Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery

  “Let’s get the boxes first,” said Jackie, “since they’re the most important. They’re out in the garage.”

  Dawn and Jackie went into the garage, and that was where Jackie had his first accident of the day.

  I should stop here to tell you a little about Jackie Rodowsky. He and his brothers are some of the club’s newest charges. They’re look-alikes, with red hair and faces full of freckles. We like them a lot — even Jackie, who is completely accident-prone. Accidents just seem to follow him around and happen to him. I mean, sometimes things occur that he doesn’t even have anything to do with. Like he’ll be sitting in the living room, and an ashtray will fall off a table in the den. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating. Most of the time, Jackie is a happy-go-lucky klutz. He gets his hands caught in things, he trips, he falls, he gets locked into places. And sometimes he just plain makes mischief. For instance, there was the time he and his brothers wanted to see what would happen to their socks if the vacuum cleaner sucked them up. (Luckily, not much.)

  Jackie is seven, Shea is nine, and little Archie is four. Shea and Archie are not accident-prone, which is why they take lessons and Jackie doesn’t. Not that Jackie hasn’t tried, but, well, for example, he hadn’t been taking piano lessons for very long when he managed to break his teacher’s metronome and her doorbell. (Don’t ask me how.) He may have broken a few other things, too.

  Anyway, that’s Jackie’s story, so now you can see why agreeing to make a robot costume was sort of dangerous. But Dawn had said she’d do it.

  Out in the garage, Jackie showed Dawn a huge stack of cardboard cartons. “We can use any of these,” he told her.

  “Are you sure?” replied Dawn. “What are they here for?”

  “Oh, anything. Storing stuff, taking garbage to the dump, recycling newspapers.”

  Jackie reached for the biggest box he saw. It was on the bottom of the pile.

  THUD, THUD, THUD, KER-RASH!

  The mountain of cartons toppled over.

  Dawn sighed. Her afternoon was just beginning.

  When all but three of the boxes (the big one, a medium-sized one, and a small one) had been stacked again, Dawn and Jackie brought their cartons inside. They set them on the floor.

  “Okay,” said Dawn. “What else do we need?”

  “Paint,” replied Jackie.

  “I better get that,” Dawn said nervously.

  Jackie showed her where it was, and Dawn put several jars of already-mixed poster paints, plus some brushes, with the boxes.

  “Now,” Jackie went on, “we just need stuff.” He found several jar lids, a coil of wire, and an old Slinky toy on shelves in the basement. In a box marked SCRAPS he found some pieces of felt, five wooden spools, and the googly eyes he’d been talking about.

  “See?” he said, holding up the plastic eyes with the moving black pupils. “We got a whole package of these once. They’re googly.”

  Dawn had to agree.

  “Last thing,” Jackie continued. “Buttons. They’re upstairs in Mom’s sewing chest.”

  Dawn made the mistake of letting Jackie go upstairs alone. How much trouble, she thought, could he get into with buttons? They weren’t messy or dangerous or —

  KER-RASH.

  Dawn closed her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts before she headed upstairs. When she reached Mr. and Mrs. Rodowsky’s bedroom, she found Jackie kneeling by the overturned sewing chest. Needles and pins and spools of thread and packages of zippers and piles of buttons were scattered across the rug.

  “Oops,” said Jackie.

  It took more than fifteen minutes for Dawn and Jackie to put each item back into its little compartment. Then Dawn insisted on vacuuming the rug, in case they’d missed a stray pin or needle. Jackie wanted to start on his robot while Dawn vacuumed, but by then, she knew better.

  “You sit right there,” she told him, pointing to his parents’ bed, “until I’m done. Then we’ll go downstairs together.”

  At long last, they began work on the robot. Dawn had sensibly spread newspapers over the floor before Jackie opened the bottle of Elmer’s glue.

  “See, what we do,” Jackie said, “is glue these two boxes together to make the body. Then we put dials and stuff all over it — those are the jar lids and buttons and things. And then we make a robot head — well, a hat really — out of the little box. I want to put the Slinky on top of the hat.”

