Chapter 14: The Last Page of the Notebook

Monday, The Last Week

Exams are over. I passed everything, including cell membranes, which I am still a little surprised about. The residence is half empty and very loud at the same time, because everyone who is still here is packing and playing music. Lina is sitting on the floor of our room, winding cables into neat circles and labelling them, which she says is "the only part of moving that makes sense". I am supposed to be packing my books. Instead I am sitting on my bed with this diary, because there are only six pages left in it.

When Grandma gave me the notebook at the start of the year, she asked me to write down one thing I had checked for myself every week. I thought I would forget by the third week. I did not forget once. So tonight I read the whole diary from the beginning, and I want to write down, in one line each, what the year taught me, before the pages run out.

In the first week I learned that to verify something means to check it through a source I choose myself. In week three of the first term, I learned that a picture of a profit is not a profit. In week five, I learned that a pool and a car in a mentor's photos say nothing about how he really earns his money. In week seven, the word "guaranteed" sent me to the official register for the first time. In week nine, I made my 24-hour rule, the evening I nearly put in the price of two textbooks.

In week eleven, I learned that numbers on a screen are not money in my hands. In the long break, my family learned the three questions at our kitchen table. In the first week of the second term, Marcus showed me that a fee to get your own money back means: stop paying and tell someone. In week three, Lina asked where the money in Bruno's club really came from. In weeks five to seven, I learned that someone I know only online cannot be my guide to money, however kind he seems. In week eight, a famous face was borrowed, and in week nine, the second fox came. And in the exam weeks, I learned to check who is asking before I prove who I am.

Reading it all at once, I noticed something that surprised me. Almost none of the checks needed me to be clever. They needed me to be slow, to go somewhere I chose myself, and to tell someone. Grandma's rule was right from the first page: "Count twice. The second time, count with your own paws." Lina looked up from her cables and asked what I was smiling about, and I said, "My own paws." She said, "You're very strange," and went back to her labels.

Thursday Night, The Last Week

Tonight the student money advice office held an evening for students in one of the lecture halls, and Ms Okafor asked Marcus to speak. He said yes weeks ago, and he has been nervous about it ever since. Lina and I sat in the third row. There were more people than I expected: first-year students, a few older ones, some parents, and two people from the café in town where Marcus works, who came because he asked them.

Ms Okafor spoke first, briefly, and then she said, "Marcus has agreed to tell you what happened to him. I want to say one thing before he starts. Nothing that happened to Marcus was his fault. The people who took his money are responsible for it. Marcus is here because he is brave enough to talk about it, and talking about it is how other people stay safe."

Marcus stood at the front with one piece of paper, which he did not look at once. He told them about the group chat with the screenshots, the "VIP group", the app with the growing balance, the "unlocking fee" he paid before he told anyone, and the "recovery service" that found him afterwards. He told it simply, without making himself look foolish and without making it sound like an adventure. When he talked about the night he finally told me, his voice went very quiet, and the whole hall went quiet with it.

Then he told them where he is now. The bank and the police are still looking at his case, and he does not know whether any of his money will come back. He is managing with a budget that he made with Ms Okafor and with extra café shifts, and he still sends a little money home to his mother, a bit less than before. He said, "I'm not finished, but I'm not alone, and I'm not hiding. The hardest thing I did all year was tell someone, and it was also the most useful thing." People clapped for a long time. I cried a little, and Lina said she did not, but she did.

Then a father in the back row asked Marcus what parents should do if their son or daughter told them something like this. Marcus thought for a moment. He said, "Please don't be angry first. Be glad first. Ask what happened, and then help them check and report it. If I had thought my mum would be angry, I would never have told anyone." The father nodded and wrote something down, and I saw Ms Okafor smile.

Afterwards a first-year student asked Ms Okafor a question that I think many people in the hall wanted to ask. She said, "If all of these things are scams, what does real investing look like?" Ms Okafor smiled and answered. I am writing down what I remember of what she said.

She said that real investing is usually slow. It is something people do over many years, not something that doubles in a month. She said that real firms and advisers are regulated: they are on the official register kept by the official office that supervises them, and you can check that yourself. She said that there is always risk, which means you can lose some or all of the money you put in, and that nobody honest can promise you a fixed gain. "Anyone who says guaranteed," she said, "is either mistaken or not telling you the truth." She said that honest firms explain their costs and risks clearly, in writing, and do not mind if you take a week to think, ask your family, or say no.

Then she said the part I wrote down word for word on the back of the programme: "I am not telling anyone here to invest or not to invest. That depends on your whole situation, and the rules where you live. If you ever want to think about it, talk to an independent, qualified adviser who is on the official register, and check that yourself, through the office's own website that you find yourself. Never take an adviser from a message, an advertisement or a stranger who found you."

Walking back, Marcus asked me whether he had talked too fast. I said he had talked exactly right. He said, "Next year, when the new students arrive, I want to help Ms Okafor again." Then he bought Lina and me hot chocolate, which he absolutely should not have done with his budget, and he said it was in his budget, under "friends".

Saturday, The Last Week

Felix sent me a message this morning that I want to keep forever. A boy in his class had sent him a link to a new game-token group "that is going to be huge", with a picture of a chart going up and up. Felix went through Grandma's questions one by one: "Who says so?" was a boy who heard it from his cousin, "How can I check it myself?" had no answer because it was only a chart, and "Who gains if I believe it?" was whoever made the group, so he said no. Then he wrote, "I didn't even ask you first, I'm basically you now." I told him that was the nicest and most worrying thing anyone had ever said to me.

