Chapter four
Jessica
The packet is exactly where I left it, on the counter beside the fruit bowl, Jon's identical folder stacked on top, a little tower of things I've aggressively ignored.
"Five minutes," I tell it. "I'll skim you, confirm you're nonsense, and then we're breaking up."
I make tea first, because procrastination, then pull the folder over intending to be disappointed. I'm not. It's gorgeous — heavy matte pages, deep forest and cream, that mountain-and-crescent crest embossed so it catches the light. It opens like an expensive book.
The welcome letter is warm, less stiff than the envelopes: an offer like this arrives without warning, it says, and the orientation exists precisely because they don't expect anyone to commit to a place they've never seen.
Come look, then decide. There's a scholarship breakdown — tuition, housing, meals, travel, and a personal stipend listed with a number that makes me choke on my tea.
An itinerary detailed in a way scams never are: a week, guided tours, sessions on the academy's history, free time, a closing day where you decide whether to enroll or go home.
The accommodations are an old castle out on the land called Lufgard, described almost apologetically as "more like camping indoors than a hotel," which sounds like a compliment in my mind.
And the mountains. God, the mountains. Page after page of Swiss Alps that don't look real — snow-dusted peaks, meadows stitched with wildflowers, a lake so clear it's basically a mirror.
There's a trail switchbacking up a ridge, and I lean closer, the way I did with that paw print, like I could climb into the picture if I tried hard enough.
Near the back, a small photo of Professor Jon Matthias — not smiling, patient and a little amused, like a man who knew he'd end up on my counter. I move on quickly. I am not thinking about the forearms. Closed matter.
Then I go hunting for the catch, because there's always a catch — the asterisk, the dagger, the "nominal administrative fee" buried in smaller type at the back. I read the FAQ twice. I check the inside cover. I check for the fine print that turns free into forty thousand pounds and a kidney.
There isn't one.
"Where's the catch," I say out loud, to my empty kitchen. My five minutes turned into an hour and a half, my tea's gone stone cold, and I've found nothing wrong with this on paper — which somehow bothers me more than if I had.
I should be focused on the too-good-to-be-true aspect, but I’m not.
You cannot fake that packet. Nobody spends that kind of money on embossing and professional photography to lure in one hiking-store clerk with a sprained ankle and a leopard gecko.
Scammers cast wide, cheap nets; they don't hand-deliver a folder to one person in England.
And Jon's line — we're intentionally private, we prefer personal recruitment — suddenly sounds less like a dodge and more like the kind of old money that says, if you have to look us up, you were never getting in.
I pull the packet back toward me. I've wanted to see Switzerland since I was a kid drawing crooked peaks in my homework margins.
"If this is a scam," I tell the photos, "it's the prettiest one I've ever seen.
" And then I catch myself tracing that switchbacking trail, wondering what's over the ridge, half-planning which layers I'd pack — and I shut the folder like it burned me.
"Absolutely not. We are not imagining the hiking. That's how they get you."
Teeth brushed, lights off, I check my horoscope one last time.
Sagittarius. The universe is holding a door open. Say yes to the unexpected — a change of scenery may be exactly what your spirit needs.
I stare at it.
"Seriously?"
Because come on. A mysterious scholarship. Switzerland. A professor showing up at my job. And now the universe is holding a door open?
I read it again, slower this time.
Maybe this is a sign.
Maybe the universe has been trying to shove me through this particular door for two weeks, and I've been standing on the other side with my arms crossed.
"Okay," I whisper to the ceiling. "I hear you."
And I laugh at myself.
I call Jon the next morning.
He picks up on the second ring. "Jessica." Not a question. He sounds like he's smiling, damn him.
"I'm still skeptical," I say, straight past hello. "On the record. Your FAQ answered the boring questions, so now you're stuck with the real ones."
"I'd be disappointed if you weren't. Coffee? You strike me as someone who interrogates better in person."
