13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

  The Blue Envelope Gang

  It was noon the next day, and they were all recovering on Hippo’s beach. Ginny sat in the cold, shallow sand and felt the wooden boards that supported the beach just under her fingertips. The sky was mostly gray, and the buildings around them were Danish canal houses and seven-hundred-year-old countinghouses, but everyone was acting like it was spring break in Palm Beach. People were sleeping on the sand in bathing suits and a large group was playing volleyball.

  She scooped up some of the sand in the empty eleventh envelope, slid the letter back in, and absently folded the flap closed.

  Ginny turned to her companions and said, “I’ve got to go to Greece. Someplace called Corfu. And I have to go right now.”

  Emmett looked over.

  “Why do you have to go to Greece?” he asked. “And why now?”

  It was a reasonable enough question, and the asking had attracted the attention of the others.

  “I have these letters,” she said, holding up the sand-filled envelope. “They’re from my aunt. It’s kind of a game. She sent me here. The letters tell me where I have to go and what I have to do, and when I’m done, I can open the next one.”

  “You’re kidding,” Carrie said. “Your aunt is ace! Where is she? At home or here?”

  “She’s…gone. I mean, she died. But that’s okay. I mean…”

  She shrugged to try to show them that she was all right with the question.

  “So,” Bennett said, “are there a lot of these letters?”

  “Thirteen. This is number eleven. Almost to the end.”

  “And you don’t know where you’re going or what you have to do until you open them?”

  “Nope.”

  The effect was kind of remarkable and seemed to solidify in the Australians’ minds the idea that Ginny was a very special being. This was a very foreign feeling, and not a bad one.

  “Well,” Carrie said, “can we go?”

  “Go?”

  “To Greece. With you?”

  “You want to come with me?”

  “Greece sounds good. We’re done here, anyway. We could use some sun. We have rail passes. Why not?”

  And so, the matter was decided. Ten minutes later, they were shaking the sand off themselves and back onto Hippo’s little beach and heading inside to get their things. In twenty minutes, they were online in Hippo’s lounge, booking seats on a train. Because Bennett, Emmett, Nigel, and Carrie all had Eurail passes, their route to Greece was restricted to certain trains at certain times. And because there were four of them and one of Ginny, their needs came first. Their route would take them through Germany, through Austria for a short while, then they would cut into Italy, finally stopping at Venice. It would take twenty-five hours.

  Within a half hour, they were in a Copenhagen supermarket, filling a basket with fruit, bottled water, tiny cheeses sealed in wax, cookies…anything they could think of that might sustain them for twenty-five hours on board a train. And one and a half hours later, they were leaving Copenhagen for another Danish city called Rødbyhavn, which Ginny wasn’t even going to try to pronounce. It seemed to consist only of the ferry terminal, a big, windy building. There they caught a small ferry to Puttgarden, Germany, which took about three minutes. In Puttgarden, they stood on a lonely train platform, where a sleek-looking train stopped and accepted them. They squished into a set of seats meant for four people.

  As Ginny saw it, Germany was a Pizza Hut in Hamburg where she burned the roof of her mouth from eating too fast. She and Carrie got lost trying to find the women’s bathroom in Frankfurt. Nigel accidentally knocked over an elderly woman as he ran for the train in Munich.

  The rest was just train. In her dazed state, she remembered looking out of a window at a bright blue sky against gray mountains with white peaks soaring in the distance. Then there were miles and miles of green and fields of long, slender grasses and purple flowers. Three sudden rainstorms. Gas stations. Colorful cottages that looked like something out of The Sound of Music. Rows of plain brown houses.

  After the twelfth hour, Ginny began to suspect that if she sat like this much longer, hunched over with Carrie’s jacket behind her head, she would be shrimp-shaped the rest of her life. Somewhere in what Ginny guessed was the north of Italy, the air conditioner died. A valiant attempt was made to open their windows, but to no avail. It didn’t take long before the heat began to collect in the car, and a light but definitely funky smell hung in the still air. The train got slower. Some announcements were made about a strike somewhere. Patience was requested. The funk got funkier.

