13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

  Discovery: It was possible to take apart a fake palm tree and fit it in a car. In fact, it was possible to take apart a whole set and get it in a car. A little car. A little, white, very dirty Volkswagen. This is how they were “unloading” Starbucks: The Musical.

  “You may be asking yourself, ‘Why is Keith taking these?’” Keith said as he shoved the fronds down into the trunk. “‘Why, he doesn’t even use these in the show.’”

  “I kind of wondered,” Ginny said. (She’d wondered a lot as she’d been dragging one of them down the basement hallway, actually. They were heavy.)

  “Well, I did for a while,” Keith said, looking at the underside of the car and how it was sinking low to the ground under the weight. “I wrote them out. But I have to make sure no one nicks them since the school paid for them. I mean, fake palm trees. Come on. These beat orange traffic cones any day of the week. These things are a prize.”

  He looked down at the pile of costumes that was still on the sidewalk.

  “You get in and I’ll pack this stuff around you,” he said.

  Ginny was duly stuffed in (on the wrong side), and Keith got in on her right. The car didn’t look so good from the outside, but apparently its insides were in perfect working order. As soon as Keith hit the gas, it sprang to life and rocketed to the corner of the street. It squealed slightly as he took the corner and plunged into the traffic on the main road, barely missing being knocked out of the way by a double-decker bus.

  She could tell Keith was one of those guys who loved to drive—he switched through the gears with great intensity and as often as humanly possible and zigzagged his way through the congestion. A black cab was suddenly within inches of them. Ginny was face-to-face with a rather surprised-looking couple, who pointed at her fearfully.

  “Aren’t we a little close?” she said as Keith angled the car even closer to the cab in an attempt to change lanes.

  “He’ll move over,” Keith said lightly.

  They drove through part of Essex Road that Ginny knew.

  “I’m staying around here,” she said.

  “In Islington? Who with?”

  “A friend of my aunt’s.”

  “I’m surprised,” he said. “Thought you were in a big hotel somewhere since you’re an heiress or something.”

  Keith turned down an endless sequence of tiny, dark roads full of houses and anonymous apartment blocks, past brightly fluorescent fish-and-chip shops. Posters and ads were glued to every surface, advertising reggae albums and Indian music. Ginny found herself automatically marking the route in her mind, tracing a pattern of signs, posters, pubs, houses. Not that she would ever come here again, of course. It was just habit.

  They finally stopped on an unlit street with a long row of gray stone houses. He swerved the car and parked at an angle to the curb. There were a lot of wrappers along the sidewalks and bottles in the little yards. A few of the houses were clearly unoccupied, with boards over the windows and signs pasted on the doors.

  Keith came around and opened her door, then pulled out all of the things that wedged her in. He opened the front gate of one of the houses and walked up to a bright red door with a yellow plastic window panel. They unloaded the sloppily packed boxes and bags bit by bit. Once inside, they passed a kitchen and went right to a dark set of stairs, which Keith went up without switching on the light.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a strong smell of old cigarette smoke. Many objects were stuffed onto the landing—a crammed bookcase with a skull on top, a hat stand draped with shoes, a pile of clothes. He kicked these aside and opened the door they sat in front of.

  “My room,” Keith said with a grin.

  Most of the room was red. The carpet was brick red. The saggy sofa was red. The multiple bean bags on the floor were red and black. Flyers for who knew how many student plays covered the walls, along with posters for Japanese animation and comic books. The furniture consisted of plastic packing crates, with the occasional board laid across to make a shelf or table. Books and DVDs were piled everywhere.

  “It is her,” a voice said.

  She turned to face the guy she had attempted to give a ticket to outside the uni—the one with the dreadlocks and the rimless glasses. He was smiling knowingly. Behind him was a blond girl, rail thin, who didn’t look very happy. Her arms poked out of the stylishly shredded shoulders of her black T-shirt like two white pencils. Her eyes were round and deeply colored, and she had a pout. Her white-blond hair looked over-processed to the point of being straw-like and visibly fragile. Yet somehow this damage complemented the wild, sophisticated way she piled it on top of her head.