It made me think about Grandma's fables. All year she has told me one every Sunday, and every one of them was about something I needed that week. She told them long ago to her own children, and now to me. I realised I have never told one to anybody. So this afternoon, while Lina finished packing, I wrote one for Felix on the next pages of this diary. It is not as good as Grandma's. But it is his.

Tess's Fable: The Young Owl Who Learned to Ask

In a tall forest there lived a young owl who wanted very much to be wise. He had heard all his life that owls were the wisest birds in the forest. So when the other birds came to him with news, he always nodded and said something that sounded clever, even when he did not understand a word of it.

One evening a jay landed on his branch, very excited. "Have you heard? On the hill beyond the stream there is a magic tree, and if you bury one berry under it tonight, by morning there will be ten. Everyone is taking their berries there." The young owl wanted to look wise, so he opened his beak to say, "Of course, I knew that," and then he remembered something his grandmother had once told him. "Wise owls do not know more than other birds. They ask more."

So instead he asked, "Who says so?" The jay blinked and said, "Everyone says so." The young owl asked, "Who is everyone?" The jay thought about it. "Well, a crow told me, and the crow said the other crows had seen it." The young owl asked, "Has anyone you know seen ten berries come back for one?" The jay was quiet for a while, and then he said, "Not yet, but they will in the morning."

The young owl asked himself the second question: how can I check it myself? And he realised that this one was easy for an owl, because owls can see in the dark. That night he flew to the hill beyond the stream and sat in a branch above the magic tree, very still, and watched.

For a long time nothing happened. Then, when the forest was asleep, the crows came quietly down from the hilltop, dug up every berry the other birds had buried, and carried them away. The young owl asked himself the third question: who gains if I believe it? He did not need to ask anyone to know the answer.

In the morning he flew back and told the jay and all the other birds what he had seen. Some of them were angry with themselves for believing. The young owl said, "Do not be angry with yourselves; be angry with the crows. And next time, come and ask with me." After that, the birds of the forest began to bring the young owl their questions instead of their news. He still did not know everything. But he always knew what to ask, and he always went to look with his own eyes.

Sunday Night, The Last Week

On our call tonight, for the first time, I told the fable instead of Grandma. I read it to her slowly, from these pages, and I was more nervous than I was before any exam. When I finished, she did not say anything for a long moment. Then she said, "The crows came quietly. That's right, they always do." And then she said, "That's a good fable, Tess. It's yours now, and it's Felix's, and that is what they are for."

I asked her why she had started telling me fables in the first place, instead of just telling me what to do. She said, "Because you would have forgotten what I told you to do by Tuesday. But you don't forget a ewe with a torn ear." She is right. I can still remember every animal from this year, and I can remember what each one taught me, even though she never once said what it was.

I sent a photograph of the fable to Felix. He replied, "Why is the owl so cool? Is the owl me?" I said yes, and he said, "Obviously." Then, a minute later, he sent another message that just said, "Thanks, Tess." Felix never says thanks. I am going to frame it.

I also thought, one last time, about the people behind every offer this year: the mentor, the countdown, the app, the fee, the kind stranger, the borrowed face, the second fox, the page that wanted my card. They all wanted the same two things from me: to hurry, and to stay alone. And they were all afraid of the same thing: that I would slow down, go somewhere I chose myself, and tell somebody. Knowing that makes me feel less afraid of them, not more.

There is one page left. Under Grandma's rule, on the inside of the cover, I have written my own line in my smallest handwriting, so that next year's diary can begin with it: "Ask first, go and look yourself, and never check alone." Lina has read it and says it is too long for a rule. Marcus has read it and says it is exactly long enough. Felix has not read it yet, but I think he already knows it.

What I Checked This Week

This week I checked what real investing generally looks like, by listening to someone qualified at an official university evening and not to an advertisement. Real investing is usually slow and happens over many years. Real firms and advisers are regulated and are on the official register kept by the official office that supervises them in your country. There is always risk, and you can lose money. Nobody honest can guarantee a gain.

Real firms explain their costs and risks clearly, in writing, and they do not mind if you take time to think, ask your family, or say no. Every scam I met this year did the opposite: it promised gains without risk, it hurried me, and it wanted me to keep it to myself. That difference is something I can check every time.

Whether anyone should invest at all, and how, depends on their whole situation and on the rules where they live. That is a question for an independent, qualified adviser who is on the official register, and I would check that register myself, through the office's own website that I find myself. I would never use an adviser who found me through a message, a group chat, an advertisement or a phone call.

And here is the whole year in one paragraph, for whoever reads this diary next. To check a claim, I use a source I choose myself, never the link, number or person that comes with the claim. I ask Grandma's three questions: Who says so? How can I check it myself? Who gains if I believe it? I make no money decision on the day it is asked for. And when something goes wrong, I tell someone, because the people who deceive us are the ones who should be ashamed, never the people they deceive.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess's diary ends here, with one page left for next year. Over the year she met many shapes of investment scams, and she was nearly fooled more than once, which is exactly why her diary is worth reading. What protected her and the people she loved was never a special talent. It was a small set of habits: checking through sources she chose herself, asking three simple questions, waiting a day, and talking to someone. Every one of those habits can belong to your family too, whatever your ages.

Here are some last questions to talk about together. Which moment in Tess's year felt most like something that could happen in your own family, and what would you do? Who in your family is the one others would go to with a worrying message, and how can you make sure that person never feels alone with it? And if you made your own family rule, like Tess's line inside the cover, what would it say?

Here is one last thing to try together. Make up a short fable of your own, as Tess did for Felix: one animal, one tempting offer, and one way of checking. Tell it at the table, on a call or on a walk, to the youngest person who will listen. Then keep it somewhere you will find it again, perhaps on the inside cover of a new notebook. Stories like this travel well between generations, and the questions inside them are worth more than any promise of quick money.