“You’ll see,” Kellen said, pulling up to a white building with a sign that said “Inkheart Tattoo” in a decorative black script. I was surprised by the outside of the building. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting – some dilapidated shack next to a bar and strip club maybe – but Inkheart wasn’t crumbling or molding and there were no old guys puking on the front lawn. If I didn’t know it was a tattoo shop I’d think it could be anything.
We set our bikes against the building and walked in. My vision was instantly hit with color. I blinked, adjusting my eyes. In contrast to the plain white walls outside, every inch of every wall inside was decked out in drawings and artwork. It was like walking into the inside of a gumball machine, a really artistic gumball machine. There was a desk in the middle of the shop and three doors ran along both of the two side walls. I could see that the doors led into smaller rooms. Some of the rooms were quiet and others had music playing, an electric buzzing sound accompanying the noise. Signs hung down from the tops of the doors. The one closest to my right said “Monkey.”
“Hey, Kellen.”
I looked over as a girl with blue hair and more facial piercings than I’d ever seen in my life walked out of a back room that had strings of beads separating it from the rest of the shop. She was really pretty and had a sleeve of rose tattoos that traveled up her arm. More roses covered the outside of her leg. The girl sat down behind the desk in the middle of the shop and began typing something into a computer.
“Hey,” Kellen said. To me he added, “That’s Charlotte. She’s the piercer.”
I nodded. I thought Charlotte chose the right career path.
Charlotte the piercer finished typing at the computer and then spun in her chair.
“Yo, Roscoe!” she called. “Kellen’s here.”
I heard someone yell back something in Spanish and then a guy was skateboarding out of the last door on the left. He was shorter than Kellen, but looked like he was probably a few years older. From across the room he’d looked like he had dark hair, but as he got closer I saw that tattoos covered his head, which was actually bald. Tattoos covered the rest of his body as well, his olive skin showing through small patches here and there.
“Hey, man, what’s up,” Roscoe said, smiling widely. He had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. Roscoe hopped off his skateboard and he and Kellen did that handshake-hug thing that guys liked to do. “And who’s this gorgeous girl?” he asked as soon as the bromance broke apart. “She’s way too pretty to be with you.”
Standing this close to him I could see that Roscoe had “Forever” tattooed above one eyebrow and “Young” tattooed above the other. I pictured Roscoe in sixty years skateboarding around a retirement home, still somehow forever young.
“This is my girlfriend, Carson,” Kellen said. He smiled and I felt butterflies attack my stomach. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him say “my girlfriend, Carson” out loud before. I liked the sound of it.
“Hi,” I said.
Roscoe shook his head. “How did this loser get you to be his girlfriend?” he asked jokingly, shoving Kellen’s arm.
“He bribed me with donuts.”
Roscoe laughed. “I like her.” He hopped back on his skateboard and wheeled around the desk. As he went by he tossed a strand of Charlotte the piercer’s hair. She threw a pen at him. “So, are we doing this or what?” he asked Kellen.
Kellen held up the brown bag and tossed it to Roscoe. Roscoe caught it mid-skate and pulled out a greasy box.
“Wait,” I said. “Are those..?”
“Chicken nuggets,” Kellen said. He smirked. “What did you think was in the bag?”
I knew my face was turning red, but Roscoe saved me from answering.
“Bro, I am taking time out of my busy schedule to give you a beautiful tattoo of a leaf and you couldn’t spring for the ten-piece?”
“He pays you in chicken nuggets?” I asked, laughing. “Why?”
Roscoe shrugged. “I like chicken nuggets,” he said. He skateboarded through the beads and into the back room. Two minutes later he zoomed back into the lobby, chicken nugget-less. “Let’s get this party started!” he said, heading towards his room. “Love you, Charlotte,” he added as he passed her at the desk.
“Get a life,” she said, not even bothering to look up.
When we walked into Roscoe’s room he said, “She’ll go out with me one day.”
“Never gonna happen,” I heard Charlotte the Piercer call from the desk. I laughed.
“Hey, now, chica, I liked you a few minutes ago,” Roscoe said. “Don’t ruin it now.”
Kellen sat down in a chair that looked kind of like the ones in a dentist’s office and Roscoe sat on a stool with wheels on the bottom. He set a little cap onto a piece of plastic wrap and opened a drawer. “So what color will it be this time?” he asked.
Kellen looked down at his tattoo and then up at me. His lip perked up at the side. “Blue.”
“Blue it is,” Roscoe said, pouring blue ink into the little cap. “And take the hat off,” he added, reaching over. “You’re indoors, have some manners.”
Kellen swatted his hand away. “You were just skateboarding in the lobby,” he said.
“So?”
“So, you’re indoors. Have some manners.”
“Bro, this is my home. I can do whatever I want in my home,” Roscoe said before grinning. “Unless my boss is around. Then the wheels gotta go.”
Roscoe pulled on a pair of gloves and messed around with his tattoo machine. Before I knew it he was turning it on and that buzzing noise that I heard before was filling the room. “Here we go,” he said.
