“See this?” I ask.
He peers over to get a good look at the bird tattoo in the binder and I tell him about where it came from.
“That’s crazy,” Jasper says. “It’s like you guys were, like, destined to come here and find this.”
“I completely agree,” Alexa says from the doorway, her journal and pen in hand.
“Alexa’s really into fate,” I say.
Jasper says, “Well, yeah. If this isn’t fate then what is, right?”
Jasper explains that he’s only technically worked here for a couple years but that he grew up in the shop because his older brother is also a tattoo artist there.
“I started apprenticing when I was fourteen,” he says. “They made me practice on myself for a while and then they let me practice on them and then after like a million years I started to get my own customers.” He looks down at the binder and strikes The Thinker pose, shoulders hunched, chin on fist and says, “Well, this is one of the oldest binders—way before my time. This is from, like, the early nineties. All I can tell is that it’s on a back, and it’s a dude’s back. My brother might know something about it. I’ll try to reach him, but he’s at a convention right now. And if he doesn’t know then Spider’ll definitely know. He’s the owner.”
He keys my number into his phone and promises a speedy follow-up, and we’ve said good-bye and are almost out the door to go for lunch, when I say, “Hey, want to come eat with us?”
His whole face lights up when I say it and he jumps off the stool he was sitting on. He rips a light-colored page from a magazine.
“Got something to write with?”
I grab a Sharpie from my messenger bag and he writes Be back in like an hour or something and sticks it on the window with black tape.
We walk a few blocks to a burger stand with outdoor benches, place our orders, and pay far less than we should because Jasper knows the girl working.
“Are you sure?” I ask her as I hand over my share of cash.
“They make me wear this hideous hat,” she says. “So yeah, I’m sure.”
Bev and Jasper and I claim a bench while Alexa and Meg wait for our food to be ready.
Beat-up trucks and old American cars pass on the main road as we wait in the sun. Jasper takes off his hat, runs his hand over his shaggy hair, replaces the cap. Bev’s phone vibrates. A text appears on the screen: SWING BY BEFORE U LEAVE. She deletes the text, then finds a name in her contacts and deletes it. I don’t even try to hide the fact that I’m watching her do all of this.
“What’s the point of getting someone’s number if you’re just going to erase it the next day?”
“It’s awkward not to.”
“And it’s not awkward to ignore him?”
She shrugs. Jasper’s leg bounces up and down, shakes the bench. He looks into the distance as if something has caught his attention.
Bev says, “It’s what I always do. It’s better for everyone this way.”
“You mean it’s better for you.”
Bev sighs like I’m a little kid she has to deal with, and slips her phone into her bag.
“So, Jasper,” she says, “do you like living here?”
“No,” he says. “You don’t have to be polite.”
Bev smiles her great smile. Her dimple, her crooked tooth.
“There has to be something good about it,” she says.
“Sure. That doesn’t make it a good place, though.”
Jasper begins listing the many reasons to dislike his hometown, and soon the girls walk over with trays of burgers and fries. Meg sets a basket of fries in front of me. I squeeze ketchup onto the white paper.
I put a fry into my mouth, look up to see Jasper eyeing me.
“Vegetarian?”
I nod.
“You like onions?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
“Tomatoes?”
“Yeah.”
He slides off the bench and returns a few minutes later with a grilled cheese on a hamburger bun. The sandwich has some kind of sauce and lettuce and tomatoes and onions. It isn’t bad.
“A girl I used to date was a vegetarian. At least she pretended to be, but then if something looked really good she’d eat it anyway. Like, she would make me take her to certain places because they served salads and then she would take all these little bites of my burger. Like small bites don’t count or something. I was like, Newsflash: a little bit of a cow is still a cow. She was a drag.”
“Sounds like it,” Meg says.
Jasper nods. Then, a minute later, he says, “Well, not a total drag. She’s a cool girl. It was just that one thing that kind of got under my skin, you know?”
We eat in the sun, telling Jasper about our plans.
“So where are you going?” he asks. “And then where? What’s it like there?” And the longer we talk the clearer it becomes that Jasper has never been anywhere except Los Angeles one time for a tattoo convention when he was a kid.
“What you got going on in San Francisco?” he asks us. “I mean, other than the band.”
“We just graduated,” I say. “All of us but Alexa.”
Alexa smiles. “I get to come along because I’m the drummer. And we’re moving my sister into the dorms in Portland.”
Jasper looks from Meg to Bev, confused, and then we all laugh because we forget sometimes, that people don’t understand how Meg and Alexa can be sisters and look so little alike.