Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery Read online

  Before I get any further, I guess I should remind you about Mallory’s brothers and sisters, since the Pikes are not your average family.

  Mallory is the oldest, of course, and she’s eleven. The triplets she wrote about in the notebook are her ten-year-old brothers, — Byron, Jordan, and Adam. They’re identical, and they can be a handful. They like to tease, especially their younger brother Nicky, but they’re basically good kids. Vanessa is nine. She’s a budding poet and sometimes talks in rhyme, which could make you wack-o. Nicky is eight. He’s also a good kid but has trouble fitting in with his family. His brothers think he’s a baby, and Nicky hates girls, which is a problem. Margo Pike is seven and going through a bossy stage. Last but not least is Claire, who’s five and sometimes really plays up her baby-of-the-family role. What a family.

  Okay, back to the Daddy Stew. Mr. and Mrs. Pike had just left. The last thing Mrs. Pike said before the door closed behind her was, “Let the Daddy Stew heat up until six-thirty. Leave the burner where it is.”

  “Six-thirty!” Byron exclaimed. “I can’t wait that long!”

  “That’s less than half an hour from now,” Mallory pointed out.

  “But I’m starving. I’ll die of starvation before then!”

  “No, you won’t. Come on. Help us get ready in the rec room. We’re not going to eat in the kitchen tonight. We’re going to have an indoor picnic.”

  “An indoor picnic!” cried the other Pikes. “Goody!” They got busy carrying things down to the rec room, then spreading a tablecloth on the floor and laying out the plates and forks and spoons and napkins.

  Byron never joined them. No one paid any attention to that. Not until they noticed an awful acrid smell — like smoking rubber.

  Claudia sniffed the air. “Is something burning?” she asked worriedly.

  Mallory sniffed, too. “Uh-oh,” she said.

  Claudia, Mallory, Adam, Jordan, Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire raced upstairs to the kitchen. On the stove was a smoking pot of Daddy Stew. Byron was standing next to it. He looked from the pot to his baby-sitters.

  “Oops,” he said.

  Mallory dashed to the stove and turned the burner off. Then she grabbed a potholder and lifted the lid. The Daddy Stew was a horrid, burned, black mess.

  “Ew! Ew! Pee-yew!” cried the Pike kids. They held their noses and backed out of the kitchen.

  “The Daddy Stew is ruined, Mallory. Byron ruined it,” cried Claire.

  “I’m sorry,” said Byron. “Honest. I was hungry. And I just thought that if I turned the fire up —”

  “Aughh! Aughh!”

  Shrieks were coming from the living room, where the Pikes (except for Mal and Byron) had fled to escape the smell of the ruined Daddy Stew.

  “Now what?” exclaimed Claudia.

  “I don’t know,” Mallory replied, shaking her head, “but that sounded like more than just a stop-teasing-me-or-I’ll-kill-you scream. I think something happened.”

  The girls left the kitchen (Claudia calling over her shoulder, “You’re in charge of cleaning up that mess, Byron!”) and hurried into the living room. They found the Pikes running back and forth, stooped over, as if the ceiling were closing in on them.

  Above them flew a bird.

  “Oh, my lord!” cried Claudia. “Where did that come from?”

  “It flew down the chimney!” Vanessa shrieked. “Aughh! Oh, help!”

  “Now, wait a sec, guys. That bird is scared to death and you’re scaring it even more,” said Mallory sensibly. “So either calm down and help Claudia and me, or go watch TV.”

  Vanessa made a dash for the TV. Everyone else stayed. They huddled around Claud and Mal in the entryway to the living room.

  The poor bird, which was only a little sparrow, kept letting out terrified sparrow-squawks and swooping from one side of the living room to the other.

  “How are we going to catch him?” asked Nicky.

  “Maybe it’s a ‘her,’” said Adam, just to torture Nicky.

  “Never mind that,” Mallory told Adam. “We have to keep the bird from flying into something, like the window. It could knock itself out.”

  “Hey!” said Jordan. “Maybe if we open the windows and doors, the bird will just fly outside.”

