#17, Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery

This book opens with Mary Anne eating lunch with her friends. Here is what Claudia was wearing.

The best way to get this point across is to describe to you what Claudia was wearing at lunch that day. It was her vegetable blouse: an oversized white shirt with a green vegetable print all over it -- cabbages and squashes and turnips and stuff. Under the blouse was a very short jean skirt, white stockings, green anklets over the stockings, and lavender sneakers, the kind boys usually wear, with a lot of rubber and big laces and the name of the manufacturer in huge letters on the sides. Wait, I'm not done. Claudia had pulled the hair on one side of her head back with a yellow clip that looked like a poodle. The hair on the other side of her head was hanging in her face. Attached to the one ear you could see was a plastic earring about the size of a jar lid.

 That is an epic outfit description. It really sets the tone for this book.

Mary Anne gets a chain letter in the mail. It claims that if she breaks the chain, she and her friends and loved ones will have bad luck. Mallory and Jessi think she shouldn't break the chain, but none of her other friends want to get chain letters, and Mary Anne doesn't want to spend $3 on photocopies and a few bucks more on postage, so she throws the letter away. After throwing away the letter, she has a terrible day, including such things as falling out of bed in the morning, spilling orange juice on a white dress, forgetting a babysitting job, and dropping some food on the floor in the cafeteria.

The next chapter has Dawn babysitting for Jackie Rodowsky, who is crafting a robot costume for Halloween and wants Dawn to help him. There are a lot of spills and messes, and the costume falls apart when he tries it on, but still, I've always thought making a robot costume out of cardboard boxes and jar lids and an old Slinky and things sounds like fun.

Mary Anne gets a package in her mailbox addressed to her and the rest of the club. It contains a jewelry box with a necklace in it, and a note saying that it is a bad luck charm and she has to wear it or else. Mallory and Jessi are all, "This is why you don't break chains." Mary Anne has some more bad luck, as do the other club members and some kids at school. One of the things that happens is that Jamie Newton falls down some stairs while Mary Anne is babysitting him and skins his knee. This is the scene depicted on the cover. Mary Anne is wearing what looks like sweats, and of course the bad luck charm, but Jamie is in shorts.

The club goes to the library to check out books about magic, because they are just sure they need a spell of some sort to counteract Mary Anne's bad luck. Once again they look things up in the card catalog and I feel a wave of nostalgia.

Jessi babysits Jamie Newton. It's not a bad chapter, as far as babysitting chapters go, but it's not all that interesting either. Then Claudia and Mallory sit for the Pike kids in one of the more memorable jobs in the series. First of all, Mr. Pike has left a stew with cut up hot dog pieces on the stove. Claudia thought it looked revolting, but the gross Pike kids were all really excited about it. They call it Daddy Stew and it is a special treat.

Mmm, that shit looks tasty as hell. The stew is supposed to cook until 6:30, but Byron the fatty triplet can't wait, and turns up the burner under it, burning and ruining the dish. Claudia tells Byron he is in charge of cleaning up the mess. Cleaning burned on stew from a big pot sounds like a pain in the ass, not to mention that thirty books from now, he won't even be able to clean up his own spilled milk, and Mallory will have to do it for him. Then a sparrow flies into the house through the chimney, and they have to open doors and windows and shoo it out. Then Vanessa knocks out a loose tooth and has blood pouring from her mouth. Claudia and Mallory make 18 tuna fish sandwiches (2 apiece) which is the only thing everyone will agree to eat what with the disappointment over the Daddy stew. Then the Pikes are late getting home and they don't even call, because they were stuck in traffic and couldn't call.

The girls get together to go through the books, but they don't really find anything useful. The spells all call for things like scrapings from the underside of a sea snake. I don't really know what they were expecting, but they set the books aside and prepare to go to the school dance. Well, Mallory and Jessi's parents won't allow them to go, but the eighth graders go. Mary Anne and Logan go in costume as cats. Mary Anne's costume has a leotard and tights, and Logan had purchased fabric and his mother sewed him a "fur suit." I snickered. Nobody in 1988 could have guessed what would pop into my head seeing "fursuit" in 2012. Claudia didn't wear a costume

unless you'd consider Claudia's wild floral outfit, gigantic hair clip, and armload of silver bangle bracelets a costume. Most people would. Claudia didn't.

and Dawn dressed in regular clothes but smeared green makeup on her face and stuck a plastic wart on it. For some reason I'd never really paid attention to that detail before, and I find it intriguing. I have recreated Dawn's outfit for you in Neopets form:

At the dance, Cokie Mason tells Mary Anne "Nice bad luck charm." Mary Anne is upset by this and more upset when she gets home and there is a note telling her that the whole club needs to go to Old Hickory's grave at midnight the next night, which is Halloween. The girls decide to have a sleepover at Kristy's, and tell their parents that Charlie will be picking them up at 10:30. For some reason all of the parents, even the ones who won't let their kids go to a school dance with chaperons (which was over well before 10:30 because Mary Anne had to be home by 10) are totally cool with this. Mary Anne realizes that the only people she's told about the bad luck charm are her friends, so if Cokie called it a bad luck charm, she must be the one who sent it. The girls get Charlie to drive them to the graveyard early, where they rig up some traps and scare the pants off of Cokie and her group of friends, who had indeed been planning to try to scare the club. Then they really do have a sleepover at Kristy's house, and Mary Anne decides to keep the necklace, which her father had told her was a mustard seed, a symbol of faith.