  “We better paint the boxes before you glue things on them,” Dawn pointed out.

  “Oh, right,” said Jackie. “But first, I have to make the body.” He got busy with the boxes and glue. He cut a neckhole. He cut two armholes. Then he cut himself.

  “Ow!”

  Dawn fixed up his bleeding thumb with Bactine and a Band-Aid.

  Then Jackie glued the cartons together. “Now for the paint,” he announced.

  Dawn helped him carry the cartons to the basement — ever so carefully, since the glue wasn’t dry. After Jackie had knocked over a jar of blue paint and he and Dawn had mopped it up, he painted his robot a wild array of colors. The poster paints dried quickly.

  They carried the robot back upstairs.

  “Okay, this is the fun part,” said Jackie. And he proceeded to turn the painted cartons into a really splendid robot.

  Even though every other word out of his mouth was, “Whoops,” he managed to glue the jar lids and spools and buttons all over the body of the robot. Using a Magic Marker, he drew a gauge and a needle (measuring … what?) on the robot’s belly. He attached wires, coiled to look like springs. To the head, he glued two googly eyes and the Slinky. He couldn’t find a use for the felt scraps, but it was almost time for Mrs. Rodowsky and Shea and Archie to come home, anyway.

  “Hey!” he cried. “I know! I’ll put my costume on so I can surprise them when they walk through the door.”

  Dawn smiled. “Good idea.” She was relieved that the rest of the project had gone so peacefully and safely.

  Jackie slipped the cartons over his head. He put on his hat and grinned at Dawn. He was the perfect homemade robot.

  For three seconds.

  Then his hat fell off. The top of the body came apart from the bottom part of the body, and the bottom dropped to the floor, like the stages of a rocket separating. The spools and jar lids and wires and googly eyes came off and rolled under the couch.

  “Oh, no!” cried Dawn.

  But Jackie just said calmly, “Oops. I guess the glue wasn’t dry. Poor old robot. I’ll put him back together tomorrow.”

  What bad luck, Dawn thought, as she rode her bike home that afternoon. Briefly, she remembered my chain letter and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have broken the chain. Maybe bad luck was being visited upon her, since she’s one of my friends. Then, no, she realized. Jackie always has bad luck. He’s a walking disaster.

  Dawn forgot about the chain letter.

  Another Friday, another club meeting. After baby-sitting for two little girls, Nina and Eleanor Marshall (I remembered my appointment that day), I checked our mailbox before going to the Kishis’. And in among the bills and magazines I found a small package!

  I closed my hands over it, hoping it was for me. But it was probably for Dad. My birthday was over, Christmas was two months away, and I hadn’t ordered anything from the back of a magazine lately. Maybe it was a free sample. That could be interesting, especially if it was hand lotion or makeup or shampoo.

  I opened my hands. The package was for me! And it wasn’t just a sample. But right away, I felt those chills again. My name and address were made out of letters cut from magazines and newspapers. It was the kind of thing you only see on TV or in the movies when somebody has been kidnapped and the bad guys mail a ransom note. I know it sounds crazy, but my first thought was that Tigger had been kittennapped. I ran inside to check on him.

  “Tigger! Tigger!” I called.

  I found him curled up in a ball of rumbly purrs on the living room sofa.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” I exclaim
ed, letting out a lungful of air. “You’re here and you’re alive.”

  I hotfooted it over to Claudia’s, the box clutched in my hand.

  Kristy and Claudia were the only club members there, and Kristy was the one who noticed immediately that the box was addressed not just to me but to:

  There was no return address.

  The three of us looked at each other. I could see fear in my friends’ eyes, and I’m sure they could see it in mine. We were dying to open the box (and at the same time afraid to), but we waited until Dawn, Jessi, and Mal arrived before we did.

  Kristy was so nervous about what might be inside that she didn’t even conduct an official meeting. In fact, she forgot to put on her visor, and she crowded onto the bed with Dawn and Claudia and me.

  “We’ll just take phone calls today,” she informed us. “We can take care of business on Monday.”

  We all looked at the box.

  “Well,” I said, “who’s going to open it?”

