13 Little Blue Envelopes(57)

“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.

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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 super—

market, 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 R?dbyhavn, 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.

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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 262

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 irrele-vant. 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