  “I could get my butterfly net,” said Nicky. “Maybe I could scoop it up. Then we could take it outdoors and let it loose.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Jordan sarcastically.

  “Maybe it’ll calm down and land somewhere,” suggested Margo. “We could throw a pillowcase over it.”

  “I wonder if the bird knows Santa Claus,” Claire said dreamily.

  Everyone forgot about the sparrow for a moment.

  “Huh?” said Adam.

  “The bird came down the chimney, just like Santa,” Claire explained. “I wonder …”

  Adam, Jordan, and Nicky snickered behind their hands.

  Then “Aughh!” Margo shrieked again as the bird made another arc across the living room, just inches above her head.

  “Okay, we’re wasting time,” said Mallory. “Let’s open the windows and doors. That seems like the best idea so far.”

  Claudia and the Pikes rushed around, opening every window and door on that level of the house.

  “Go ahead, little birdie,” Margo coaxed the sparrow. Then suddenly, feeling brave (or maybe bossy), she raised her hands in the air and ran toward a window, waving and screaming. “Get out of here, bird!”

  The sparrow flew ahead of her — and went right out the window.

  “Good job!” Mallory exclaimed. “Thanks, Margo.”

  “Whew,” said Claudia. “All right. Let’s close everything up.”

  Claudia turned around to go back to the kitchen and was met by the sight of Vanessa holding blood-smeared hands to her mouth.

  “Oh, my lord!” cried Claudia, who was getting a lot of mileage out of that phrase that evening. “Vanessa, what happened?”

  As Vanessa let Claudia guide her toward the sink in the kitchen, she held out her hand. In it was a small, bloody tooth.

  “I didn’t know you had a loose tooth, Vanessa,” said Mallory.

  “I didn’t know I did, either,” Vanessa replied tearfully. Claudia helped her to rinse out her mouth with warm, salty water. When the bleeding had stopped, Vanessa said sheepishly, “I was eating a piece of candy. It was really sticky. I bit down on it, and when I opened my mouth again, the candy pulled the tooth out.”

  Well, as you can imagine, it was a while before Claudia and the Pikes sat down to their indoor picnic. The kids, especially the triplets, were wild over the bird and Vanessa’s mouth. Furthermore, it took a while to make eighteen tuna-fish sandwiches (two apiece), which was the only thing everyone would agree to eat, given the disappointment over the Daddy Stew.

  The rest of the evening was uneventful — until Mr. and Mrs. Pike were an hour late getting home. Claudia was exhausted, and Mallory was nearly hysterical, wondering why her parents hadn’t called. It turned out that they’d been caught in a traffic jam on the freeway and couldn’t call.

  If any of us club members had any doubts left about the power of the chain letter, the doubts were gone after Claudia and Mal’s sitting experience. We were in big trouble, all of us. And it was my fault.

  I had brought bad luck to myself, my friends, and everyone I knew.

  “This,” said Kristy somberly, “is an emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. You all know why you’ve been called here.”

  It was Sunday afternoon. The six main members of the club were in Claudia’s room in our usual places. And, yes, we all knew why we had been called there.

  Because of me. Because I had tempted fate, thrown away a chain letter, and then been sent a bad-luck charm, which I was forced to wear or else. Not knowing what that “or else” meant was the only thing that kept me wearing the charm. Or else death? Death and destruction? Death, destruction, and the end of civilization as we know it? Claudia was afraid it could mean the end of
junk food. Who knew? We weren’t taking chances. We’d done enough of that already.

  “So,” said Kristy, “something must be done about Mary Anne’s, um, problem.”

  (If you’ll remember, the chain letter had been met by a lot of skepticism at first. Kristy had been the biggest skeptic of all. She’d had no use for charms or spells or bad-luck wishes. She’d scoffed at it all. Now she was as big a believer in such things as Jessi and Mal were. So were the rest of us.)

  “Well,” said Mallory, “we’ve got the books. We better start going through them. I think a spell to — to, oh, what’s the word?”

  “Get rid of the bad stuff?” suggested Claudia.

