Chapter 5: Only Ten Places Left

Tuesday Night, Week 9

Marcus was in a very good mood today. The small first amount he put into the platform two weeks ago is, according to the platform's screen, a little bigger every time he looks, and last week he added a little more. He has stopped asking me what I think. He just shows me the number, the way Felix shows me his game scores, and I say "hmm", which seems to be enough for both of them.

But today he had something else to show me. At lunchtime, every member of the platform received a message about a "bonus window". Anyone who puts money in before midnight on Wednesday, the message said, will get a "bonus" added to their balance straight away. A bonus, as far as I understand it, is an extra amount given on top of what you pay in, as a reward. The balance is simply the amount the platform's screen says you have. Under the message there was a countdown, a row of numbers getting smaller every second, and under the countdown, in red letters: "Only ten places left!"

Marcus turned to me with his whole face shining. "This is your chance," he said. "You're always worrying about money. You told me yourself that the textbook for the second half of term costs more than you expected. Just put in a little. The price of two textbooks, maybe. With the bonus, you'd have your textbooks paid for and more."

He was not trying to trick me. I want to write that clearly, because I think it is important. Marcus believes in the platform, and he was trying to help me, the way I tried to help him with the register. He even sent me the page where I could sign up, with a little note: "For my lab partner, who deserves a break."

And here is the honest part. I was tempted, more than I have been by anything so far. Not by the green numbers in the group chat, and not by Coach Dex's pool, but by this: the price of two textbooks, which I need, and a way to stop my two lists from pinching. I looked at the countdown on Marcus's phone, and I felt my heart beat a little faster, the way it does before an exam.

Wednesday Night, Week 9

I am writing this at twenty past midnight, and my hands are still not quite steady. I want to write down everything that happened while I still remember it exactly, because I think I came closer tonight than at any time this year.

Today was a long day. I had the early café shift, then two lectures, then a lab report that took the whole afternoon. All day, Marcus sent me messages, each with a screenshot of the countdown: "Eight hours left!" "Only six places left!" "Three places left, Tess!" Every time my phone buzzed, the number of places was smaller, and the feeling in my chest was bigger. I did not open the page he had sent me, but I did not delete it either.

Lina was out tonight at a coding evening in the computer science building, so I was alone in our room. At about eleven, I opened the platform's sign-up page. Then I opened my own savings app in another window. I told myself that I was only looking. Then I typed the amount into the savings app: the price of two textbooks. The countdown on the platform page said fifty-one minutes. It also said "Last place remaining!"

I sat there with my thumb above the button. I want to describe exactly how it felt, because I think it matters. It did not feel like being foolish. It felt like being in a hurry. My whole mind had become a clock. I was not thinking about whether the platform was real, or whether the bonus made sense, or what I had found on the register in week 7. I was only thinking about the minutes, and about how bad I would feel if I missed the last place.

Then I looked up, and the notebook was lying on my desk, next to the lamp, with its dark green cover. I do not know why I noticed it at that moment, unless it was just the colour. But I picked it up and opened the front cover, and there was Grandma's handwriting: "Count twice. The second time, count with your own paws." And under it were the three questions, in my own handwriting.

Who says so? The countdown said so, and the countdown was made by the platform, so the only source telling me that there was one place left, and that midnight was the end, was the same source that wanted my money. How can I check it myself? Not properly, I realised, and not in fifty minutes. And that, I suddenly understood, was the whole point of the fifty minutes. Who gains if I believe it? Not me, and not tonight.

I put my phone face down on the desk. I closed the savings app without pressing anything. Then I sat on my bed and watched the clock on the wall, the ordinary one with hands, while the minutes went past. At midnight nothing happened. The room was the same. The radiator knocked. I still had the price of two textbooks in my savings, and nobody had taken anything from me.

