YAY CHAPTER TWO! Uhm… I have never gotten a tattoo so sorry if I do anything wrong. - Alice xoxo

Chapter Two:

The bell on the door rung as I pushed it open and stepped into the warm building. Goth-rock music was playing from and unseen stereo. Flyleaf's All Around Me.

"Can I help you?" The blonde guy at the counter asked.

I have never done this before, so I wasn't exactly sure how to ask. "Yeah, I would like to get a tattoo," I said as I walked closer to the counter.

"Sorry, you need a parents consent if you are under the age of 18," he said. Before going back to the book he was reading.

"I am 18," I said as I pulled my student I.D. card out of my back pocket and showed it to him.

"Alright," he said. "What do you want? I mean, what do you want the tattoo to be of?"

I showed him the inside of my wrist. "I want it to say 'why?'"

"Why?" He asked.

"That's right. Why," I answered. He smiled

"No, I mean why do you want it to say why?"

"Oh," I said, sighing. "It's a long story."

The guy pulled some papers from the desk and set them on the counter. "Fill these out and then you can tell me about it, ok?"

I filled the paper out quickly. It was easier than I thought, it just asked age, address, ect… They guy looked over them when I was finished.

"Ok, Alice," he said, "I'm Jasper. Follow me." Jasper lead me into a small room in the back and set me down in a tattoo chair. "So you just want it to say 'why?' in black ink?" He asked as he got a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball.

"Yeah," I answered. Japer wetted the cotton ball with the alcohol and rubbed it the inside of my left wrist to clean it off, and then he got the things ready for the tattoo itself. Then it was time. No turning back now, Alice, I thought. Jasper put some ointment over my wrist before beginning to slid the needle over my skin.

It didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would. It was more annoying then painful, actually. I've had emotional pain ten times worse.

"So," Jasper said, "what made you decide that you wanted a tattoo?"

"Honestly, I don't know," I said, "it was kinda a spur of the moment thing. I was on my way to school and I was…crying… and asking myself the same question I've been asking myself for my whole life: why? And then I just ended up here."

"Why?" He asked, "I mean, why where you asking yourself that?"

I knew this guy who I have only known for twenty minutes was going to see me cry if I told him this story, but at that point I really didn't care. I sighed. "I think it started on my first day of second grade. I had just moved up here from Mississippi a few weeks before, and I was walking home from school. My parents thought that this was a nice, quiet place to live. Some guy pulled me off the sidewalk and took me to this like shed place where I was locked in for three days.

"About a year after that, my dad left my mom, and she says that fucking annoying cliché 'we just don't love each other anymore' but I'm pretty sure my dad was sleeping with someone else." The flesh under my eyes where getting a little wet. If Jasper noticed, he didn't say anything.

"My mom met and alcoholic and they got married and began to hate me. They punished me for the most random reasons. My dad knew what they where doing so he tried to get custody of me, and right before he was granted, he was murdered."

Jasper looked up at me and saw that I was crying. "Fuck my life," I mouthed before he said, "I'm so sorry, Alice. Really, I am."

"It's ok," I said.

Then, the needle stopped dragging along my skin. "I'm finished," he said, and then I looked at my skin. It was exactly like I had pictured it. The three simple letters spelling out the word that described my life. Why?

"Thank you. So much," I said. I was still crying from the story I had told Jasper. Either that or I was so happy with the tattoo.

"You really like it?" He asked as he put a bandage over it. I nodded. "Good. You have to leave the bandage over it for at least one day, because technically, it is an open wound. Don't expose it to direct sunlight.

"And some people think that you can't take a shower for like two weeks. That's freaking nasty. It's ok to get it wet." I smiled when he said that. "Come back if you have any more questions," he continued. I nodded, and then we went back to the front of the store so I could pay.

I didn't think about that part until just now, but luckily, I had exactly the right amount of money with me. And that was all the money I owned.

"Thank you so much, Jasper," I said just before leaving. I pushed the door open.

"Alice?" He said before I left. I turned around. "Come back if you need anything. I'll be here."

"Ok. Thank you again."