  Automatically, Ginny looked down at herself—at her long green khaki cargo shorts, the same sneakers, her T-shirt and tiny hoodie. The tourist clothes were even more painful than usual.

  “This is Ginny,” Keith said. “I think you met David. David is my flatmate. And that’s Fiona.”

  “Oh,” Fiona said. “Are you working on the show?”

  It was a reasonable enough question, but Ginny detected an insult buried in it somewhere. She was strangely sure that whatever she said was going to cause Fiona to burst out laughing. Her stomach instantly knotted, and she tried to think of a snappy comeback. After about twenty seconds of thinking about the answer, she finally came up with the knife-sharp, “I don’t know.”

  Fiona twisted her lips into a wan smile. She looked Ginny up and down, her eyes settling on the cargo shorts and then on a long, thin cut that ran across Ginny’s knee. (Packing accident. Late night. Stepladder miscalculation while getting some things out of the top of the closet.)

  “We’re going out,” David said. “See you later.”

  “They’ve been fighting,” Keith said when they were gone. “There’s a shock.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” he said, dumping out a box of Starbucks cups onto the floor. “That’s what they do. They fight. And fight. And fight and fight and fight.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the short version would involve me using a word for her that Americans tend to find very offensive. The long version is that David wants to leave university and go to cooking school. He’s gotten in, has a grant and everything. That’s his dream. But Fiona wants him to go to Spain with her.”

  “Spain?”

  “She’s going to work as a rep,” he said. “A tour guide, basically. She wants him to go, even though he needs to be here. But he’ll go because he does everything she tells him to. We used to be good mates, but not anymore. It’s all about Fiona now.”

  He shook his head, and Ginny got the feeling that this wasn’t just talk—he seemed really bothered by it. But she was still caught up on the fact that Fiona was going to work in Spain. Who just decided they were going to work in Spain? Ginny hadn’t even been allowed to get a job until last summer, and that was only at the SnappyDrug down the street. One entire painful summer of stocking razor refills and asking people if they wanted to sign up for the SnappyCard. And here was Fiona, who couldn’t be much older than she was, running off to sunny Spain. Ginny tried to imagine that conversation. I’m so sick of the mall…. Think I’ll go get a job at that Gap in Madrid.

  Everyone else’s life was more interesting than hers.

  “She’s pretty,” Ginny said.

  She had no idea why she said this. It was true, more or less. Fiona was elegant and striking. (Okay, she looked a little like she had recently been raised from the dead—bony, shock-white hair, shredded clothes—but in a good way, of course.)

  “She looks like a cotton swab,” Keith said dismissively. “She has no known personality and horrible taste in music. You should hear the utter crap she plays when she’s here. You, however, have taste.”

  The switch in topic caught Ginny off guard.

  “So,” he said, “what was it about my show that made you want to buy up all the tickets? Was it that you wanted me all to yourself?”

  Not surprisingly, she couldn’t
speak. This wasn’t just her normal nervous reaction—it was because Keith had slid over on his knees and was now leaning over his coffee table box, his face only a foot or so from hers.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Isn’t it? Command performance?”

  He was smiling now. There was some kind of dare in his eyes. And for some reason, the only impulse Ginny had was to reach into her pocket, clutch the money in a tight grip, and drop it on the table. It slowly unballed itself, like a small purple monster that had just hatched. Little tiny pictures of the queen sprouted everywhere.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s for your show,” she said. “Or whatever. Another show. It’s just for you.”

  He sat back on his heels and looked at her.

  “You’re just giving me…” He picked up the money, flattened it out, and counted it. “One hundred and forty pounds?”

  “Oh…” She reached into her pocket and fished out two pound coins. It had to be one hundred forty-two. As she reached for the table to add these to the pile, she realized that the entire atmosphere in the room had just changed. Whatever conversation they might have been going to have was now canceled. Her strange, sudden gesture had shorted it out.

