Free How Nancy Drew Saved My Life by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

hope you figure this place out,” George said in parting. I thought that he was wishing me well, but then I saw from the look in his eyes that he’d forgotten about clinging together when we thought we were going to die and had now reverted to resenting me for being The Writer Who Refused To Tell His Story. I became sure of it when he added, “Not that I think that’s likely.”
    What do you say to something like that?
    â€œYou know,” George said, studying me, “some people don’t deserve a helping hand.”
    Now, where did that come from?
    Then it hit me and I snap-pointed at him. “ The Bungalow Mystery, #3! You’re quoting The Bungalow Mystery at me!”
    He gave me a look of grudging respect. “Got it in one,” he conceded.

chapter 5
    I surprisingly hadn’t brushed up on my knowledge of Iceland before flying into the country. It was an adventure, right? I should just be winging it rather than overplanning it, right?
    Just before leaving JFK, feeling a frisson akin to guilt that I should at least prepare in some way, I’d purchased a couple of guidebooks—Lonely Planet’s Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Fodor’s Scandinavia and a series that was new to me, Hanging Out in Europe.
    Then I’d shoved them in my bag and proceeded to spend the entire flight bumming about George and taking my scenic trip down Bad-Memory Lane.
    Maybe I was in denial. Maybe I was in denial because I’d left a rarely beautiful, crystal and completely non-humid midsummer New York day for…
    RAIN!
    I heard it before I saw it, pelting the tiny windows of the plane as I waited in line to debark. In a sudden panic over my own unpreparedness, I rifled through my bag—passport, money, cigarettes, just in case I needed to become a smoker again—and whipped out Lonely Planet.
    Index.
    Let’s see…climate, climate, climate…
    It said this time of year I could expect a daily temperature of 10.6ºC. Great to know, but not fucking helpful. I was a Fahrenheit girl. Who made Lonely Planet, the Europeans?
    I reached for the Fodor’s instead. They seemed like reasonable people.
    Climate, climate, climate…
    Ha! This one said 14ºC—the guidebooks couldn’t even agree with one another on average daily temperature! I mean, it’s not something like a restaurant review, which would be subjective—“The lutefisk rocks!” “The lutefisk sucks!” It was weather, for crying out loud! Wasn’t that supposed to be an exact science? Then my eyes saw that in the Fodor’s, they gave average daily highs and lows and the high was 14ºC, while the low was 9ºC, which was closer to the Lonely Planet listing. So maybe the Lonely Planet people were pessimists. Then my eyes shifted to the right and I finally saw a Fahrenheit listing. Daily high: 57ºF.
    In summer.
    I switched to Hanging Out in Europe. They didn’t bother with Celsius at all, which kind of made me like them more: 58ºF.
    It also said that during summer months, now, the warm season —ha!—the nights stay incredibly bright with sunlight, with the sun only dipping below the horizon for a few hours every day, the sky never getting completely dark. Hanging Out in Europe seemed to be the optimist in the bunch and this didn’t sound too bad, but then they spoiled the effect by saying the weather changes rapidly and that a beautiful summer day could be wiped out in an instant by cold rain and high winds.
    I switched one last time to see what the pessimists had to say about the weather beyond their mean and meaningless 10.6ºC. Lonely Planet said that, “Periods of fierce, wind-driven rain (or wet snow in winter) alternate with partial clearing, drizzle, gales and fog to create a distinctly miserable climate. It’s mostly a matter of ‘if you don’t like the weather now, wait five minutes—it will probably get