“One more month on this beautiful planet,” Kellen said as the needle touched his skin.
Roscoe rolled his eyes. “He says that every time.”
When we left the tattoo shop twenty minutes later Kellen had a small piece of plastic wrap taped over his new leaf.
“So how can you work at a preschool with all those tattoos?” I asked as we rode down the street. “Is it because your mom owns the place?”
Kellen looked over at me, faking hurt.
“How dare you imply something like that,” he said dramatically. “My tattoos have no effect on my ability to keep two-year-olds from throwing macaroni and cheese at each other.” We rounded the corner and he looked over at me and winked. “And also, my mom owns the place.”
We rode a little farther before Kellen said, “Really, though, the kids love them. When I got my first tattoo one of the little girls was tugging at my shirt and my collar came down. I didn’t even think about it, but then one of the boys was asking me what was on my skin. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say – there’s not really a protocol for telling toddlers about tattoos – so I just told him it was a forever word.”
“What about when you got the tree?”
“That was a forever mark,” Kellen said, grinning. “After that I was coming in with a new one all the time and before long my arms were covered. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. One of the four-year-olds was convinced I had magic powers. The two-year-olds just decided I had coloring books on my arms. One day instead of painting on paper I let them paint on my arms. It was great until one of them misaimed and gave me an earful of green paint.”
I laughed. I used to think of toddlers as stinky little aliens that did nothing but cry, put food into everything but their mouths, and pee everywhere but in the toilet. But now the little aliens sounded kind of adorable. And they’d given Lena that really cool paint job on her jeans.
“So when can I come with you to volunteer at the preschool?”
Kellen smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 38
Girl Overboard
Going outside of your box
And leaving your comfort zone
Is kind of like being thrown to the sharks
Small, demanding sharks
Feeling lost at sea in this world of
&n
bsp; Loud screams
Bright colors
Sticky fingers
Where is the captain of this ship?
I didn’t expect so much screaming.
“I wan un!”
“No ‘ee fahst!”
The little alien children circled me like vultures and all I could do was stand there all helpless with the bag of animal crackers and try to pass them out as the little gremlins pulled on my shirt and grabbed onto my leg. One lovely darling had already chucked a miniature toy giraffe at my face. That little ray of sunshine got a cracker that was missing its head.
“Mr. Kel!”
I looked up and saw Kellen stroll into the room.
“Woah,” he said, grinning. “Looks like you could use some backup.”
I was too grateful for his presence to be annoyed by the fact that he’d left me here alone with the little Tasmanian devils during snack time.
“Where were you?” I asked as Kellen took the bag from me and ran to the reading carpet with it. The toddlers all waddled after him, pounding their little fists against his legs.
“Mr. Kel, I wan a ion!” one of them cried.
“A lion?” he asked. He pulled a cracker out of the bag. “What does a lion say, Timmy?”
A little boy with white-blonde hair put his hands up and scrunched his face, his baby teeth on full display. “Garrrrrrrrr!” he cried.
“That’s right, little man,” Kellen said, handing Timmy the lion. He looked up at me. “I was checking to see how dinner was coming along.”
“Dinner?” I asked, horrified. “You mean there’s more food?”
Kellen laughed. “Well they can’t live off of animal crackers.” He handed a cracker to a little girl with orange pigtails and a freckled face who insisted she wanted an “ephant.” “We’re having hotdogs today.”
“Lovely,” I said. pictured the room, crazy and loud with wieners flying in all directions. It was going to be like a warzone in there.
When Kellen had told me that he arranged for us to come to the preschool today he’d said it was because this afternoon would be easy in the toddler room since four of the kids get picked up early on Thursdays. I was expecting to walk into a room of sleeping, angelic children but apparently we arrived just in time for the feeding frenzy at the zoo. Five minutes after we’d gotten there Kellen had handed me a bag of animal crackers.
“This should hold them over until I get back,” he’d said.
“You’re leaving me here?” I’d asked, horrified.
“I’ll be back in two minutes.”
Those two minutes had felt like two centuries.
“Alright,” the teacher said as she finally came out of the bathroom. She’d been parading kids in and out of there for the past half hour. “Who’s ready to hear a story?”
A chorus of “meeeeee” spread across the crowd of munchkins.
“Okay,” the teacher said, grabbing a book and sitting down with the kids. “Kyle do not crawl over Danny. He is not a carpet. Liza be gentle with Katy. It’s not nice to pull her hair.”
This woman had the patience of a saint.
“Kellen?” the teacher said as Kellen stood up and walked over to me. “Would you and Carson mind getting the table ready while I read to the children?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you!” the teacher said, smiling at me brightly.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many cups of coffee she had to drink in the morning to get herself back to being so perky after crying herself to sleep at night, because that was the only way I’d be able to get through a job like that.