Then I took my pen and wrote a new line inside the front cover, under Grandma's rule and her three questions. "The 24-hour rule: no money decision on the day it is asked for." I mean any decision to pay, send, invest or sign up, whoever is asking and however good it sounds. If something is real and good, it will still be real and good tomorrow, and by tomorrow I will have had time to check it with my own paws. If it is gone tomorrow, then it was the hurry that was being sold, not the opportunity.

Thursday Night, Week 9

This morning, at a quarter to eight, Marcus sent me a message: "Good news, they've opened the bonus window again, with a new countdown until Friday midnight and only ten places left, so you've got another chance!" I read it twice. Then I laughed out loud, alone in my room, and it was not a happy laugh.

Only ten places left. On Tuesday there were ten places. Last night there was one. This morning there were ten again. The window that was closing for ever at midnight had simply opened again, with the same number of places and a new clock. I thought about my thumb above the button and felt cold all over. If I had pressed it, I would have believed until this morning that I had been lucky to get the last place.

At lunch, I told Marcus that I was not going to put anything in, not today and not on Friday. I tried to say it kindly. I said that I was grateful he had thought of me, and that I knew he meant it as a gift. Then I told him about the countdown that went from one place to ten places overnight, and I asked him, as gently as I could, whether a real bonus would need to pretend to be ending.

Marcus's face closed a little. "I was trying to help you," he said. I said, "I know. That's exactly why I'm telling you, and not just ignoring your messages." He said that shops do this all the time, with sales that end and then come back, and that it did not mean anything. I said that perhaps that was true of shops, but that a shop does not ask me to send my savings before midnight. We finished our sandwiches without saying much; he was not angry, I think, only disappointed in me, and that was somehow worse.

Lina came back from her coding evening very late last night and slept through my whole midnight drama, so I told her about it this evening. She listened without interrupting, which for Lina is rare. Then she said, "Countdowns are easy. They're just numbers that someone tells to go down. Someone else can tell them to go back up." She hugged me, which she has never done before, and told me that my rule was the best thing anyone in the building had written all term.

Dad called this evening, a day late because of a big order at the printing shop. I told him about the rule, without telling him how close I had come. He said that at the shop, the customers who shout "urgent" the loudest are usually the ones whose orders have the most mistakes, because nobody had time to read them. "When someone says there's no time to check," Dad said, "that's when I check twice."

Sunday Night, Week 9

I told Grandma Rose everything, including the thumb above the button. I had been afraid that she would be disappointed, but she was not. She said, "You stopped. The stopping is the part that counts. And then you made a rule, which is even better, because a rule is there for you on the nights when you're too tired to think." I told her that I had written the rule inside the cover, under hers, and she was quiet for a moment, and then she said that she was very proud of me.

Then she asked about Marcus, and I said that he was a little distant with me. Grandma said that this is sometimes the price of telling a friend the truth, and that it is usually worth paying. "Friends come back when they're ready," she said. "Just make sure the door is open when they do." Then she told me a story about a gate.

Grandma's Fable: The Gate That Was Always Closing

At the bottom of a long meadow there was a thick hedge, and in the hedge there was a small wooden gate. One morning a hare sat down beside the gate and began to shout. "Beyond this gate is the sweetest clover field in the world!" he cried. "The gate closes at sunset, and there are only ten places left! One carrot each to pass!"

The young rabbits of the meadow came running. They pushed and hopped and climbed over each other to get to the gate, each with a carrot in its mouth. All day the hare shouted, "Only five places left! Only three! Only one!" And all day the pile of carrots beside him grew.

One young rabbit ran home to fetch her carrot. She ran so fast that she nearly knocked over her grandmother, who was sitting under the elder bush in the evening sun. "Why are you running?" asked the old rabbit. "The gate closes at sunset!" cried the young rabbit. "There's only one place left!"

The old rabbit looked at the sun, which was already low. "Then let it close," she said. "Sit with me until morning, and we will go and look at it together." The young rabbit sat down, but she could not keep still. When the sun went down, she was sure that she had missed the best thing in her whole life, and she did not sleep well.

