Maureen Johnson - 13 Little Blue Envelopes

First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers 2006

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

13 Little Blue Envelopes

Copyright © 2005 by Alloy Entertainment and Maureen Johnson

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007319909

EBook Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 9780007372553

Version: 2014-10-03

For Kate Schafer, the greatest traveling companion in the world, and a woman who is not afraid to admit that she occasionally can’t remember where she lives.

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Envelope 1

A Package Like a Dumpling

The Adventures of Aunt Peg

Envelope 2

54a Pennington Street, London

Harrods

Good Morning, England

Richard and the Queen

Envelope 3

The Benefactor

Jittery Grande

Bright Ideas

The Hooligan and the Pineapple

The Not-so-Mysterious Benefactor

Envelope 4

The Runner

The Master and the Hairdresser

The Monsters Attack

Envelopes 5 & 6

The Road to Rome

Virginia and the Virgins

Boys and Cake

Beppe’s Sister

Envelopes 7 & 8

The Surfboard Sleepers

Les Petits Chiens

A Night on the Town

The Best Hotel in Paris

Envelope 9

Charlie and the Apple

Homeless, Homesick, and Diseased

Life with the Knapps

Contact of Various Kinds

The Secret Life of Olivia Knapp

Envelope 10

The Viking Ship

Hippo’s

The Magical Kingdom

Envelope 11

The Blue Envelope Gang

Envelope 12

The Red Scooter

The Only ATM on Corfu

The Runaway Niece

The Green Slippers and the Lady on the Trapeze

The Magical Key to Harrods

The Padded House

Seventy Thousand Burlap Sacks

Lucky Thirteen

Keep Reading

EXTRAS

Acknowledgments

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Rule 1:

You may bring only what fits in your backpack. Don’t try to fake it with a purse or a carry-on.

Rule 2:

You may not bring guidebooks, phrase books, or any kind of foreign language aid. And no journals.

Rule 3:

You cannot bring extra money or credit/debit cards, traveler’s checks, etc. I’ll take care of all of that.

Rule 4:

No electronic crutches. This means no laptop, no cell phone, no music, and no camera. You can’t call home or communicate with people in the U.S. by Internet or telephone. Postcards and letters are acceptable and encouraged.

That’s all you need to know for now. See you at 4th Noodle.

Dear Ginger,

I have never been a great follower of rules. You know that. So it’s going to seem a little odd that this letter is full of rules I’ve written and that I need you to follow.

“Rules to what?” you have to be asking yourself. You always did ask good questions.

Remember how we used to play the “today I live in” game when you were little and used to come visit me in New York? (I think I liked “I live in Russia” best. We always played that one in winter. We’d go to see the Russian art collection at the Met, stomp through the snow in Central Park, then go to that little Russian restaurant in the Village that had those really good pickles and that weird hairless poodle who sat in the window and barked at cabs.)

I’d like to play that game one more time—except now we’re going to be a little more literal. Today’s game is “I live in London.” Notice that I have included $1,000 in cash in this envelope. This is for a passport, a one-way ticket from New York to London, and a backpack. (Keep a few bucks for a cab to the airport.)

Upon booking the ticket, packing the backpack, and hugging everyone good-bye, I want you to go to New York City. Specifically, I want you to go to 4th Noodle, the Chinese restaurant under my old apartment. Something is waiting there for you. Go to the airport right from there.

You will be gone for several weeks, and you will be traveling in foreign lands. These are the aforementioned rules that will guide your travels:

Rule 1: You may bring only what fits in your backpack. Don’t try to fake it out with a purse or a carry-on.

Rule 2: You may not bring guidebooks, phrase books, or any kind of foreign language aid. And no journals.

Rule 3: You cannot bring extra money or credit/debit cards, traveler’s checks, etc. I’ll take care of all that.

Rule 4: No electronic crutches. This means no laptop, no cell phone, no music, and no camera. You can’t call home or communicate with people in the U.S. by Internet or telephone. Postcards and letters are acceptable and encouraged.

That’s all you need to know for now. See you at 4th Noodle.

Love,

Your Runaway Aunt

As a rule, Ginny Blackstone tried to go unnoticed—something that was more or less impossible with thirty pounds (she’d weighed it) of purple-and-green backpack hanging from her back. She didn’t want to think about all the people she’d bumped into while she’d been carrying it. This thing was not made for wearing around New York City. Well, anywhere, really…but especially the East Village of New York City on a balmy June afternoon.

And a chunk of her hair was caught under the strap on her right shoulder, so her head was also being pulled down a little. That didn’t help.

It had been over two years since Ginny had last been to the 4th Noodle Penthouse. (Or “that place above the grease factory,” as Ginny’s parents preferred to refer to it. It wasn’t entirely unfair. 4th Noodle was pretty greasy. But it was the good kind of greasy, and they had the best dumplings in the world.)

Her mental map had faded a bit in the last two years, but 4th Noodle’s name also contained its address. It was on 4th Street and Avenue A. The alphabet avenues were east of the numbers, deeper into the super-trendy East Village—where people smoked and wore latex and never shuffled down the street with bags the size of mailboxes strapped to their backs.

She could just see it now…the unassuming noodle shop next to Pavlova’s Tarot (with the humming purple neon sign), just across the street from the pizza place with the giant mural of a rat on the side.