  Clunk. Clunk. She added the two pounds.

  Silence followed.

  “I should probably get back,” she said quietly. “I know the way.”

  Keith opened his mouth to speak, then rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand, as if wiping a comment away.

  “Let me drive you,” he said. “I don’t think you should go back by yourself.”

  They didn’t speak on the ride. Keith turned the radio up loud. As soon as she was on the sidewalk in front of Richard’s house, she said her goodbyes and got out as quickly as she could.

  Her heart was going to explode. It was going to blast itself out of her chest and land on the sidewalk like a heaving, desperate fish. It would keep beating as long as it could, bouncing along the discarded wrappers and cigarette butts until it had calmed itself down. Then she’d go and get it and reinstall it. She saw the whole thing very clearly. Much more clearly than she could picture what had just happened to her.

  Why…why in the middle of what was possibly her first real romantic moment…had she decided that the correct response was to throw a handful of money on the table? Sweaty, balled-up money and coins? And then ask to leave?

  Miriam was going to kill her. Either that or she was going to haul her off to the home for the incurably stupid and romantically hopeless and leave her there forever. And that was fine. That was where she belonged. She could live with her own kind there.

  She looked up at Richard’s windows. The lights were off. He had gone to bed early. If he had been awake, she might have even talked this over with him. Maybe he could reassure her, explain a way to undo what she had just done. But he was asleep.

  She dug the keys out of the crack in the step, wrestled with the locks, and let herself inside. She went to her room and, without switching on any lights, dug the packet of envelopes out of the front of her bag and pulled out the top one. She held it up to the streetlight’s glow coming in through the window. This next letter was covered in a pen-and-ink drawing of a castle high on a hill and the small figure of a girl on a path at its base.

  “Okay,” Ginny said softly. “Forget it. Moving on. What’s next?”

  #4

  * * *

  #4

  Dear Gin,

  Ever see one of those kung fu movies where the student travels to the remote outpost where the Master lives?

  Maybe not. I only have because my sophomore-year roommate was kung fu obsessed. But you get the idea—Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts, Luke Skywalker goes to Yoda. That’s what I’m talking about. The student goes off to get schooled.

  I did it myself. After a few months in London, I decided to go and meet my idol, the painter Mari Adams. I’d wanted to meet her my entire life. My dorm room in college was covered in pictures of her work. (And pictures of her. She’s very…distinctive.)

  I don’t know exactly what made me do it. I knew I needed help with my art, and I suddenly realized that she wasn’t that far away. Mari lives in Edinburgh, which is grand and spooky. Edinburgh Castle is a thousand years old or so and sits high up smack in the middle of the city on a big rock called The Mound. The entire city is ancient and strange, full of twisted little alleys called wynds. Murders, ghosts, political intrigue…these things permeate Edinburgh.

  So I got on a train and went there. And she let me in. She even let me stay for a few days.

  I want you to meet her too.

  That’s the entire task. I don’t need to be more specific. You don’t need to ask her anything. Mari is the Master, Gin, and she’ll know what you need even if you don’t. Her kung fu is that powerful. Trust me on this one. School is in session!

  Love,

  Your Runaway Aunt

  * * *

  The Runner

  Some people believe that they are guided by forces, that the universe cuts paths for them through the dense forest of life, showing them where to go. Ginny did not believe for a second that the whole universe was bending itself to her will. She did, however, entertain a slightly more specific and far-fetched idea—Aunt Peg had done this. She had known the unknowable. She was sending Ginny to the very place that Keith had to go to anyway to work out some details for his show.

  This sometimes happened with Aunt Peg. She had a weird way of knowing things, an uncanny sense of timing. When Ginny was a kid, Aunt Peg had always managed to call whenever Ginny needed her: when she had a fight with her parents, whenever she was sick, when she needed advice. So, it wasn’t a complete shock that she would have somehow plotted for Ginny to go to Edinburgh, that she would have known that Ginny would somehow blow the whole thing with the money and give her a second chance.

