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Sunday, June 9, 2013

#17 Mary Anne and the Bad Luck Mystery (or Mary Anne and the Drastic Overreaction to a Throwing Away a Chain Letter)



A MA book.  Gag, sigh, pthpthpth.  This book is full of superstition and assumptions and a little picking on Jackie Rodowsky.  Honestly, kind of boring.
The book starts with Kristy making MA sick with her descriptions of the SMS lunch.  Eesh, in the last book I snarked, she wanted to WEAR food. We get the chapter 2 stuff right away.  We finally get an admission that there might be some hurt feelings in the people the BSC members used to sit with.  MA says they’ll have to deal and make their own groups.  Nice. The chapter ends with Cokie Mason and Grace Blume staring at the table and MA feeling self conscious.
MA discourses on getting the mail and how much she loves picking up the mail.  I can’t snark this too much because I used to love getting mail too.  Now it’s all junk or bills since no one writes letters anymore.  She comments that she loves to read the Stoneybrook News, because she likes to read about crime.  This must be one heck of a scary town!  MA grabs the mail on her way to the BSC meeting and she has a letter!  Oooo, it’s a chain letter and if she breaks it, bad luck will visit her and her friends and family.  Ug, I despise chain letters and so does she.  She’s not planning on sending out 20 letters, although Mal and Jessi tell her very seriously that she has to.  No one wants her to send THEM a letter, though.  She tosses out the letter on the way out from the meeting.
The next morning starts with MA falling out of bed.  She states that she’s sort of a klutz, but she hasn’t fallen out of bed since she was four.  I didn’t realize that being a klutz was a requirement for falling out of bed.  My youngest son (9) is pretty agile, but he still falls out of bed on occasion.  Anyway, she has a rough time getting ready for the day and her day doesn’t get much better.  She hides away at home at the end of the day and forgets about a sitting job. The bad luck is just beginning….
So the next job has Dawn sitting for Jackie Rodowsky and she says it was a bad idea to try to help him make his Halloween costume.  Ok, now I take really big issue with Dawn here, because most of the issues were NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL.  There are a lot of things that fall, which can happen to anyone.  Jackie cuts himself, which I can see being somewhat of a deal, but it’s not like he’s the only kid to get a boo-boo while someone is sitting.  He spills paint; again, not that big of a deal since they were working in the basement and it was wiped up.  Then he puts on the costume he’s made BEFORE THE GLUE IS DRY.  Dawn, that’s just lack of common sense.  So, really, it wasn’t that bad.  I wish these girls wouldn’t make such a big deal about this poor kid.
MA gets the mail again and this time it is a package.  She takes it with her to the BSC meeting and it’s a letter and a bad luck charm for MA.  She must wear it….or else. The girls start rehashing all of their recent bad luck.  They talk MA into wearing it or there might be evil lurking to get them.  Muahahahaha!
More bad things keep happening and the girls decide they have to ward off evil forces.  They’re having this discussion during lunch and again, Cokie and Grace are watching them.  They go to the library to look up books on witchcraft.  MA shows off how to use the card catalogue and yet again, I cannot snicker because I remember doing that too.  They check out some books on witchcraft and feel they are ready.
Before they get to reading the books, we have not one, but two sitting chapters.  Jessi sits for Jamie Newton, who is scared of Halloween.  Claudia and Mal sit for the Pikes.  Their disasters include Byron burning dinner, a bird in the house, Vanessa losing a tooth and the parents an hour late due to traffic.
They finally get together in an emergency meeting of the BSC to find out how to counteract evil forces.  They read a bunch of impossible to perform spells, reminisce about the phantom phone calls of the previous year and talking about the Halloween hop.  It comes up that Grace Blume hates MA because she wants Logan.  Hmmm…there’s a theme starting to come out.
The night of the Halloween Hop arrives and Logan and MA are going as cats, because they’ve both seen Cats and thought the costumes were awesome.  They get to the dance, say hi to the rest of the club members and start dancing once the band starts picking up.  I say, band?  A band at a middle school dance?  Am I missing something?    The best my kids had in middle school was somebody’s older brother making a playlist on his Mac.  But then, this is Stoneybrook.  Anyway, Logan and MA are dancing along when Cokie Mason comes by and says, “Nice bad luck charm.”  Dun, dun, DUN!  MA gets home after the dance and there’s a note taped to her door:  Be at old man Hickory’s grave at midnight on Halloween.
Of course, MA is on the phone all morning with the members of the BSC and Kristy ends up calling another emergency meeting.  They all sit around trying to figure out how they’re going sneak out of their house at 11:30 at night so that they can get to the graveyard.  Kristy comes up with the brilliant idea of having a late night sleepover and instead of going to her house, Charlie will drive them to the graveyard.
Trick or treat babysitting chapter.  Kristy takes her younger siblings out trick or treating and they end up at Karen’s imaginary witch’s house…she gives out apples.
MA and her dad hang out at home, having a simple dinner while handing out treats.  MA is a nervous wreck, jumping at any little sound.  She shows her dad the “bad luck charm” and finds out it’s a mustard seed, which is a symbol of faith.  All of a sudden, everything clicks.  Cokie and Grace are behind the letters and necklace!!!!  She calls Kristy, who immediately comes up with another brilliant idea.
Charlie picksthem all up around 10:30 and they head right to the graveyard, where the girls put their plan into action.  Around 11:30, Cokie and Grace show up and the BSC proceeds to scare the bejeevers out of them.  Then Logan shows up and the whole truth comes out.  Grace wants Logan, Logan likes MA and everyone thinks everyone else is an idiot. 
The BSC retreats to Krsity’s house where the rehash the bad luck mystery.  Jessi points out that Cokie didn’t send MA the chain letter, so she could still have bad luck, but MA poo-poos that; since they’ve defeated Cokie and her minions their luck has changed.  Then she drops a jar of eye makeup on a compact and breaks the mirror.  Seven years of bad luck!!!!

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