Lost in the Everglades

Chapter One: Welcome to the Everglades "Are we there yet?" eighteen-year-old Bess Marvin grumbled. "It feels like we've been driving forever."Nancy Drew glanced into the rearview mirror of the rental car and smiled at her friend, who was fidgeting in the backseat. "Almost. The sign back there said that the entrance to Everglades National Park was coming right up."George Fayne, who was sitting next to Nancy, spread the map of southern Florida across her lap. She smoothed the crinkles and creases with her fingertips. "The Everglades ishuge.Like millions of acres. The place where we're staying, Flamingo, is only a tiny part of it.""Flamingo is way at the bottom of the Everglades, right on Florida Bay," Nancy explained.Nancy turned off the air conditioner and rolled the window down slightly. A hot breeze blew against her face and ruffled her reddish blond hair.The scenery was the same as it had been for the last half hour: dry, flat fields; orange farms; and the occasional grocery store, house, or strip mall with forlorn-looking For Rent signs.The scenery didn't look anything like what Susan Bokan had described to Nancy in her many postcards. Susan used to be a good friend of the girls back in River Heights.The girls had met Susan five years earlier. Susan's parents owned a fancy inn on the outskirts of River Heights. The Bokans were clients of Nancy's father, Carson Drew, who was an attorney.The girls hadn't seen Susan since she moved to Florida a couple of years earlier to work as a volunteer for the Everglades National Park. Her parents were still in River Heights, although they spent part of every winter in Florida to visit their daughter.In her postcards, Susan described the beautiful, wild, and junglelike Everglades. The photographs on the cards showed exotic-looking plants and animals with exotic-sounding names like gumbo-limbo trees, strangler figs, roseate spoonbills, and manatees.In her last postcard Susan had asked Nancy to visit her as soon as possible, and to bring George and Bess along. Nancy had wondered about the invitation. There was something out-of-the-blue and mysterious about it. Still, she and her friends were eager to visit the Everglades, so it didn't take much to convince them."There it is." Bess's blond head appeared between the two front seats. "There's the sign?Everglades National Park. We're here, finally!""I can't wait to see Susan," George said eagerly. "I can't wait to go on hikes and canoe trips and -- ""I can't wait to have dinner," Bess interrupted. "It's after six o'clock. The last thing we ate were those itty-bitty bags of peanuts on the plane, and I'm totally starving."Nancy chuckled. Despite the fact that George and Bess were cousins, they were as different as night and day. It wasn't just that George was tall and slender with short, dark hair, and Bess was short and curvy with long, curly blond hair.Nancy could already anticipate the rest of their Florida vacation: George would be off on hikes and canoe trips and kayaking expeditions, while Bess would be more interested in hanging out in a beach chair, working on her tan, and sampling the local cuisine. For weeks Bess had been talking about checking out such Florida specialties as conch chowder, Key lime pie, and blackened grouper.Nancy pulled up to the ranger station. A gray-haired man in a khaki-colored uniform put down his walkie-talkie and smiled at her. "May I help you, miss?""I'm looking for the volunteers' dorm at Flamingo," Nancy explained.The ranger scribbled some directions on a brochure map and handed it to her. "Follow my red arrows. Be there in no time.""Thank you," Nancy said.She waved goodbye to the ranger and drove through the gate, into the park. Almost immediately, Nancy could see that they were in a totally different world.This is the Florida Susan described in her postcards, she thought.It felt as though they had goneKeene, Carolyn is the author of 'Lost in the Everglades', published 2001 under ISBN 9780743406871 and ISBN 0743406877.