It was assumed that this was just another Aunt Peg escapade. A month went by. Then two. Then the spring semester was over. Then it was summer. Aunt Peg was simply gone. Then came a few postcards, basic assurances that she was doing well. They were postmarked from a variety of places—England, France, Italy—but they contained no explanations.
So Aunt Peg was exactly the kind of person who would send her to England alone, with a package from a Chinese restaurant. That wasn’t so odd.
The odd part was that Aunt Peg had been dead for three months.
That last fact was a little hard to swallow. Aunt Peg was the most lively person Ginny had ever known. She was also only thirty-five years old. That number was stuck in Ginny’s head because her mother kept repeating it over and over. Only thirty-five. Lively thirty-five-year-olds weren’t supposed to die. But Aunt Peg had. The phone call had come from a doctor in England explaining that Aunt Peg had developed cancer—that it had come quickly, that everything had been tried but nothing could be done.
The news…the illness…it was all very distant to Ginny. Somehow, she’d never really believed it. Aunt Peg was still out there somewhere in her mind. And Ginny was somehow speeding toward her in this plane. Only Aunt Peg could make something like this happen. Not that Ginny hadn’t had to do her part. First, she’d had to convince herself that she could follow what seemed like an obvious flight of insanity from an aunt who wasn’t known for her reliability. Once she’d done that, she had to convince her parents of the same thing. Major international treaties had been negotiated in less time.
But now she was here. No going back now.
The plane was cold. Very cold. The lights were down, and it was completely black outside the small windows. Everyone but Ginny seemed to be asleep, including the people to either side of her. She couldn’t move without waking them up. Ginny wrapped herself in the tiny and ineffectual airline blanket and clutched the package to her chest. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to open it yet. Instead, she’d spent most of the night looking out of her darkened airplane window at a long shadow and several blinking lights, at first thinking she was looking at the coast of New Jersey and then maybe Iceland or Ireland. It wasn’t until the dawn, when they were just about to land, that she saw that the whole time she’d been looking at the wing.
Below 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.