  “No, to counteract — that’s it, counteract — the bad-luck charm is our only hope.”

  “Okay, then let’s hit the books,” said Kristy. The books had all been left in Claudia’s room, much to her dismay. We each took the one we’d checked out of the library and began thumbing through it.

  “Hey, Claud,” I said, “have you noticed these books doing anything weird? Like flying around your room at night, or glowing in the dark?”

  Claudia started to laugh, but Kristy glared at both of us. “You cannot,” she told us, “afford to take this lightly. Mary Anne, you got us into this mess, so you sure better help us get out of it.”

  I felt the way I did when I’d forgotten my math homework and the teacher scolded me in front of the whole class.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Claudia said.

  Embarrassed silence followed. The five of us went back to our books. Occasionally, somebody would turn a page. There was no other sound in the room.

  “This is making me crazy!” Claudia cried after a few minutes. She jumped off the bed, opened one of the desk drawers, and pulled out a package of those big Tootsie Rolls. She made a lot of racket rummaging around in the drawer and even more noise crinkling paper as she opened the bag.

  “Tootsie Roll anyone?” said our junk-food lover.

  Claudia has stuff — candy, potato chips, gum, you name it — hidden throughout her room. Her parents don’t like her to eat junk food, but Claudia doesn’t know what she’d do without it. So she hides it. She’s got stuff in drawers, behind cushions, under her mattress, in shoe boxes. She’s crazy. But we love her anyway.

  We each took a Tootsie Roll, except for Dawn, who said it would rot her teeth.

  “The rest of you will be wearing dentures when you’re ninety,” she told us. “But I’ll still have all my own teeth.”

  “If I live to be ninety,” said Claudia, “I’ll just be glad to be alive, teeth or no teeth. You know —”

  Claudia broke off when she realized that Kristy was glaring again.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” said Claudia.

  We stuffed the Tootsie Rolls in our mouths and got back to work.

  “Well,” said Jessi after a long time, “here’s a spell for turning bad luck to good luck. Maybe that would work.”

  “Sure!” we cried. We all leaned over to look at Jessi’s book. Except for Kristy, who was in the director’s chair.

  “What does it say?” Kristy asked. “I can’t see it from over here. Read it aloud.”

  “Okay,” replied Jessi. “‘To reverse the course of luck, press a white rose between the pages of a book of sorcery. After waiting two months —’”

  “White rose!” cried Kristy. “Book of sorcery! Two months! This is not rose season, we don’t have a book of sorcery — not a real one — and we can’t wait two months.”

  “Well, excuse me,” said Jessi. “I can’t help what the book says.”

  “Hey!” I exclaimed a moment later. “Here’s a love spell!”

  “A love spell?” repeated Dawn.

  “Yeah, you know, to get a guy you like to fall for you. All you need is a lock of his hair, a fingernail clipping, one of his eyelashes —”

  “MARY ANNE!” shouted Kristy, and we all jumped.

  “Girls?” called a voice. “Everything all right up there?” It was Mrs. Kishi.

  “No problem, Mom!” Claudia called back. Then she looked at Kristy. “Would you calm down? You’re being ridiculous. I know this is serious, but just — just calm down, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Once again, we turned back to our books. I began to have trouble reading mine. “Claud, can we put the light on?” I asked. “It’s getting awfully dark in here.”

  “Sure,” replied Claudia. She flicked on a lamp and the overhead light, then glanced out the window. “Gosh,” she said. “There’s a storm coming. Look at the sky.”

  Mallory, Jessi, Dawn, and I joined Claudia at the window. (Kristy remained planted in her chair.) We gazed out at the gathering clouds. A few seconds later we heard the low rumble of thunder.

  “Ooh, creepy,” said Mallory.

  We returned to the books before Kristy had to waste any more energy on her glares.

  “Here’s something,” said Dawn. “Well, it might be something.” (A clap of thunder sounded.) “I hope that wasn’t a warning,” she added, looking toward the sky. “Anyway, this spell doesn’t exactly counteract bad luck, but it’s supposed to get rid of it.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Kristy.