  But did this really mean anything? Sure, in a purely hypothetical sense, she could even ask him if he wanted to go with her. If she were someone other than herself, that was. Miriam would do it. Lots of people would do it. She wouldn’t. She wanted to, more than anything, but she wouldn’t.

  For a start, the mysterious benefactor task was done. She had no possible excuse for seeing Keith. Plus, she’d already made things weird with the money. And besides…how did you just invite someone to go to another country with you? (Even if it wasn’t really that much of another country. It sounded like going to Canada. Not that big of a deal. Not like David and Fiona and the whole Spain thing.)

  She spent the entire day at the house, debating the issue with herself. First, she watched TV. British television seemed to consist mostly of makeover shows. Garden makeovers. Fashion makeovers. House makeovers. Everything relating to change. It seemed like a hint. Change something. Make a move.

  She turned off the television and looked around the living room.

  She would clean, that’s what she would do. Cleaning often relaxed her. She did the dishes, brushed the crumbs off the table and chairs, folded the clothes…anything she could think of. She spent a good half hour examining the strange machine with the small glass window and the alphabetical dial that was under the counter in the kitchen. At first, it looked like a very odd oven. It took her a while to realize it was a washing machine.

  By five o’clock, the feeling wouldn’t leave her. That was when Richard called to say he would be home late. She couldn’t sit anymore.

  She would just walk. She would walk just to prove to herself that she had learned the way there. It wasn’t far. She would walk there, look at the house, and then walk back. Then at least she could tell herself she had gone. It was pathetic, but it was better than nothing.

  She wrote a quick note to Richard and headed out. She carefully retraced the route as best she could. Newsagents…yellow cones in the middle of the road…the zigzagging lines in the street…it was all there, somewhere in her head. But soon, the houses all looked the same. They all looked like Keith’s house.

  Sh
e turned a corner and got the sign she needed—namely, David. He was on the sidewalk, clutching his cell phone against his head. He was pacing back and forth in front of the gate and he didn’t sound very happy. He just kept saying “no” and “fine” over and over in a way that seemed very ominous.

  Ginny was close to the house by the time she realized it was him. She thought about backing away and waiting until he’d gone back inside, but he’d seen her approach. She couldn’t just run. That would be weird. She could only keep walking, slowly, cautiously, toward him. As Ginny reached the gate, he went silent. Then he hung up with an angry, snapping gesture and sat down on the low front garden wall and put his head in his hands.

  “Hi?” she said.

  “That’s it.” He shook his head. “I’m not going. I told her. I told her I don’t want to go to Spain.”

  “Oh,” Ginny said. “Well. Good. For you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding heavily. “It is good. I mean, I’ve got to start my life here, don’t I?”

  “Right.”

  David nodded once more, then broke down into heaving sobs. There was a rustling noise above, and Ginny saw the crooked black blinds on Keith’s window rocking back and forth. A moment later, he was down on the sidewalk with them. Keith glanced over at Ginny. She could see his confusion at the two things in front of him—the fact that she was there and that his roommate was dissolving in tears in front of his own house. For a second, she actually felt guilty, until she remembered that this wasn’t her fault.

  “Right,” Keith said, striding over to his car and opening the passenger door. “Get in. Come on.”

  Ginny wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Neither was David. They looked at each other.

  “Both of you,” Keith said. “Brick Lane time.”

  A few minutes later, she was part of this little group, speeding deeper into East London, where the houses got a little grayer and the signs were written in curvy, totally unknown languages. Indian restaurants lined both sides of the street, and even the air was permeated with the odors of heavy spices, and they all seemed to be open, even at midnight. Colorful lights were strung from building to building, and hawkers stood in doorways, offering free beer or snacks to whoever would come inside. Keith, however, knew exactly where he was going and guided them to a small, very neat little restaurant where there seemed to be four waiters for every customer.