13 Little Blue Envelopes(60)

“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 anything.”

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.

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“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, 275

and then they’d come down and stolen the bags. And they’d watched them go.

Everything was gone. All her swampy clothes. And all of

the envelopes. Including the last, unopened one. Her explanation had just zipped up the side of a Greek hill on a red scooter.

Ginny dug her toes into the sand.

“I’m going to go swim again,” she said. She reached into her pocket and produced her only two remaining possessions, her passport and her Barclaycard. She had moved these there for safekeeping on one of the trains. She passed them to Emmett and walked to the water.

This time, she just left everything on as she walked back into the warm waves. She felt her shirt and shorts balloon up with water as she got deeper, and as the water pulled away, they suctioned to her body. All the early morning gray and lavender was burning off fast, and a bright blue sky blossomed above her.

It was matched by the color of the sea. In fact, she could just about tell where the horizon was. She was in the water, and the water was in the sky—it was kind of like she was at the beginning and end of everything.

Nigel waded out to her after a few minutes.

“You all right?” he asked, looking concerned.

Ginny started to laugh.

276





The Only ATM on Corfu

It took about an hour to stop Carrie from raving and frantically pacing up and down the beach. Then they scrabbled (with a considerably lighter load) back up the steps cut into the sandy-colored rock to the road. They began walking back in what they guessed was the direction of the town. There was really nothing to indicate this, except that there seemed to be more hibiscus plants in that direction, and Emmett thought he saw something that might be a phone booth up ahead. It turned out to be a rock, but Ginny could understand how he made the mistake. It was kind of square.

The sun had pulled itself up high in the sky with surprising speed. The heat, combined with their exhaustion and Carrie’s sporadic crying, made the going slow and somewhat painful.

After a while, they could see massive modern hotels in the far, far distance and white churches and houses on points high above, jutting out over the water. About a mile up the road, 277

they came to a clump of buildings. It turned out not to be Corfu Town, but a small village with a few small hotels and restaurants.

Everything was white. Blinding, hot white. All the buildings.

All the walls. The stones that paved the ground had even been painted white. Only the doorways and shuttered windows stood out with sudden bursts of red or yellow or blue. They walked down a tiny path shaded on both sides by little trees that looked like someone had grabbed them by the top branches and twisted them like corkscrews. They were full of little green fruits, some of which had dropped and splattered open on the stones. Nigel cheerfully pointed out that they were olive trees, and Carrie, much less cheerfully, told him to shut up.

Ginny picked up a split olive from the ground. She had

never seen an olive that looked like this—it was like a little lime, hard, with a skin. Nothing like those little green things with the red speck that you were supposed to drop in martini glasses.