  “Okay. ‘On a piece of paper, write your name, your birth date, your zodiac sign, and your lucky number.’”

  “So far, so good,” said Kristy.

  “‘Place the paper in an airtight glass container by an elm tree on the night of a full moon.’”

  “We could do that!” said Kristy excitedly.

  “‘The next morning, open the jar, add two hairs from an ox’s tail, scrapings from the underside of a sea snake —’”

  “Are you making this up?” I demanded to know.

  “Unfortunately not,” Dawn answered. She sighed and turned the page.

  A streak of lightning cut through the sky outside Claudia’s window. Inside, the lights flickered. I could tell we were all getting spooked. But we were more afraid of Kristy, so we kept on reading.

  Half an hour went by. Nobody found a single spell — a single spell we could use, that is. Even Kristy was beginning to look bored and frustrated.

  “Maybe we’re going at this all wrong,” I said, closing my book.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jessi.

  “Well for one thing, we haven’t figured out who sent the bad-luck charm. If we knew who did, maybe we could look up a spell to put on that person. A spell to visit bad luck upon the person. Something like that.”

  “Who says someone sent the charm?” asked Claudia. “It just appeared. That was part of your bad luck for throwing out the chain letter.”

  “But someone had to send it. I mean, it came with the note and everything. The question is — who sent it and why?”

  “Hmm,” said Kristy. “I see what you mean. Like, is it someone we know? Or is it someone evil and unknown — an evil powermaster, or maybe just an evil force?”

  Jessi shivered. “Evil powermaster. You’re scaring me, Kristy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It could be something like that, though,” said Claudia.

  “Right,” agreed Dawn. “I’ve read enough ghost stories to know.”

  CRASH! A huge clap of thunder sounded. Jessi and Mal screamed.

  “Mary Anne, did you save the box the charm came in? Or the note that was with it?” asked Kristy.

  I shook my head. “No way. I didn’t want those things hanging around. Why?”

  “They might have contained clues. I mean, clues to who sent the charm.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “They’re long gone. I threw them out the day I got the charm.”

  For a couple of minutes, no one spoke. We watched the storm and the flickering lights. Finally, Claudia said, “This reminds me of last Halloween.”

  “What does?” I asked.

  “Almost everything. Remember all those thunderstorms we had last October? We don’t usually have a lot of them in the fall, especiall
y at the end of October. Plus, we were solving another mystery then. The Phantom Phone Caller.”

  “Oh, yeah!” I said. “That’s right. This is kind of weird.”

  “Who was the Phantom Phone Caller?” Jessi wanted to know.

  “Well, it turned out to be Trevor Sandbourne, who had an immense crush on Claudia,” I told her. “Only we didn’t know that at first.”

  “Trevor and I ended up going to the Halloween Hop,” Claudia added. “Hey, did I tell you guys I’m going with Austin Bentley this year?”

  “No!” we cried.

  “Well, I am. But it’s no big deal. I like him okay, but that’s all.” (Claudia used to have a crush on Austin. Bigger than the one Trevor had had on her.) “Who else is going?” she asked.

  “Not me,” said Jessi and Mal at the same time. (Their parents wouldn’t let them.)

  “Not me,” said Kristy. “I’m tired of going places with Alan Gray. He’s too much of a jerk.”

  “I’m going, even though no one’s asked me,” said Dawn. “I’ll go stag. Who cares?”

  “I guess you’re going with Logan, aren’t you?” Claudia asked me.

  “Yup,” I replied.

  “Gosh, you are so lucky to have a steady boyfriend,” said Dawn. “Someone you can count on.”

  “Even better that it’s Logan,” added Claudia. “Half the girls in our grade would kill to go out with him.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t realized that. “Like who?

  “Like Grace Blume. Talk about immense crushes. I bet she hates you, Mary Anne. She probably hates our whole club for taking up so much of Logan’s time.”

  Ordinarily I might have gloated about that, but what with the storm and the rest of our problems, I couldn’t even work up a good gloat. The news about Grace just seemed like more bad luck.