  They stopped entirely for half an hour, and when they started again, the conductor asked that nobody use the bathroom.

  They arrived at Venice with only fifteen minutes to spare and no idea where they were. They took their cues from the signs, trying to find the exit. Once out on the street, they piled into a small, unmarked cab, and then they were speeding down the empty streets at what felt like a hundred fifty miles an hour. A strong ocean breeze came in through the open windows as they flew, buffeting Ginny’s face and causing her eyes to tear up.

  And in another moment, they were all getting on a big red boat.

  They were deck passengers. That meant they could sit in a chair in the lounge (already full), a chair on the deck (all taken), or the deck itself. And most of that space had been claimed. They had to walk around the boat twice before they found a narrow slice of deck between a lifeboat and a wall. Ginny stretched out as far as she could, grateful to be in the open air.

  She woke up feeling a midday sun hanging right above her eyes. The heat penetrated her eyelids. She could feel an uneven sunburn on her face. She got up and stretched, then walked to the side of the boat.

  The boat they were on was part of the “super-speed” line, but it didn’t live up to its name. They slugged through the water at a slow enough pace to allow seabirds to land on the deck, rest, and then take off again. The water under them was a crayon-bright turquoise—the kind of color she’d never believed water could be. Ginny pulled the remaining envelopes from her bag and held them tightly (not that anything moved much—there was almost no breeze). Now the rubber band was irrelevant. It hung slack over the last two. Ginny slipped out the twelfth envelope and wound the band around her wrist.

  The picture on twelve had always puzzled her. It sort of looked like the back of a purple dragon rising from the bottom edge of the envelope. Now that she was on the water, she understood exactly what it was supposed to be—it was an island. Granted, a strange picture of an island, somewhat blurry and completely the wrong color. But it was an island nonetheless.

  She broke the seal and opened it.

  #12

  * * *

  #12

  Ginny,

  Harrods is the kind of thing I think you only find in England. It’s in a beautiful old building. It’s traditional. It’s bizarrely organized and more or less impossible to find anything—but if you look hard enough, everything in the world is in there.

  Including Richard Murphy.

  See, Gin, when I first arrived in London, I was still on my adrenaline rush. But after a few days, I realized that I was homeless, jobless, and broke—which is a really bad combination.

  You know me…when the chips are down, I like to go try on fabulous, expensive things. So I went to Harrods. I spent an entire day having makeup put on me in the cosmetics department, trying on dresses that cost thousands of pounds, sampling perfume. After about eight hours of this, it finally dawned on me that I was a grown woman wandering aimlessly around a store like a little kid. A little kid who had run away from home in a snit. I had done a serious, potentially disastrous thing.

  I was down in the food hall by that point. I saw a tall guy in a suit loading a basket with about fifty containers of incredibly expensive African honey. I wondered to myself, Who does that? So I asked him. And he told me that he was putting together Sting’s holiday baskets. I made some terrible joke about honey an
d stinging, and then…then I started crying. Crying over my whole stupid life and my situation and Sting’s African honey.

  Needless to say, I startled the guy. But he reacted well and sat me down and asked me what was wrong. And I explained that I was a lost, homeless American yo-yo. As it turned out, he had a spare room that he was about to place an ad to rent. He offered to cut me a deal—I could stay there for free until I had some money.

  Since you aren’t stupid, I know that you have already realized this guy was Richard. I moved into his spare room that day.

  Now, I bet I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking: Well, duh, Aunt Peg. What guy isn’t going to take advantage of some moron woman pulling a damsel in distress? And that’s a good question. Admittedly, I was taking a risk. But there was something about Richard that I trusted from the moment I met him. Richard is not exactly like the usual gang of delightful idiots I tend to spend my time with. Richard is practical. Richard likes to have a steady job and a steady life. Richard does not really understand why wall paint comes in any color aside from white. Richard is reliable. Richard never charged me a dime of rent, either.