  “You, of course,” said Kristy. “It was in your mailbox, and it’s addressed mostly to you.”

  “You’re afraid!” I cried. I was relieved to find I had company.

  “You’re right.”

  I scowled. “Okay.” I began to peel back the paper as slowly and as carefully as if a bomb might be inside. (And these days, who knew?)

  I unwound one layer of paper, then another, then a third. Inside lay a harmless white jewelry box.

  I gave my friends a look that said, “We are all such jerks. We’ve been afraid of jewelry.”

  But Jessi didn’t look a bit relieved. “Anything could be inside,” she pointed out. “And there are a lot of anythings I wouldn’t want to be within a mile of.”

  My fear returned.

  With shaking hands I lifted the lid of the box.

  All I could see was tissue paper.

  “Claudia? Do you have any tweezers?” I asked. I’m not touching this.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Claudia took the box from me and pulled the tissue paper up. She crumpled it into a ball, which she dropped on the bed.

  “Ew!” shrieked Dawn, jumping away from the paper, and the rest of us screamed, too.

  When we calmed down, we dared — all six of us — to peer into the box.

  “What is it?” asked Mallory.

  “It looks like a necklace,” I replied.

  Lying in the box was a tiny glass ball on a delicate gold chain. The ball was hollow, and inside was what looked like a seed — a small, blah, yellowish-brown thing.

  I lifted the necklace out, afraid that at any moment it might go up in a puff of smoke, or that we might go up in a puff of smoke.

  “It’s kind of pretty.” Claudia interrupted my thoughts. “Really. It’s weird-looking and it’s unusual. I like it because it’s different. It’s my kind of jewelry.”

  I was about to tell her she could have it, when I realized what it had been resting on in the box. It wasn’t your usual little piece of cotton.

  “Hey, here’s a note!” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, brother. Which one of us is going to read it?” asked Dawn.

  “I — I guess I better,” I said. “I mean, Kristy’s right. The box was mostly addressed to me.”

  I dropped the necklace on the bed (everyone scrambled away from it), and opened up the note.

  “Handwriting?” asked Kristy.

  I shook my head. “Nope. More cut-out letters from the newspaper.”

  “So what does it say?” asked Claudia.

  “It — it says,” I replied shakily, “well, see for yourselves.”

  I spread open the note on Claudia’s bed. The members of the Baby-sitters Club leaned over to look at it, although I noticed that nobody got too close. The note said:

  “Aughh!” I shrieked.

  “Bad-luck charm?!” cried Mallory with a gasp. “Oh, I knew it. I just knew it.”

  I looked at the necklace, which was lying on the bed near the note. “Oh, my gosh, I’ve already touched it,” I said.

  “Touched it,” Dawn repeated. “You’ve got to wear it.”

  “Are you crazy? No way!” I exclaimed.

  “I think you better,” said Jessi. “Are you going to ignore this warning … like you ignored the chain letter?”

  I looked at the older girls. After all, Mal and Jessi are two years younger than the rest of us. Of course they believed in warnings and charms.

  But my friends were no help.

  “May-maybe you ought to wear it,” said Dawn.

  “Yeah …” said Claudia slowly.

  “I thought you guys didn’t believe in superstitious stuff!” I cried. The thing was, I sort of believed it myself. Otherwise I would have put the necklace on right away, just to prove what a bunch of dopes they were.

  I glanced at Kristy. She looked embarrassed. I realized that for once she wasn’t scoffing. She wasn’t laughing, either. In fact, she looked pretty scared.

  “What is it with you guys?” I asked nervously.

  “It’s, well, it’s …” Dawn began. “See, I had some pretty bad luck with Jackie Rodowsky yesterday.” She told us about his unfortunate robot and all the accidents.

  “But Jackie is bad luck, just like you said,” I told her.

  “This was worse than usual,” Dawn replied. “It was a pretty bad baby-sitting experience.”

  “I flunked a spelling test,” added Claudia.

  “You always flunk spelling tests,” I said.

  “Not lately.” Claudia looked haughty.

