A Script for Danger (Nancy Drew Diaries #10)(33)

Bess had been acting weird all day. We’d gone into town to do some errands—mostly just to get out of the house—and she had barely said a word. At first I thought it was the weather—a cold snap had moved in overnight with the threat of snow later—but even after we’d stopped at the Coffee Corner, our favorite café in River Heights and George’s place of employment, to get warm, she still hadn’t cheered up.

“What’s going on, Bess?” I asked as gently as I could. Ironically, Bess is the most emotionally intuitive of the three of us. Whenever George or I are upset, Bess knows exactly what to do or say to make us feel better. I wished Bess could talk to Bess, but I’d try my best instead.

“Remember New Year’s Eve?” Bess asked.

I nodded. Bess’s parents threw a big party every New Year’s Eve. Each year they picked a different theme. One year it was An Evening in Wonderland, and they hung at least a hundred different clocks on the wall, replaced the furniture in one room with doll furniture, spread stuffed bunnies throughout the house, and made placemats out of playing cards. They even hung half a mannequin dressed in a light blue dress with a white apron from the hallway ceiling so it looked like Alice was falling through the rabbit hole into the house. It was always the party of the year, and half of River Heights attended.

George, Bess, and I had been going to that party for as long as we could remember. When we were younger, Bess’s parents would herd us up to Bess’s room and we’d be asleep long before midnight. As we got older, we kept the tradition of heading up to Bess’s room early, only now we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV, drank glasses of sparkling cider, and shared our resolutions for the coming year.

This year had been no different. The theme of the party had been the 1960s, and George, Bess, and Ned, my boyfriend, had scoured As You Wore, the vintage shop in town, for the perfect outfits. Bess’s parents had outdone themselves with the decorations. Entering the house felt like stepping through a time warp. The walls, the furniture, and the rugs were all from the 1960s or earlier. They’d even swapped out their TV for an older model. We ate a ton of food, danced, took goofy pictures in the photo booth the Marvin’s rented, and headed up to Bess’s room to watch the ball drop. It had seemed like Bess was having as good a time as the rest of us, so I couldn’t imagine what would have made her upset.

“Sure. I remember New Year’s,” I said.

“Do you remember my resolution?” Bess asked. I thought back, but it wasn’t coming to mind. Bess noticed my hesitancy. “George said she wanted to crack five thousand followers on Twitter. Ned said he wanted to make the dean’s list. You said you wanted to beat your personal record for solving a case.”

Suddenly it all came rushing back. “You said you wanted to floss more,” I said.

Bess nodded glumly. I could see tears brimming in her eyes, and I felt like a horrible friend because I still didn’t know why this was making her so upset.

It was especially frustrating because I’m an amateur detective. I help people track down stolen goods, or figure out who’s behind a blackmail attempt. My dad’s a prosecutor and he says that I solve more cases than some of the detectives he works with, so I should have been able to put the clues together and figure out why Bess was so sad. I understood that flossing wasn’t the most exciting resolution in the world, but it didn’t seem worth crying over.

Fortunately, Bess noticed my confusion. “You all have your things. Like George is a computer nerd.”

“Hey!” George piped up. She had finally noticed Bess’s mood and had put down her phone.

“Excuse me. A computer geek,” Bess corrected.

“Thank you,” George replied.

“You’re a detective. Ned is a brain. But I don’t know who I am or what I’m good at or even what I want to be when I get older.”

I thought for a second before answering because I wanted to get this right. I finally understood what Bess was saying, and there was some truth to it: She wasn’t as easily categorized as me, George, or even Ned, but that didn’t mean she had no identity.

“You’re the most compassionate and empathetic person I’ve ever met, Bess,” I said finally.