Kellen led me out of the room and over to a counter with a metal contraption pulled down over a window. He lifted the contraption up like it was a garage door, revealing a kitchen complete with a refrigerator, stoves, and his mom, who was bustling around at warp speed. She was putting plates here and food there and she appeared to be in some kind of chaotic whirlwind. At first I thought she was flustered, but then I realized that her face was flushed in determination and there was nothing chaotic about her movements. She had a system and she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Your mom cooks the food?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Kellen said, leaning on the counter. “She has two cooks – Ricky comes in for breakfast and Milo comes in to help at lunchtime since it’s the most hectic meal. Milo usually does the dinner shift but when his daughter has ballet recitals my mom will jump into the kitchen.”
“Your mother is a brave woman.”
Lena looked up, just noticing us. “Hey guys,” she said. She turned back to the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of milk before setting it into one of several large buckets in front of her. She looked up and smiled at me. “So, Carson, how are you liking it so far?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, unsure of the most polite way of saying that I was on the verge of ripping my hair out. I sighed. “You’re a brave woman,” I repeated.
Lena laughed. “I know it’s overwhelming the first day,” she said. “When I first started in the childcare field I almost quit on my first day. I was a teacher’s assistant in the toddler room and one of the little boys peed on my shirt.”
I felt my eyes widen. I was officially terrified of going back into the toddler room.
Lena chuckled at the look on my face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Volunteers don’t do bathroom duty.”
The level of relief that went through me was indescribable. “So what did you do?” I asked.
“Well, at the end of the day I spent forty-five minutes crying in the director’s office and I was sure that was it.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I went home and ate a pint of ice cream,” she said. “Then I got up the next day and went back. When I walked through the door the same little boy ran up to me, hugged my legs, and gave me a dinosaur sticker. I was sold.”
“I just don’t know how you guys do it,” I said. “There’s so much running around and screaming and people coming in and out of the rooms.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy sometimes,” Lena agreed. “But it’s also full of life. There’s never a dull moment and that’s what I was always afraid of – being stuck in a job that bored me.”
“I bet you never get bored here.”
“Never,” Lena said, smiling. She lifted up one of the buckets and set it on the counter in front of Kellen. “Alright, soldiers. Take this to the troops.” She winked at me. “You’ll be fine,” she said, and then she was back into Chef Lena mode, moving around the kitchen, completely in control of the situation.
When Kellen and I got back to the room the kids were completely fixated on the book in the teacher’s hands.
“And the farmer asked the cow, what do you say?” the teacher read. “And the cow said – ”
“Moooooo!” the kids shrieked before erupting into a fit of giggles.
I followed Kellen to a table in the back of the room where he set the dinner bucket down and started removing its contents.
“Okay, so we have hotdogs, mixed vegetables, and mashed potatoes,” he said.
“Mashed potatoes?” I asked. What was Lena thinking, making mashed potatoes for a classroom of little terrors?
“You don’t like mashed potatoes?”
“I love them,” I said. “But I’m not two and likely to use them to paint the wall.”
“Have a little faith,” he said.
“I have plenty of faith that one of us is going to get mashed potatoes thrown at their face.”
Kellen shrugged. “If one of them comes at you with a handful of potatoes then I’ll throw myself in front of you and take the hit.”
“My hero.”
“Okay, princess, help me get this food on the plates before the kids sniff it out.”
We worked quickly, setting out a plate of food for each of the kids. I was pouring milk into plastic cups when I heard the teacher say, “Okay, boys and girls. It’s time for dinner.”
T
hen I heard one of the boys yell, “Ho daws!”
I froze, fear washing over me. Any second there would be a tiny-tot stampede over to the food and there was no way I wanted to get caught in the middle of that. I set down the last cup and dashed out of the way just as I heard their little feet charge to the table. Sure enough, the first thing one of them did was stick their hand in the pile of mashed potatoes on their plate.
“You and Carson are more than welcome to have something to eat too,” the teacher said as she came over and sat down with the kids. I watched as the little girl with orange pigtails picked up a fistful of mashed potatoes and slapped it to her face. Half of it went up her nose. I made a mental note to watch out for that little firecracker.
“Um, no thanks,” I said. Something about the scene made me lose my appetite. “I might never eat mashed potatoes again,” I whispered to Kellen.
Just then I felt something splat against my leg. I looked down and saw that the little boy named Kyle had just mashed me with his potatoes. He started laughing happily.
“No, but apparently you’ll wear them,” Kellen snorted.
I turned and glared at him. “Not funny,” I said. “And you are a terrible hero.”
“The villain was too quick for me,” he said. “At least it’s better than a hotdog to the eye.”
“What about a fist to the eye,” I mumbled.
Kellen smirked. “Be nice, the children are watching.”
We stood there and watched as the kids got a little of their food into their mouths and a lot of their food on their clothes, in their hair, and on the table. The little boy named Timmy took his last bite of hotdog and slid out of his chair, knocking over his cup in the process. Milk spilled onto the little red chair that Timmy had been in seconds before.
“Ooooooooh,” the little firecracker said, pointing to the chair. “Timmy may mess.”
I thought this was kind of funny coming from the girl with ketchup on her forehead.
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