  “I fell in ballet class,” said Jessi. “That never happens.”

  “I lost my watch,” said Kristy.

  “I got in trouble for talking during math,” said Mal.

  “You know what?” Claud added. “Stacey called awhile ago. She broke her dad’s paperweight. That one he loves. She can’t even figure out how to confess to him.”

  “Well, I might as well tell you,” I went on. “I had the worst day of my life the day after I threw away the chain letter.” I described the day, from falling out of bed to forgetting my baby-sitting job. When I was done, we all just stared at each other. At long last, I picked up the charm and slipped it over my head.

  “This thing scares me to death,” I admitted. “It’s bad luck. But what would happen if I didn’t wear it? Things might be worse than bad.”

  “Evil,” said Mal in a whisper.

  “But who sent the charm?” I wondered.

  None of us had any ideas.

  “And why did they send it to me? Why do I have to wear the thing?”

  “Maybe,” answered Jessi, “because you were the one who threw the chain letter away. This is your bad luck. And all the other stuff is the bad luck that’s being visited upon your friends.”

  “What about the rest of the note?” I asked.

  “‘Halloween is coming. Beware of evil forces.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well,” said Claudia, “Halloween is the spookiest, eeriest time of year.”

  “But the evil forces —” I began.

  “I think,” said Mal, “that we will have to ward them off.”

  We all knew that wouldn’t be easy. I had broken a good-luck chain and was wearing a bad-luck charm. I couldn’t change either situation.

  Still, we did have to ward off the evil forces. The question was — how?

  I was terrified.

  Who wouldn’t be?

  On Saturday, the day after I got the bad-luck charm, I was wearing it while I sat for Jamie Newton. Jamie spilled everything in sight, dropped everything in sight, and then fell and skinned his knee. And he didn’t just trip and fall. He fell down half a flight of steps. Of course, he cried. A lot. But a Band-Aid helped. Jamie likes Band-Aids.

  On Monday, the first day I wore the charm to school, there was a fire in a trash can (which the fire company had to come put out), an explosion in the science lab (no one was hurt, but a Bunson burner was completely destroyed), and an accident in a gym class
. (Miranda Shillaber twisted her ankle. She had to go to the nurse and she needed an Ace bandage and everything.)

  “Maybe,” said Kristy at lunch that day, “this is just a big coincidence.”

  I looked around at Kristy, Claudia, Dawn, and Logan. They were all picking at their food. So was I. The hot vegetable that day was succotash, and therefore looked incredibly disgusting, but Kristy hadn’t made a single comment about it. So I knew she didn’t believe what she’d just said. She was too worried and preoccupied even to gross me out.

  I glanced down at the charm. The little seed was resting on the bottom of its glass globe. I decided that it looked like something that was carefully, calmly planning horrible deeds.

  “One accident on the first day I wear the charm,” I said, “might be a coincidence. One little spill at the Newtons’. But not spills and broken stuff and Jamie’s knee. I could even accept one little fire at school that Mr. Halprin puts out by himself with a bucket of water. That could still be a coincidence. But not a fire-department fire —”

  “And an explosion,” continued Logan.

  “Plus a gym injury,” finished Dawn.

  “Right,” I agreed. And then I went on in a whisper, “You know what else? There have been other signs of bad luck today.”

  “There have?” Kristy replied. “Like what?”

  “My father opened an umbrella in the house this morning.”

  Kristy rolled her eyes.

  “But wait, there’s more,” I said. “On the way to school, a black cat crossed our path.” I glanced at Claudia, who nodded nervously.

  “That’s right, one did,” she said.

  “And just before I came into the cafeteria?” I went on.

  “Yeah?” said Logan. He reached over and held onto my hand. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to comfort me, or if he was afraid himself.

  “I saw a penny on the floor, so I bent down and picked it up. I just did it without thinking. It was already in my hand before I realized it was a tail-up penny. I dropped it, but by then it was too late.”

  Our table was silent. On another day, any one of those bad-luck signs would have made us laugh. But today — the first day I wore the charm to school — three signs, three accidents, the charm, and the chain letter were just too much.