Meyer owns all

Jasper: From high school to the happy hour at the beginning of Gothic

"Com'mere boy," Jasper's uncle said. "You sit here and listen to this."

Jasper didn't know what a "Jelly Roll Morton" was. He didn't much care for the music either, all of the notes spilling into the air and hanging there for a second before they meandered lazily down the garden path and out of the gate and over the fields overgrown with thorny vines and wild flowers.

Jasper was more of a "Down with the Sickness" kind of a guy. But he liked his uncle, who was also named Jasper. "You may call me Jass," his uncle would say to the ladies, tipping his hat.

Jasper refused to believe what aunt Trilby had said about the man. "Ain't got no right to the Georgia home," she'd slurred drunkenly one Christmas in Texas, where most of the family now lived. "Someone like that."

Jass was just genteel, Jasper told himself.

So genteel, in fact, that when Jasper and Edward passed through Georgia visiting colleges, Jass offered them accommodations in the crumbling old plantation house that was "the family manse." Jass put Edward to work right away though. "Got to earn your keep," Jass said, directing Edward to sit at the piano. Jasper didn't recognize the noises coming out of the instrument, but Jass didn't seem to mind, laughing happily at the madcap rhythm. His joy was so infectious that soon Jasper was laughing too.

The next morning, Jasper wandered into the kitchen and heard his uncle's voice outside. Glancing through a window, he saw his uncle talking to a fellow that Jasper didn't recognize. Jasper quickly jerked back from the window. His uncle had been holding the man's hand.

Jass entered the kitchen a few minutes later. "An' I spose you think I should feed you 'fore you go," he lilted pleasantly as he opened the refrigerator. "'Can't be nobody," Jass crooned softly. "Can't even be myself."

"Why not?" Jasper asked.

"Hmm?" his uncle asked.

"Why can't you be yourself?"

Jass cocked his head to the side. "Oh, the feller in the song is a wanted man. He's livin' unda an alias." He started singing again.

Jasper and Edward left a few hours later. It was the last time that Jasper saw his uncle alive.

Jasper wasn't afraid of anything. It wasn't true bravery, because he didn't have to overcome any qualms to go after the things he wanted. He just took them.

Like the time that he totaled his car. As his car spun around—it was all so fast—he didn't even have time to be afraid. He just thought, 'so this is what it's like.'

Hence Jasper didn't understand why other people had so much trouble facing their fears. Screw convention. Screw aunt Trilby.

Jasper was just starting his second semester of college when he received a phone call telling him that his uncle had been beaten to death outside of a bar. Jasper left immediately. He knew that he could talk his teachers into letting him make up the work.

The funeral was hell. Jasper's cousins and uncles and aunts were running all over his uncle's house. People that he knew had never bothered to visit Jass while the man was still alive. And Jasper didn't care for the way that some of them were speculating about how the murder—yes murder, didn't they get that?

Aunt Trilby was the worst. "Just like his unca, I reckon," she whispered spitefully about Jasper at the funeral. She didn't quite say that Jass had gotten what he deserved, but it was understood.

Jasper waited a few weeks before he called Edward to give him the news. Jasper admitted to himself that the delay was partly out of spite. Edward and his uncle had gotten along so well—"famously," as his uncle had put it.

Yet the conversation went exactly the way that Jasper had expected. Edward expressed sympathy alright, but then it was all about him again and his problems. For once, Jasper wished that Edward would realize that he wasn't the center of the universe.

When Edward was arrested, Jasper had flown home to help. Jasper had gone around with Edward to question Felix and Dimitri and all of the other jerks on Edward's so-called suspect list. Just once Jasper wished that Edward could be there for him.

Jasper didn't go so far as to cut ties with Edward, but he didn't make much of an effort after that to keep up the friendship.

Five years later, Jasper was flying to Chicago for a conference and decided to shoot Edward an email. "Stay with me," Edward replied. Jasper was surprised by the offer but pleased.

Esme had looked so mournful the last time Jasper was in Forks. "Edward hasn't been home recently," she'd said when Jasper ran into her by chance at the market. "And he's always so busy."

Jasper acknowledged that he was at least partially responsible for the fact that his friendship with Edward had lapsed. He thought it was time to rectify that.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature conspired to put a spanner in the works. Jasper had planned to swing by the "family manse" before flying to Chicago, just to make sure that the crumbling of that old edifice had been kept to a minimum, "southern gothic" not yet having descended into "unlivable." But the flight to Georgia was cancelled because of weather, so he flew directly to Chicago, arriving two days early. He left a voicemail for Edward, who had already warned Jasper that he would be pretty busy working. Jasper didn't think that Edward would mind that he was arriving early.

Jasper took a cab to Edward's apartment and was fortunate to find Edward's roommate at home. The roommate let Jasper into the apartment and directed him towards Edward's room, where he said that Edward had a sofa for Jasper to sleep on. And after warning Jasper that he didn't know when Edward was going to be home, the roommate left.

So Jasper was all alone in the apartment when he opened the door to Edward's room.

'No,' Jasper thought. This couldn't be right.

The walls were literally covered with notes and maps and lists. Photos of the cabin and Tanya and Edward's old car.

Jasper had an urge to tear it all down. He hadn't any right to do so—but this wasn't normal. If Edward would just listen to Jasper—

But no. No one ever listened to Jasper.

"You're early," Edward gasped raggedly behind Jasper, clearly having rushed up to the apartment.

Jasper gazed at his old friend, recognizing the general outlines of the figure before him, the same regular features, but not the wild glint in the eye, the obvious anxiety in the twitching limbs.

"What is this?" Jasper asked.

Edward shook his head, still trying to catch his breath. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're kidding me."

"You're early. I was going to take it all down."

"So you know it's messed up," Jasper confirmed.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get over it," Jasper said. It was as easy as that.

"I can't."

Jasper shook his head but he didn't walk out.

They did a better job of keeping up their friendship after that, and a few years later, when Jasper learned that he was working at the same university as Izzy, his first thought was to tell Edward.

His second thought was to keep his mouth shut. Jasper didn't want to do anything that might encourage Edward to remember anything associated with Tanya.

Jasper couldn't help being surprised though, by how much Izzy seemed to have changed. It was evidence, Jasper decided, that people could do whatever they wanted.

What he didn't understand, was why Izzy wanted nothing to do with him. Everyone liked Jasper. He was a charmer, just like his uncle. He didn't get it.

It was Jasper's dismay over Izzy's obvious distaste for him, more than anything else, that prompted him to mention her to Edward. Jasper knew that he should just be happy that Edward was condescending to come out for a beer. But he could tell that Edward didn't want to be there. Jasper had already tried talking baseball and football. He'd asked about Edward's family and work. He'd gotten nothing but one word answers and a shrug or two in return.

Jasper sighed. "Guess who I'm working with."