By Ann M. Martin. Published October 1988.
Good lord. This is one of those books that show maybe these
girls aren’t mature enough to be taking care of children.
We begin with some foreshadowing. Cokie Mason, Grace Bloom,
and their friends are staring at the BSC lunch table. Grace has a big old crush
on Logan. Mary Anne hears one of them say something about being “stuck up”.
Mary Anne says she knows people think they may be stuck up because they only
sit with each other. But she doesn’t really care.
Mary Anne has receives a letter, and she opens it at the
club meeting. It’s a chain letter, and it tells her she has to send it to
twenty people or she, her friends, and family have back luck. She’s like, “I
don’t even know twenty people.” She could send it to baby-sitting clients, that
would be enough. But all the older girls think it’s pretty silly. Mallory and
Jessi freak the fuck out, though. Mary Anne ignores them, and throws the letter
away.
The next day, Mary Anne has an unusually clumsy day. And she
gets grumpy with her friends.
Dawn sits for Jackie, and of course he has a clumsy time.
It’s what her does. But Dawn wonders if it has to do with bad luck.
On her way to the next meeting, Mary Anne receives a small
package. It’s addressed to her and the members of the BSC, in cutout letters.
Everyone’s scared to open it, but Mary Anne finally does. Inside is a necklace,
with a glass ball charm, with a seed inside of it. There is also a note, with
the cutout letters again: Halloween is coming. Beware of evil forces. Wear this
bad-luck charm, Mary Anne – or else.
The girls all pretty much lose it, and start naming all the
“bad luck” things that have happened to the recently. It’s ridiculous. But Mary
Anne puts on the necklace anyway.
Mary Anne sits for Jamie, and there’s a whole bunch of
accidents. Then there’s a bunch of accidents at school the next day. The girls
are getting seriously freaked out. They decide to go t the library, and they
check out a bunch of witchcraft books. I’m kind of surprised their library has
so many of them.
Jessi sits for Jamie. He’s scared of Halloween, but she
reads him a book about a cute, shy little ghost, and Jamie wants to dress up as
him. It’s a boring chapter; I think just to beat us over the head with the fact
that it’s Halloween.
Claudia and Mal have a bad luck sitting job at the Pikes’.
Claudia says it’s her worst job ever. Really? There was a bird in the house,
that they got rid of quickly, Byron burned dinner, and Vanessa lost a tooth. If
that’s your worse job, consider yourself lucky. Oh well, she’ll break her leg
soon enough. Then she’ll know a bad sitting job.
The girls have an emergency meeting, and go through their
spell books. They don’t find anything they can use, though. They either have to
wait two months, or use things like ox tails. Kristy starts getting all scary
dictator during this meeting. Mary Anne says they’re more scared of her than
the spooky thunderstorm happening.
The night before Halloween, their school holds the Halloween
Hop. You can either go in costume, or not. Mary Anne and Logan go as cats. Of
course they do. Mary Anne still wears the necklace. Cokie says something like,
“Nice bad-luck charm.” MARY ANNE. You are dumb.
When she gets home, there’s an envelope taped to the
doorknob for her. Inside is another cutout note, telling the baby-sitters to
Old Man Hickory’s headstone the next night at midnight.
Mary Anne spends the next morning on the phone with the
other girls, until Kristy decides to just call for another emergency meeting
that afternoon. The girls decide they definitely have to go to the graveyard.
But then they start discussing sneaking out of their houses, and they realize
just how complicated that can be. So Kristy, of course, comes up with an idea.
She’ll have a late-night slumber party. Charlie will pick them all up around
10:30, and take them to the graveyard, then they’ll go to Kristy’s afterwards.
Ok. My parents were not strict, but I think they would have
had a big problem with me going out so late, with a seventeen-year-old driving.
Especially when I was eleven. And where does Kristy’s mom think they are before
they show up at the mansion? And Charlie. Poor Charlie. Don’t you have any
better plans? He doesn’t get enough credit.
Anyway.
Mary Anne kind of tells her dad about the necklace, so he’ll
know a little bit about why Mary Anne doesn’t come back. Seriously, the girls
think they might die. Anyway, he says it’s not a bad luck charm; it’s a mustard
seed, which is actually a symbol of faith. Oh. Mary Anne feels like a dumb-ass.
And then she starts thinking about it, and she remembers what Cokie said, and
realizes nobody told her what it was.
There you go, genius.
So she calls Kristy and tells her, and of course she comes
up with a revenge plan.
The girls are picked up at ten-thirty, and they go straight
to the cemetery, loaded down with supplies. The girls rig up ghosts from the
trees on ropes, and then hide, with masks and flashlights.
Eventually they hear voices, and put their plan into action.
They shine lights on the “ghosts” and make them move, then on their own masks.
They surround Cokie, Grace, and their friends, and won’t let them get away.
They thoroughly freak them out, and then finally take off their masks.
They call each other sneaks, and then a male voice calls
out. It’s Logan. He had a phone call telling him to go to the cemetery if he
wants to see something amazing. That sounds totally suspect, but okay.
Cokie fesses up to sending the necklace. Grace says they
wanted Mary Anne and the girls to look like jerks in front of Logan. So that backfired
nicely.
At the mansion, the girls can’t get to sleep for laughing
hysterically. But there is one thing. Cokie had no idea what they were talking
about when they brought up the chain letter. So they may still have the
original bad luck. But they bring up a bunch of good things that have happened
recently, including making Cokie and her friends look stupid. So they decide
the bad luck is gone, just like that.
That was easy. Just decide you don’t have bad luck, and you
don’t have it anymore. What do you know.
o
Mary Anne spends an entire page talking about
how much she loves the mail.
o
We get a lesson on how to use the library,
including using the card catalog! Holla! But Mal and Jessi say to act mature in
the adult section; the librarians are suspicious of kids in there. Really? I
never came across that problem.
o
Also, I think it’s weird they never mention Mrs.
Kishi, considering she works at the library.
o
Logan refused to go in a sewing store without
Mary Anne. Insert eye roll.
o
Mary Anne says she’s read a lot of Stephen King
books. I find that doubtful. And then she says she’d watched Halloween and Halloween II. Isn’t there sex in those movies?
