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My heart began to race. “Who has cancer?” My eyes darted between them.

“No one, Jess. We have a little issue,” Dad said quietly. “The money we put aside for your college is not there anymore.”

“What do you mean?” My voice broke. My heart pounded faster as my skin tightened up all over my body. “What happened to my money?”

“We lost your savings in the bad market.” Mom looked at Dad and then at me.

“You have to get it back. I’m…I’m all packed. I’m ready to go.”

“It’s all gone, honey.” My mother’s eyes filled with tears. “We did not intend for this to happen, but it did. It’s out of our control.”

“I don’t understand. What did you do?”

They didn’t answer.

“I start a new job the first week of October,” Dad explained. “We’re strapped until then. It’s just bad timing. Could you help us out?” Dad asked. “Could you delay your move?”

My father had never asked me for anything, so this was serious. “What do you mean bydelay?” I’d already met my roommates. Gin, a lovely Korean girl from Seoul, and Isabella, a nice Italian American girl from Queens. We chose our matching bedspreads online at Target. Mine was upstairs in plastic wrap.

I snatched the check back from my mother. “Uncle Louie and Aunt Lil sent me a thousand dollars. I could go to them for a loan!”

“Absolutely not,” my mother said. “We can’t run down the street every time we need something.”

“This isn’t asomething! I’m not a flat tire or a hole in the roof or a broken tooth or some unexpected expense! There was aplan!” I was frozen like an innocent bystander blindsided by the crime she had just witnessed. I’d been robbed, except in this situation, the thieves weren’t strangers; they were family. My mouth went dry. “This is my future!”

“How about this?” Dad placed his hands on the table.

It was hard for me to take my father seriously when he had yellow paint in his hair. But this isn’t funny. It feels like a setup.

Dad went on. “You could study at Montclair State andcommute. Just for freshman year. Live at home. Save all that money. And by then Mom and I will find a way to get you to Rutgers.”

“I could get another student loan. The deadline passed, but maybe they’ll make an exception.”

“We looked into it, honey. We maxed out,” Dad said sadly. “We are still paying off the loan we took for Connie’s schooling. We need nineteen thousand dollars to send you. The dorm is more.”

“Dad. Please. There has to be a way. Make Mom heal her rift with Uncle Louie. He would help me. I know he would.”

My father wiped tears from his eyes. “I can’t do this.” He sat and put his head in his hands. This big and tall man who shopped at the big and tall men’s store was suddenly very small.

“I will find a way to get the money. I will figure this out on my own.” I chewed my bottom lip like it was rawhide. The truth was, I had no idea what to do, or where to turn, as the gravity of the situation set in.

I was ashamed that my parents were idiots about money. My father was covered in paint because they never had enough money to hire a proper housepainter or plumber or electrician. Our lives were held together with duct tape and despair. I was furious at my mother for severing the lifeline to my future because she couldn’t get along with her brother. I had nowhere to turn, and they knew it!

Mom began to speak. This time, Dad cut her off.

“I don’t want to hear a word about your brother either,” my father said. “Louie Cap has always been good to my kids.”

“Now I’m the bad guy?” My mother put her head down on the kitchen table and wept.

“Don’t start, Philly. I told you, when you poison the well, you can’t drink from it.”

I heard them argue as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom; my legs felt like they were made of cement. I pushed the door open, closed it behind me, and locked it. I looked at everything I had packed to take to school. I had borrowed my dad’s leather suitcase with his initials on the lock. His parents had gifted it to him when he graduated from high school. There were large plastic shopping bags filled with bedding, a smaller one with toiletries, a hot pot, and a blow dryer. I had collected every item they listed as essential in the freshman manual and packed them to take to school. However, I didn’t have the tuition; a lot of good boiling ramen noodles was going to do me now.

I made it to my bed.

I cried into my pillow for so long, it was soaked, like it came in with the tide on Lake Como beach. How could this have happened to me? I was ready for college. I worked hard, got good grades, and saved. None of it mattered. Money had always been a problem in my family; there was never enough of it, and it ran out, right on schedule, just in time to ruin my life.

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