“Sounds like a plan to me,” she grinned as she applied her blue green paint to her canvas where the greenish waves met the golden sand of the beach. “We can hitchhike across America and paint whatever we see.”

“Then we can publish a book of our paintings,” I suggested.

“Totally,” Kamiko grinned.

Plein Air Painting was awesome. When class was over three hours later, we packed everything up and walked back to SDU.

I had totally forgotten about my financial woes the entire time. And for that, I was grateful.

But they hadn’t forgotten about me.

* * *

Five people stood in front of me in line for the teller at the bank in Del Mar when I walked in the next morning.

From what I understood, if you handed a note to the bank teller that you had a gun and wanted money, they gave it to you. They didn’t ask if you had a gun. They just assumed you did, and paid you, which meant I was in luck because I had no gun. I’d considered stopping at a 99 Cents Only store to buy a toy gun, but I didn’t have 99 cents to spare, so I decided to wing it.

Of course, when you handed the note to the teller, they also stepped on the floor alarm button and the cops showed up, but I was fast on my feet. I could be gone before the SWAT team arrived and guns started going off.

Besides, this was San Diego. Did they even have SWAT teams in San Diego? The security guard at this bank was an old guy. I’m pretty sure he had a banana in his holster. I would be fine.

And I was only going to ask for $10,000 to cover my tuition. Not a penny more. I liked to think of it like a scholarship, because no one expected you to pay scholarships back.

The person in front of me was a bulbous man in a sloppy windbreaker and saggy slacks. He kept clearing his throat every five seconds. I think he had a hairball. I was waiting for him to squat down on the marble floor, head hanging between his shoulder blades, and hack it up like a cat, but he never did. He just kept hacking.

Eventually, the teller called Hairball up to the counter. He pulled out a stack of cash, which he counted out in front of the teller, coughing after every fifth bill he laid down like clockwork. I think he was making a cash deposit. I didn’t understand why he was counting it. That was the bank’s job. But he insisted. It took forever. He was hacking so often, I was getting the urge to clear my own throat. Were there toxic spores in the air? Whatever Hairball had, it was catching.

I was getting more and more nervous by the second because I was next. For a minute, I considered leaving, but didn’t. I had to go through with this. As soon as Hairball was gone, I was asking for that ten grand.

About ten hours and a million hacks later, Hairball was finished. I stepped up to the teller window and opened my mouth to speak.

What came out was a hack. Stupid Hairball. It really was catching. I cleared my throat several times. When I finished, the teller was looking at me like I had tuberculosis. I probably did. Thanks, Hairball Hackmaster.

“Ahem,” I hacked a final time. I wrung my hands together. I was going to do this. I needed ten grand. My heart was pounding. It was time to ask for my money.

“Can I help you?” the teller asked like she was about to call the Center for Disease Control so she could have me quarantined.

My throat was tickling again, but I willed it to relax. “Yes,” I said hoarsely, “I need to speak to someone about getting a loan?”

“Certainly,” the teller fake smiled dryly. “I’ll have one of our loan officers speak with you. If you could take a seat over there,” she pointed to the far corner of the bank, “someone will be out to talk to you shortly.” She couldn’t wait to get me out of her breathing space.

“Thanks,” I said and sat down in one of the chairs. My throat was still tickling, but I refused to start hacking again while I waited.

It was ten in the morning, and I’d decided to cut classes today and try to solve my money problems. I mean, what was the point in studying if I couldn’t pay my tuition bill when it came due?

Sadly, I hadn’t been able to find a single job online, and the scholarships weren’t looking any more promising. I still hadn’t told Christos about losing my museum job. It had been two weeks already, but the last thing I wanted to do was bother him with my money problems. With all of the paintings he needed to finish for his next gallery show weighing down on him, he had more than enough stress already, and it was eating away at him. His continued drinking was proof.

When the loan officer finally called me into his cubicle, I was bummed to discover I needed a cosigner for a $10,000 loan.

Great.

