter 2
After high school I planned to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My father wanted me to go to Harvard or Princeton like some of the sons of other congressmen did, but with my grades it wasn’t possible. Not that I was a bad student. I just didn’t focus on my studies, and my grades weren’t exactly up to snuff for the Ivy Leagues. By my senior year it was pretty much touch and go whether I’d even get accepted at UNC, and this was my father’s alma mater, a place where he could pull some strings. During one of his few weekends home, my father came up with the plan to put me over the top. I’d just finished my first week of school and we were sitting down for dinner. He was home for three days on account of Labor Day weekend.
“I think you should run for student body president,” he said. “You’ll be graduating in June, and I think it would look good on your record. Your mother thinks so, too, by the way.”
My mother nodded as she chewed a mouthful of peas. She didn’t speak much when my father had the floor, though she winked at me. Sometimes I think my mother liked to see me squirm, even though she was sweet.
“I don’t think I’d have a chance at winning,” I said. Though I was probably the richest kid in school, I was by no means the most popular. That honor belonged to Eric Hunter, my best friend. He could throw a baseball at almost ninety miles an hour, and he’d led the football team to back-to-back state titles as the star quarterback. He was a stud. Even his name sounded cool.