  It wasn’t long before I had a serious crush going on. And though he tried to be subtle, I knew he liked me, too. And then, after a while, I realized that I loved him.

  We lived with this happy arrangement for a few months. We never acted on it. It was always just there, under the surface, in the way we passed each other the remote control or said things like, “Is that the phone?” I told him I’d always dreamed of having an attic studio in Europe, and do you know what he did? He managed to find an old storage room on one of the uppermost floors of Harrods. He snuck me in every day so I could paint and I kept all my work in a cabinet there.

  Then one night, he did the worst thing possible—he told me how he felt.

  Now, some people—nice, normal, sane people—might be thrilled to know that the great guy that they are in love with loves them back. Because I am not one of these people, I reacted somewhat badly.

  While he was at work one day, I packed up my things and left. I was gone for months on the route that you just followed. But when I knew something was wrong with me, it was Richard I went back to. It was Richard who took care of me. It’s Richard who brings me cans of Coke and ice cream while I sit and write these letters. He makes sure I take my medication at the right times because sometimes I get a little confused.

  Only one more envelope to go, Gin. There is a very important task contained in that envelope—the most critical one of all. Because it is so big and serious, I am leaving it entirely up to you when you decide to open it and take it on.

  Love,

  Your Runaway Aunt

  P.S. Do not go around taking up the offers of strange men who ask you to come live with them. That is not the moral of this story. Besides, your mom would never forgive me.

  * * *

  The Red Scooter

  While Carrie was eagerly poring over the twelfth letter, Ginny held the thirteenth blue envelope up to the Greek sun. (Was it Greek? Was it Italian? Did anyone own it?) She couldn’t see much through it. It wasn’t much larger than any of the others. Felt like two pages. And this one’s drawing was hardly even a drawing—it was the number 13, made to look like oversized typewritten numbers.

  “Well?” Carrie asked, folding up the letter she was reading. “So you’re going to open it now, right? It says you can.”

  Ginny sat back down and leaned back, immediately knocking her head into an oar on the side of the lifeboat behind her.

  “And you obviously want to open it now, right?” Carrie went on. “Right?”

  Ginny fished into the grocery bag. The only thing she could find in there that seemed good was one of the little cheeses. She had to nibble her way through the red wax, and by the time she got to the cheesy goodness, her mouth tasted like warm candle and she wasn’t hungry anymore. She set it aside. One of the guys would eat it.

  “Are fried onion blossoms a real Australian food?” she asked.

  Carrie hopped up and sat down on Ginny’s knees, pushing the grocery bag aside in the process.

  “Oh, come on! Open it!”

  “I don’t get it,” Ginny said. “In the beginning, it kind of made sense. Then it all got kind of random. The one guy I was supposed to meet in Amsterdam wasn’t even there. Then she sent me all the way to Denmark for no reason at all.”

  “There had to be a reason,” Carrie said.

  “I don’t know. My aunt was kind of crazy sometimes. She liked to see what she could get people to do.”

  “Well, you can solve a lot of questions by opening the last one and reading it.”

  “I know.”

  There was going to be something in this last letter. Something she didn’t want to know. She could feel it through the paper. This letter held a lot.

  “I’ll open it when we get there,” she said, pushing Carrie gently off her knees. “I promise.”

  Ginny’s body had adjusted to movement, so when she realized the boat had stopped moving several hours later, she found it a little hard to walk. She swayed a little and bumped into Bennett. They joined the long line of groggy, equally confused fellow passengers, and soon they found themselves on land just before dawn.

  The port was a dismal bunch of concrete buildings. Again, having no real idea where they were, they took a cab waiting by the port office. Emmett spoke to the driver for a moment and then waved everyone in.

