Free 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson Page A

entertain a slightly more specific and far-fetched idea—Aunt Peg had done this. She had known the unknowable. She was sending Ginny to the very place that Keith had to go to anyway to work out some details for his show.
    This sometimes happened with Aunt Peg. She had a weird way of knowing things, an uncanny sense of timing. When Ginny was a kid, Aunt Peg had always managed to call whenever Ginny needed her: when she had a fight with her parents, whenever she was sick, when she needed advice. So, it wasn’t a complete shock that she would have somehow plotted for Ginny to go to Edinburgh, that she would have known that 93

    Ginny would somehow blow the whole thing with the money and give her a second chance.
    But did this really mean anything? Sure, in a purely hypothetical sense, she could even ask him if he wanted to go with her. If she were someone other than herself, that was.
    Miriam would do it. Lots of people would do it. She wouldn’t.
    She wanted to, more than anything, but she wouldn’t.
    For a start, the mysterious benefactor task was done. She had no possible excuse for seeing Keith. Plus, she’d already made things weird with the money. And besides . . . how did you just invite someone to go to another country with you ? (Even if it wasn’t really that much of another country. It sounded like going to Canada. Not that big of a deal. Not like David and Fiona and the whole Spain thing.)
    She spent the entire day at the house, debating the issue with herself. First, she watched TV. British television seemed to consist mostly of makeover shows. Garden makeovers. Fashion makeovers. House makeovers. Everything relating to change. It seemed like a hint. Change something. Make a move.
    She turned off the television and looked around the living room.
    She would clean, that’s what she would do. Cleaning often relaxed her. She did the dishes, brushed the crumbs off the table and chairs, folded the clothes . . . anything she could think of.
    She spent a good half hour examining the strange machine with the small glass window and the alphabetical dial that was under the counter in the kitchen. At first, it looked like a very odd oven. It took her a while to realize it was a washing machine.
    By five o’clock, the feeling wouldn’t leave her. That was when 94

    Richard called to say he would be home late. She couldn’t sit anymore.
    She would just walk. She would walk just to prove to herself that she had learned the way there. It wasn’t far. She would walk there, look at the house, and then walk back. Then at least she could tell herself she had gone. It was pathetic, but it was better than nothing.
    She wrote a quick note to Richard and headed out. She carefully retraced the route as best she could. Newsagents . . .
    yellow cones in the middle of the road . . . the zigzagging lines in the street . . . it was all there, somewhere in her head. But soon, the houses all looked the same. They all looked like Keith’s house.
    She turned a corner and got the sign she needed—namely, David. He was on the sidewalk, clutching his cell phone against his head. He was pacing back and forth in front of the gate and he didn’t sound very happy. He just kept saying “no” and “fine”
    over and over in a way that seemed very ominous.
    Ginny was close to the house by the time she realized it was him. She thought about backing away and waiting until he’d gone back inside, but he’d seen her approach. She couldn’t just run. That would be weird. She could only keep walking, slowly, cautiously, toward him. As Ginny reached the gate, he went silent. Then he hung up with an angry, snapping gesture and sat down on the low front garden wall and put his head in his hands.
    “Hi?” she said.
    “That’s it.” He shook his head. “I’m not going. I told her. I told her I don’t want to go to Spain.”
    “Oh,” Ginny said. “Well. Good. For you.”
    95

    “Yeah,” he said, nodding heavily. “It is good. I mean,