When the professor was finished, she turned to the students and smiled, “Now go ahead and start your paintings. I’ll be walking around helping everyone out.”

Kamiko and I walked over to our easels. Now that I realized we weren’t going to be painting invisible oxygen all term, I adjusted my easel so I was facing the south cliffs, like the professor had.

I didn’t have a palette knife, so I just used brushes. I wasn’t used to working on such a complicated subject likes cliffs and waves. There were ten million different things to paint in my field of vision. I was getting a little flustered. I set my brush down and rubbed my forehead with the back of my wrist.

“Having troubles?” Professor Weatherspoon asked.

I was so used to Marjorie Bitchinger’s bitchiness and sarcasm last quarter, I was afraid to say anything for fear of incurring Professor Weatherspoon’s wrath.

“It’s okay,” she said in a kind voice, “there’s a lot to figure out all at once,” she smiled. “What you want to do is focus on the big shapes first. Work from big to small and add detail last. May I?” she asked, reaching for my brush.

“Yeah, totally,” I smiled.

She picked up my brush, dabbed it in some raw umber on my palette, and blocked in a few lines for the cliffs. “Since you’re using a brush, paint thin. You don’t want too much paint making a mess all over your canvas.” She rinsed the brush in my little jar of Turpenoid, then went in with a thin mix of white and ultramarine blue. “Put in the horizon line, like this,” she painted a faint blue horizontal line, “so you know where it is.” She cleaned the brush again, dipped it in some yellow ochre, and scribbled in the line of the beach where it met the water. My painting now looked like colored outlines of the view. “Now all you have to do is fill everything in,” she smiled and handed me my brush before walking away to help other students.

My good mood was back. I turned to Kamiko, “Is this even a real class? It seems like way too much fun.”

“I know, right?” she grinned while she mixed a pile of phthalo green with cerulean blue on her palette.

“Maybe we can both drop out of school and be Plein Air painters for the rest of our lives.”

“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.