I wondered if I could keep Christos’ upcoming solo show a secret so I could avoid having my friends gawk at a nude picture of me. Who was I kidding? Kamiko followed the upcoming gallery shows like a hawk. She’d find out and she’d be there. At least I could appreciate her desire to show up and support.

Changing subjects, I said, “Have you done any new paintings to submit to Brandumb for his upcoming Contemporary Artists Show?”

“A bunch,” she smiled.

“How are they coming along?”

Kamiko had been crushed when Brandon had rejected her first batch of submissions.

“Awesome,” she said. “You wanna see them after lunch?”

“Sure,” I smiled.

When we finished eating, we walked our trays over to the trash cans and emptied them into the bin then walked out the front doors.

There was a newspaper rack right outside.

Kamiko stopped and squealed, “Oh my God!” She grabbed a fresh copy of The Wombat off the rack. “Sam! It’s your wombat!” She handed me the paper. “It looks so good!”

Wow, my art was on the cover, next to Tammy Lemons’ illustration.

“You should totally save like ten copies!”

“But I haven’t won,” I said.

“So what?” Kamiko said, excited. “You’re in print! That’s YOUR art!”

“I guess you’re right,” I smiled. “But maybe I’ll only take five copies.” I grabbed a handful off the rack.

“Will you sign mine for me?” Kamiko asked, digging frantically through her book bag for a pen.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Kamiko,” I dismissed.

“What, did you forget how to spell your name?” she asked sarcastically and thrust her pen at me.

I frowned, “No.”

“Then sign it, bitch! I’m so proud of you!” She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. When she was done, she pushed her pen at me again. “But seriously, sign it. I’m going to hold onto this until it’s worth a thousand bucks. I’ll sell it at San Diego Comic Con in twenty years when you’re a world famous cartoonist.”

I scoffed, “I think you’re getting a bit carried away, Kamiko.”

“Shut up and sign it. If I’m going to be a doctor for the rest of my life, I’m going to tell people I went to school with Samantha Smith, the awesome artist.”

I arched a doubtful eyebrow.

“Quit being fake humble and sign it!” she growled.

I wasn’t being fake humble. It just seemed weird she was asking me to sign the paper for her. I hadn’t even won yet. For all I knew, the students who read the paper and bothered to vote would pick Tammy’s art.

Some random guy with glasses and wavy long hair walked up to the rack and picked up a copy of The Wombat. He chuckled when he looked at the cover.

“My home girl drew that wombat,” Kamiko said to him. “She can autograph your paper if you’re nice.”

“Kamiko!” I hissed.

The guy looked at the pictures thoughtfully. “You drew this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said sheepishly, “the one on the toilet. I didn’t draw the one with the baseball bat.”

“Oh,” he nodded, examining the drawings. He chuckled, “I love that he’s stoned while he’s taking a shit. That’s awesome.”

Kamiko nudged me, “Sign it!”

“Yeah,” the guy said, “will you sign it for me? I’m hanging this in our bathroom in the dorms.”

I couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or an insult.

He smiled, admiring my art, “The guys are going to love this.”

So I signed it. I mean, a lot of people read when they were on the toilet. Sure, a bathroom stall in the dorms wasn’t exactly Charboneau Gallery, but it was the next best thing, right?

* * *

Kamiko and I went to her dorm room in Paiute Hall.

“I’m trying something totally different,” she said, sliding a big black portfolio out from under her bed. She unzipped it and handed me a stack of paintings on 1/8” thick illustration board. “These are all done with pen and ink, and acrylics.”

They were drawings with washes of transparent color over the ink lines, and touches of opaque acrylic here and there on some, and more thickly applied acrylics on others.

“What happened to all your oils?”

“They’re in the closet,” she nodded toward the wheeled wardrobe next to her bed. “Since Brandumb didn’t want them for the show, I put them all away. Maybe I’ll try to sell them later. But for now, I’m doing this,” she pointed her chin toward the stacks of paintings in my lap.