In the morning the two rabbits went down to the hedge. The hare was sitting beside the gate, with a new pile of carrots, shouting, "The gate closes at sunset! Only ten places left!" The young rabbit stared at him. "But yesterday there were ten places," she whispered, "and then one. And now there are ten again."

The old rabbit did not answer. She led her granddaughter along the hedge to a low gap where they could look through without paying. On the other side there was no clover field. There was only a small bare patch of earth, where the rabbits who had paid sat in a tired row, nibbling dry stems.

The young rabbit kept her carrot. That evening, when she heard the hare's voice coming up the meadow, "Closes at sunset! Only ten places left!", she listened for a moment, and then she went on with her supper.

Monday Night, Week 10

The hare's gate was always closing, and that is how I know it was never really closing. The old rabbit did not argue with the hare. She did not count his carrots or explain to the other rabbits why they were wrong. She did only one thing: she waited until morning. And the morning showed the young rabbit everything, because the hare was still there, shouting the same words with a new pile of carrots.

What I notice most is that the grandmother rabbit made time to look. She did not just say "no", but "We will go and look at it together." Waiting was not the end of checking, but what made checking possible. That is what my rule is for. The 24 hours are not a punishment for being tempted. They are the time I need to find my own gap in the hedge.

I keep asking myself what the countdown wanted from me on Wednesday night. I think it wanted me to stop thinking about anything except the minutes. It wanted me alone, without Lina, without Grandma, without the register. And what was it afraid of? I think it was afraid of morning: of a night's sleep, a talk with someone I trust, and a second look.

Marcus and I did our lab together today as usual. He was polite but quiet, and he did not show me his phone once. I miss the old jokes about the microscope. But I said no, and I would say it again, and I think that one day he will understand why.

What I Checked This Week

The claim was that a "bonus window" would close at midnight, that there were "only ten places left", and that I had to decide at once. The proof was a countdown on the platform's own page. When I counted with my own paws, the next morning, the window had opened again, with ten places and a new clock.

What I learned is that checking needs time, and that someone who does not want to be checked will try to take that time away. A countdown, a number of places that keeps getting smaller, a message that says "last chance" or "only today": these all say the same thing, which is "do not stop to look". Pressure is not just annoying. Pressure is itself a warning sign, because a real opportunity does not need to rush me past the questions.

So I made a rule for myself: no money decision on the day it is asked for. I can still say yes the next day, after I have checked who is asking, looked at the register through the official office's own website that I find myself, and talked to someone I trust. A real opportunity will still be there tomorrow. If it is gone, or if it comes back with a new countdown, then the hurry was the thing being sold.

The rule also helps on nights when I am too tired to think clearly, and those are exactly the nights when hurry works best. I do not have to win the argument with the countdown at eleven o'clock at night. I only have to remember that I have a rule. One thing I checked for myself this week: whether midnight was really the end. It was not.

Things to Talk About as a Family

Tess's diary stops here for the week. She came very close, closer than at any time so far, and what saved her was not knowledge about investing. It was the few seconds in which she noticed that her mind had become a clock. She did not feel foolish in that moment, and she was not foolish; she was hurried, and hurry is exactly what the countdown was built to create.

Some questions to share, at the table or on a call. Can each of you remember a time when you made a decision quickly because of a countdown, a "last chance" message or someone saying "only today", and how did you feel about it afterwards? What would a family 24-hour rule look like for you: which decisions would it cover, and who could each person call during those 24 hours? And how can you make it easy, in your family, to say "I nearly did something" without being afraid of the answer?

Here is something small to practise together. Write your own version of Tess's 24-hour rule on a card or inside the cover of a notebook, in words that each person in the family agrees with. Then agree on one simple sentence that anyone can say when they feel hurried by an offer, such as "I have a rule, I will decide tomorrow." Practise saying it out loud once, so that the words are ready on the night someone needs them.