13 Little Blue Envelopes. Maureen Johnson
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them, through a cottony veil of clouds, was a patchwork of green squares. Land. This plane was actually going to land, and they were going to make her get out. In a foreign country. Ginny had never been anywhere more exotic than Florida, and nowhere by herself.
She pried the package from her own grip and set it on her lap. The time had clearly come to open it. Time to find out what Aunt Peg had planned for her.
She pulled open the seal and reached inside.
The package contained a collection of envelopes much like the first. They were all blue. They were made of heavy paper. Good quality. The kind from one of those boutique paper stores. The front of each envelope was either illustrated in pen and ink or watercolor, and they were bundled together with an overstretched rubber band that had been doubled around them.
More importantly, they were each marked with a number, starting with two and running to thirteen. Envelope 2 had an illustration of a bottle, with a label that read OPEN ME ON THE PLANE.
So she did.
Dear Ginger,
How was 4th Noodle? It’s been a while, huh? I hope you had some ginger dumplings for me.
I’m well aware that I owe you an explanation about a lot of things, Gin. But let me start by telling you about my life in New York, before I left, two years ago.
I guess you know that I caught a lot of flak from your mom (because she cares for her wayward little sister) for never having a “real job,” and not being married, and not having kids and a house and a dog. But I was okay with that. I thought I was doing things right and other people were doing them wrong.
One November day, though, I was riding on the subway up to my new temp job. That blind guy with the accordion who rides the 6 train was playing the Godfather theme song right in my ear, just like he did every other time in my life I’ve ever taken the 6. And then I got off at 33rd Street and bought myself a cup of burned, stale coffee from the closest deli for 89 cents, just like I did every other time I went for a temp job.
That day I was going to a job in an office in the Empire State Building. I have to confess, Gin…I get a little romantic about the old Empire State. Just looking at it makes me want to play some Frank Sinatra tunes and sway a little. I have a crush on a building. I’d been in there several times but never to work. I always knew there were offices in there, but that fact never penetrated, really. You don’t work in the Empire State Building. You propose in the Empire State Building. You sneak a flask up there and raise a toast to the whole city of New York.
And as I walked up to it and realized that I was about to enter that beautiful building to file or make copies—I stopped. Too quickly, actually. The guy behind me walked right into me.
Something had seriously gone wrong if I was going into the Empire State for that.
That was how it all started, Gin. It was right there on the 33rd Street sidewalk. I never went to work that day. I turned around, got back on the 6, and went home. As much as I loved my apartment, something in me was saying…it’s time! Time to go! Like that rabbit in Alice in Wonderland who runs past saying, “I’m late!”
Late for what, I couldn’t really tell you. But this feeling was so intense, I couldn’t shake it. I called in sick. I wandered around my apartment in circles. Something wasn’t right about what I was doing. I’d been comfortable in my apartment for too long. I was doing boring jobs.
I thought about all the artists I’d admired. What did they do? Where did they live? Well, for the most part, they lived in Europe.
What if I just went to Europe? Right then? The people I admired had sometimes starved and scraped their way along, but it had helped them create. I wanted to create.
By that night, I had purchased my ticket to London. I borrowed $500 from a friend to do it. I gave myself three days to get everything settled. I picked up the phone to call you a few times, but I didn’t know what to say. Where I was going…why…I had no answers. And I didn’t know how long I’d be gone.
This is the position you are in right now. You are about to go to England with no idea of what’s in store for you. Your path, your instructions, are in these envelopes. Here’s the catch: You may only open them one at a time and only once you’ve completed the task in each letter. I am relying on your honesty—you could open them all now, and I’d certainly never know. But I’m serious, Gin. It won’t work unless you open them exactly as I’ve said.
On landing, your first task is to get from the airport to where you’ll be staying. To do this, you’ll need to take the underground, otherwise known as the tube (in American, the subway). I’ve enclosed a £10 note for this. It’s the orange thing with the queen on it.
You need to get to the stop called Angel, which is on the Northern Line. You’ll be in a part of London called Islington. When you get out, you’ll be on Essex Road. Go right. Walk for about a minute until you reach Pennington Street. Hang left and look for 54a.
Knock. Wait for someone to open door. Rinse and repeat as necessary until door opens.
Love,
Your Runaway Aunt
P.S.
You will notice that an ATM card for Barclays Bank is also in this envelope. Of course, it wouldn’t be safe to write the PIN number down. When you get to 54a, ask the person who lives there, “What did you sell to the queen?” The answer to that question is the PIN. When you’ve solved that, you may open #3.
She was standing somewhere in Heathrow Airport. She’d been shuffled off the plane, had pulled the notorious backpack from the luggage carousel, waited in an hour-long line to get her passport stamped, and been ignored by some customs officers. Now she was staring at a London tube map.
It looked like a nursery school poster designed to attract the eyes of toddlers. It was stark white, with bright primary-colored lines snaking around it. The stops had solid-sounding names, like Old Street and London Bridge. Royal sounding: Earl’s Court, Queensway, Knightsbridge. Entertaining: Elephant & Castle, Oxford Circus, Marylebone. And there were names she recognized: Victoria Station, Paddington (where the bear lived), Waterloo. And there was Angel. To get there, she’d have to change at a place called Kings Cross.
She pulled out her £10 note, found a ticket machine, and followed the instructions. She walked up to one of the entrance aisles and faced a pair of metal doors, almost like saloon doors. She looked around, unsure of what to do next. She tried to push the gate gently, but nothing happened. Then she saw a woman next to her put her ticket into a slot on the little metal box next to her, and the doors opened. Ginny did the same. The machine sucked in the ticket with a satisfying swoosh, and the doors clapped open and she passed through.
Everyone was moving in the same direction, so she kept going, trying not to stumble against the backs of the bags other people were wheeling. When the train slid up to the stark white platform, she didn’t think to unhook herself from the pack, so when she got on, she could only fit on the very edge of a seat.
It wasn’t like the subway she had taken in New York. These were much nicer. The doors made pleasant bonging noises as they opened, and a British voice warned her to “mind the gap.”
The train moved aboveground. They were riding along behind houses. Then it was back underground, where the stations became more crowded. All kinds of people shuffled on and off, some with maps and backpacks, others with folded newspapers or books and blank expressions.
The cooing British voice said, “Angel,” a few stops later. She couldn’t turn around, so she had to