I sat down on the bed and flipped through them. There was a half dozen of them, all in totally different styles. One showed a dolphin jumping out of waves made of blue human hands and arms. Another showed a beautiful woman in a giant Victorian gown with hands that snaked out in looping coils that ended in bouquets of roses. Another showed three identical young girls with black pigtails and kimonos standing on a Japanese garden bridge over a pond filled with koi that had human faces. “Are these kimono triplets supposed to be you?” I asked.

Kamiko nodded. “And those faces on the koi are supposed to be Brandumb, but I don’t think he’ll notice. I had to work from memory.”

“What is it supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Kamiko grinned, “that I’m three times more awesome than Brandumb, who is so un-evolved he hasn’t yet crawled out of the ocean with the other fishes that turned into humans a billion years ago?”

“You’re not still angry at him, are you?”

“I was when I did that one,” she smiled. “Now? Not so much.”

The rest of her paintings were equally bizarre and amazing. “Did you do all of these? It looks like six different artists painted them.”

She smiled and nodded, her eyes beaming with excitement. “I did my homework. I went through that catalog from the last show that you gave me until I had some direction, then I dove in.”

I could still remember how Kamiko’s confidence had been shattered by Brandon when he’d rejected her art, and hit on me right in front of her. For two weeks afterward, I had been afraid she’d never climb out of her funk. But her confidence was now back in full force.

“Well, they’re all awesome, Kamiko.” I handed the stack back to her. “I’m blown away.”

She took them and slid them back into the big black portfolio. “Are you going to submit anything, Sam?”

“What, to Brandon’s show?”

“Yeah.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess I’ve been too busy.”

“Considering you’re on the front cover of The Wombat, I think you probably should.”

“Do you have that show catalog of Brandon’s?”

Kamiko pulled it off the bookcase on her desk and handed it to me.

I flipped through it. The first thing I noticed was that Kamiko’s new paintings would totally fit right in. “I don’t know, Kamiko. These are all really good. I can see you did a lot of research. I don’t know if I’ll have time to come up with something before the show.”

“You’ll think of something,” she smiled.

As much as I’d improved while studying art with the help of Christos, Spiridon, Kamiko, and all my art teachers, the paintings in the catalog were probably better than I could do at the moment, especially on short notice.

“You have tons of great ideas, Sam,” Kamiko said. “I bet you’ll come up with something awesome.”

Once again, I was super grateful that all of my San Diego friends were so supportive of me. Their confidence bolstered my own.

“You’re right,” I grinned confidently, “I will.”

* * *

Madison and I were studying in the Main Library in our favorite private study room on the fifth floor, which had the best view of the ocean.

My laptop was open and my email program chimed when a new email came in. It was from the SDU Registrar’s Office. Subject: A date has been set for your appeal.

I groaned.

“What?” Madison asked, looking up from her gigantic Marketing textbook.

Not only had the subject line of the email been a spoiler for the content of the message, it had also spoiled my mood. I clicked on it to get it over with.

The message read, “A date has been assigned for you to appear before the administrative tribunal of San Diego University to discuss the grievance(s) pending against you, at which time your standing as a student at SDU will be reviewed. In addition to the initial claim of theft leveled against you by Tiffany Kingston-Whitehouse (plaintiff), an additional charge of assault has been brought against you, Samantha Smith (defendant)…”

Tiffany and her stupid stolen credit card.

And my stupid slap.

I never should’ve smacked her.

According to the rest of the letter, Tiffany had gone to the SDU police to report my “attack” on her. At least the letter made it sound like my slapping her wasn’t a federal offense with the death penalty attached. But for a second, I imagined the cops showing up in their police cars with the red and blue lights flashing so they could cuff me and haul me to jail for committing Assault and Slappery.

Wow, I suddenly felt like my situation and Christos’ had been reversed. Or he was having a bad influence on me like my mom had warned. No, that was crazy because my cheating mom was crazy.

“Bad news?” Madison asked.

“Huh?”

“You look like you swallowed a poisoned pie.”

“Poisoned pie?”

“Like one of those blackbird pies with twenty four birds inside? You look like they’re flapping around in your belly right now, trying to get out,” she smirked.

“I’d rather have that than this,” I scowled.

“What is it?”

“My date for the Tiffany thing.”

“Oh,” Madison said morosely. She already knew the whole story. “I’ve told you before, give me the word, and I’ll cut a bitch.”