  “Where’re we going?” Carrie asked.

  “Not a clue,” he said. “I said we wanted to go somewhere around here with a good beach, and we can’t pay more than three euros each.”

  At first, the land around the road looked scrubby and hard, full of rocks and tough little plants that thrived in intense heat and gravel beds. Then the car turned, and they were on a high road above a vast beach. In front of them was a small town, just waking. Chairs were being put out in front of cafés. Ginny could see fishing boats moving in the distance.

  The driver let them off along the road, pointing to a a set of steps that had been carved out of the side of the cliff that faced the water. The sand below was white, and the beach was empty. They made their way down these broad steps, clutching the rocky wall. As soon as they reached the beach, the guys immediately dropped down on the sand and stretched out to sleep. Carrie cocked an eyebrow at Ginny.

  “I’ll open it in a few minutes,” Ginny said. “I want to walk around first.”

  They left their bags there and climbed over a large rock and found themselves in a small grotto. Carrie whipped off her shirt.

  “I’m swimming,” she said, her hands already working on her bra hooks.

  “Naked?”

  “Come on!” Carrie said. “You’re in Greece. There’s pretty much no one around. They’re asleep.”

  Without waiting for Ginny to make up her mind, Carrie removed the rest of her clothes without a flicker of hesitation and headed for the water. Ginny thought it over for a moment. She needed to shave, seriously. But she did feel kind of gross, and the water looked unbelievable. Besides, her underwear looked pretty bathing suit–like. She would just keep that on. She yanked off her clothes and ran into the water.

  It was warm as a bath. She dipped underwater and watched her braids float above her head, like antennae. Then she put her head above water and sat down on the ground, letting the waves come up over her. Carrie had obviously been cooped up way too long and was in and out of the surf. There was something almost toddler-like about her thrill to be naked.

  When she’d been swept over by enough waves, Ginny pulled herself out of the small trench she was sinking into and made her way back to the rock. Carrie slogged her way out soon after and dropped straight down into the sand.

  “I feel so classical,” she said.

  “What if they wake up?” Ginny asked.

  “What? Them? They’ve been awake for two days, and they’ve been drinking lager all night. They’ll sleep through any
thing.”

  There wasn’t the need to say anything else. There was something so good about the morning that they could be silent and just drink in the sun and enjoy their own behavior. And when she was ready, she would open the last letter.

  Up on the road above, Ginny saw some backpackers on a scooter zip by. Carrie lifted her head and watched them go.

  “My friends who came here last year rented scooters,” she said. “It’s supposed to be the best way to see the islands. We should get one.”

  Ginny nodded. She liked the thought of having a scooter.

  “I’m hungry,” Carrie said. “I’m going to go get some food from my bag. Be right back.”

  “Going to get dressed?”

  “Nope.”

  A few minutes later, Ginny heard Carrie’s voice from the other side of the rock. Something about it sounded wrong.

  “Where did you guys put it? It’s not funny.”

  This got Ginny’s attention. As she scrabbled over the rock, she saw Carrie, still naked (though she was clutching one of the towels to herself), circling around in a strange way. Kind of hysterical. Ginny slid back down and dressed quickly, then gathered up Carrie’s clothes.

  She had a feeling she was walking into a private joke, but the looks on all of their faces immediately told her that wasn’t the case. Tears were streaming down Carrie’s face, and the guys looked groggy but very grave.

  Ginny noticed there were only three packs on the ground—the ones that had been under the guys’ heads as they slept. Carrie’s and Ginny’s were nowhere in sight.

  “Oh God,” Carrie was saying, still doing her hysteria dance. “No. No. You must be joking with me.”

  “We’ll look for them,” Bennett was saying.

  When it hit Ginny, she almost wanted to laugh.

  The guys on the scooter. The fellow backpackers. They were thieves. They’d probably been watching them from the road, and then they’d come down and stolen the bags. And they’d watched them go.