13 Little Blue Envelopes(35)

Okay. I’m going to stop complaining now. You know I

miss you, and I promise I’ll mail this soon.

Love,

Gin

A few hours into the trip, the woman said something about bed in two languages, and then everyone else in the cabin stood up.

There was a lot of pushing around of stuff, and in the process, Ginny got squeezed out of the cabin. When she re-entered, there were six big shelves there. Judging from the fact that Mr.

Generic Europe was stretched out on one, Ginny guessed these were supposed to be beds.

There was a lot of awkward shuffling around as people figured out which ones they should take. Ginny got an upper one.

Then the German woman snapped out the overhead lights.

Some of the others turned on little personal lights that were built into the wall. But Ginny had nothing to read or do, so she remained in the dark, looking at the ceiling.

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There was no way she was going to be able to sleep on some jiggling surfboard sticking out of a wall. Especially since the German woman kept sliding open the window, and Mr.

Generic Europe kept closing it halfway. Then one of the backpackers said something in Spanish and then said, “Do you

mind?” in English and pointed at the window. When she

closed it all the way, no one put up a fuss. The German woman opened it again anyway, and the cycle went on throughout the night.

Morning came suddenly, and people started going in and out of the couchette with toothbrushes. Ginny rolled over and swung her legs off her surfboard, carefully toeing the ground. When she returned from washing up in the cramped and kind of dark bathroom, the beds were magically folded back into chairs. An hour later, the train stopped and she was shuffling through a huge train station and out onto a wide, sunny boulevard in Paris.

The street signs were little blue plaques on the sides of huge white buildings, frequently obscured by a tree branch, lost in a bunch of other signs, or just impossible to spot. The streets veered off almost constantly. Still, it wasn’t that difficult to find a hostel in the neighborhood that Aunt Peg had recommended. It was in a massive building, some kind of old hospital or junior palace. A woman with stiff black curls behind the front desk, after admonishing Ginny for five minutes about not calling ahead in peak season, told her that though there were no singles left, there was plenty of room in the dorms.

“Do you have sheetz?” the woman asked.

“No . . .”

“Three euros.”

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Ginny handed her three euros, and the woman handed her a big white bag made of a rough cotton.

“Eet will be lockout soon,” the woman said. “But you may

take your sheetz upstairs. You can come back at seex. The door ees locked each night at ten. Eef you are not here at ten, we lock you out. I suggest you take your bag weeth you.”

Ginny took her sheet sack up the stairs and went to the

room at the end of the hall, as she’d been directed. The door was open just a crack, and she pushed it wide to reveal a very large room with skinny, military-style-looking bunks. The floor was covered in small putty-colored tiles that were still wet from a mopping with a strong-smelling cleanser.

Her roommates were still there, gathering their things for the day. They nodded hello to Ginny and exchanged a few

words of greeting, then they went back to their conversation.

She quickly concluded that they were from the same high

school, which was in Minnesota. She knew this because they all knew one another’s names and were talking about what classes they were going to take together. They also kept saying things like, “Oh my God, can you imagine this in Minnesota?” and, “I want to take one of these home to Minnesota.”

Ginny put her bag o’ sheets on one of the empty cots on the other side of the room. She lingered for a minute, adjusting the sack over the little plastic pad that served as a mattress. She wasn’t great with strangers, but today she felt like she could be.

If the girls had seemed interested, she could have gotten into a conversation with them. Maybe she could join them, and they could all go somewhere together.

That was it. That was what she wanted. She and the girls

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from Minnesota could go through Paris together. They’d go to stores and stop at a café. They’d probably want to go to a club or something. Ginny had never been to a club but knew from her French textbook that that’s what you did in Europe. So if the Minnesota girls wanted to go, she would go too. They’d all become good friends really quickly.

But the Minnesota girls had different plans and slipped out the door without her. A screeching voice came over the loudspeaker and told everyone in French and English that they had better get out or there would be some kind of hell to pay. Ginny picked up her bag and left, alone.

Once she was out on the street, she soon passed a metro station with one of the famous, curling green metal entrances and, lacking a better plan, descended. The Paris metro map was a bigger, more troubled cousin of the London map. However, the Louvre was easy to find. The stop was called Louvre. That was a good hint.

Her French textbook had assured her that the Louvre was

big, but nothing prepared her for just how big. She waited in line for two hours to get in through the massive glass pyramid entrance. Inside the Louvre, there was a certain safety. It was okay to be a tourist. Everywhere she looked, people were poring over the floor plan, reading guidebooks, digging into backpacks.