Where was I going to find a cosigner? My parents? Ha! That was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Christos? I couldn’t ask him. It was one thing to live in his house rent free, another to make him liable for a huge chunk of change. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t ask my friends. They didn’t have any money to spare.

Maybe I needed to head to Las Vegas on the weekend and pour some money into the slot machines? Oh, wait. I didn’t have any money to blow on gambling.

Wasn’t there some kind of college hooker organization that represented young college women like myself, and only paired you with hot guys? Nah, I think I read that in a romance novel somewhere. It couldn’t possibly be real. Besides, I had a boyfriend.

I was out of options.

Sane ones, anyway.

I sat in my car in the parking lot outside the bank and cried while I leaned my head against the steering wheel. My hair draped around my face and stuck to my wet cheeks. When I was out of tears, I drove to UTC, the shopping center just east of SDU. I walked from store to store, asking about jobs, just like I’d done with Romeo a few months ago.

No one was hiring.

Not even Hot Dog On A Stick. I considered waiting around until one of the hot dog girls took a break so I could knock her out and steal her multi-colored uniform. I was so desperate, I would gladly wear one of their clown outfits and re-subject myself to smelling like hot dogs if it meant I had some money coming in.

Since UTC was a bust, I drove to Mission Valley and hit up the Fashion Valley Mall, Hazard Center, and the Westfield. I filled out several applications and left them behind with promises from the managers they’d give me a call if anything opened up.

When I went home that night, I was exhausted. I had job searched for nine hours straight. My feet were killing me.

I checked the studio for Christos but he wasn’t there. I trudged upstairs and found him passed out in our bedroom. He reeked of booze. He was getting sloshed every day now.

When in Rome.

I was so tired and hungry and frustrated and disheartened from my failed job search today that I decided to get sloshed myself.

I drove to the grocery store under the cover of darkness and bought an armload of ice cream. When I got back to the house, it didn’t take long for me to stuff myself so full of ice cream that I was sloshing when I walked into one of the downstairs bathrooms. I unloaded my freshly consumed ice cream in private and prepared for round two. I walked back to the freezer and pulled out another pint.

Mmmm, ice cream.

Gag.

I ate two more pints before I’d had enough and went to bed.

* * *

A few days later, between Sociology 3 and American History 3, I spent several hours studying in the Main Library. When it was time to head to my history lecture, I closed my laptop and headed for the stairwell door.

There was a huge staircase that spiraled around the square cement tower that supported the fourth through seventh floors of the Main Library. From the outside, the Main Library resembled a squat cement squared-off oak tree with a narrow base that supported the four floors on top.

Going down the stairs inside the three-story base always reminded me of descending into a giant crypt, like in the pyramids, but without cool hieroglyphics on the walls. It was gray and dreary.

Too bad I wasn’t going to find any gold sarcophagi at the bottom of the stairs, or whatever other treasures grave robbers always found when they broke into pyramids. Oh well.

At least it was exercise.

When I walked out of the stairwell next to the elevators, I passed through a corridor that had glass cases on both sides. The cases contained an ever-changing collection of museum style exhibits of all kinds of things: old antique books, ceramics, folk art objects, or sometimes actual art. Today, I noticed that there was a new display in several of the cases.

To my surprise, when I read one of the placards, I discovered it was original art from the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

I stopped to look at the art more closely. I had only ever seen Dennis the Menace art in the pulpy newsprint paper my dad looked at every morning. Up close, the original inked art was magnificent. The lines were so precise and crisp, yet stylized and very geometrical. I would never have made an observation like this before I’d started studying drawing so intensely six months ago. I used to just think of Dennis the Menace as a cartoon with cute drawings. Now I had something vaguely profound to say. I was so proud of myself.

Maybe I had found treasure at the bottom of that library staircase.

“Hank Ketcham is amazing, isn’t he?” Justin Tomlinson asked.

“Oh!” I gasped. I’d been so engrossed in the art, I hadn’t noticed him walk up. “Hey, Justin.”

Justin wore a sporty lightweight leather jacket over a V-neck print tee, and skinny jeans. He looked like he was ready to walk up to the podium at the Grammys and accept an award for best male vocalist.