The Copper Kettle smells like espresso and cinnamon, and he's already there with two mugs and a leather notebook — and he stands when I walk in, which nobody does anymore. "I ordered you a tea. I hope that was okay."
"That's deeply presumptuous. Also correct, thank you."
He opens the notebook to a blank page. "Your list. I'll answer everything I honestly can."
I start with the big one. "Why me. I’m nobody. What put my name on your very expensive letterhead?"
The flicker again, there and gone. "You qualified through a partnership we maintain.
How that identification works is exactly the kind of thing I'd rather explain in full, in context, at orientation — told in pieces it sounds stranger than it is.
But honestly: it isn't random, it isn't a mistake, and you weren't the only one.
I wouldn't have flown to a hiking store for someone who didn't meet the criteria.
" Still not really an answer. But a more honest version than last time, so I file it — come back to this — and move on.
He answers the rest plainly. A small cohort, fewer than a dozen. Not a test, nobody grading me — the whole point is for me to evaluate them. Everything's free because the academy has resources most schools only dream of and decided talent shouldn't be filtered by who can afford a plane ticket.
I open my mouth to argue and, annoyingly, close it.
"And if I hate it?"
"We fly you home. That day, if you want.
No pressure, no follow-up letters — I'll call the admissions office off myself.
The worst realistic outcome here is a free week in the Alps with people who'll be gracious when you leave.
" Every time I steer toward deeper water — what makes this place so unusual — he just smiles and says some version of, "That'll make far more sense on the actual mountain than across a coffee table," and somehow makes the deferral feel like a courtesy.
I don't fully trust it. But I believe him, which is a different thing.
We're wrapping up when I remember the last one. "Okay. Weirdest thing you'll hear all day. I have a leopard gecko. Pickles. Extremely judgmental. And I don't have a single person I trust to watch him for a week."
Jon smiles — the first fully unguarded one I've gotten. "That's a first."
He actually considers it. "Students can't keep pets in the dorms. But faculty housing is separate — the professors have real homes on campus. Bring him. I'll keep him with me during orientation; you can check on him whenever you like."
"You'd babysit a judgmental lizard for a week?"
"It's only a week."
"And if I decide to stay?"
"Then we sort out something permanent. A housing exception, a place nearby that allows reptiles or, if Pickles and I have become inseparable by then, we negotiate shared custody."
A laugh bursts out of me.
"I make no long term promises," he says, perfectly deadpan, gathering his notebook. "I haven't met him yet."
And that's the one that gets me — because somewhere in the last hour I stopped interrogating a recruiter and started having coffee with a person.
The only obstacle left is work, and I say so.
"Talk to your manager." He offers his hand, warm and callused in a way I don't expect from a professor.
"Thank you for the questions. They were good ones. "
I brace for a fight and don't get one. My manager listens with his arms crossed, and then his whole face changes.
"A free week in Switzerland? On a scholarship?
Jess, why are you still standing here. Go.
I'll juggle the schedule, Nadia'll cover.
" He shakes his head. "You spend all day telling other people to go have the adventure.
Take your own advice for once." I don't have an argument for that either.
So I call Jon that evening, before I can overthink it. "Okay. Time off's approved. I'm in — for orientation. One week. That's all I'm agreeing to. One week, an open mind, and a lizard."
"That's all we're asking. Just come with an open mind, Jessica. That's the only thing that actually matters."
"No promises."
He laughs, quiet and warm. "No promises. Give my regards to Pickles."
I hang up. The packet's still on the counter, and I pull it over one more time — to the mountains, the impossible lake, that trail switchbacking up into someplace I'm apparently about to go.
A week ago I nearly threw it out with a pizza flyer.
There's still a piece of me that knows there's something under all of this he isn't saying.
But he never once pushed. He offered to keep my lizard.
And Switzerland's been on my list my whole life.
"One week," I say to the packet, the mountains, the strange, calm, forearm-having professor and his school full of secrets. Then I grin, because underneath all the skepticism I am — God help me — excited. "Let's see what you've got."