Nancy Drew Files – Case 6, 1987

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bess Marvin said. She looked up from her seat in Nancy Drew’s bedroom, where she was polishing her long, delicate nails. “I’m not going on any wilderness trip!”

“But, Bess, you’ll love it,” countered her cousin George Fayne.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, Nancy Drew was engrossed in a puzzle and trying to block out the sound of her best friends’ voices. The more difficult the puzzle, the better Nancy liked it. Thinking hard kept her mind limbered up for her more challenging work as a detective.

“Really, Bess, you will love it,” George said again, seeing her cousin roll her eyes. “Lost River, the mountains, the trees, the birds-they’re all yours, just for sitting comfortably in a rubber raft for a couple of days. You probably won’t even have to paddle. The river will do all the work.”

“I’ll loathe it!” Bess exclaimed with a shudder. “Nancy,” she implored, “tell George that this time she’s really gone looney tunes.”

Nancy put down her puzzle and looked at her friends. George, who had just come from her regular three-mile afternoon jog, was wearing a blue-and-green running suit that emphasized her athletic wiriness and made her look ready for anything. White water rafting was exactly the kind of thing that would turn George on. She loved any challenge. That was what made her so valuable to Nancy.

At the same time, rafting was exactly the kind of thing that would turn Bess off. At the moment, for instance, she was wearing a pair of tight purple stirrup pants and an enormous gauzy shirt, cinched with a thin gold belt. Her long, straw-colored hair curled loosely around her shoulders. It wasn’t that Bess was afraid of adventure, and it wasn’t that she was terribly lazy. She was just… well, Bess liked to do things the easy way. Maybe she was a bit timid, but she always enjoyed being where things were happening-and things always happened with Nancy around.