“I got an eighty-five on a math test,” said Claudia. “And Stacey straightened everything out with her father.” Claudia pulled a makeup kit out of her overnight bag, and I began playing with her compact.
“I found my lost watch!” said Kristy with a grin.
“I don’t have to get braces for six more months,” Mal told us.
“My brother’s getting As in his new school in California,” said Dawn.
“My ballet teacher told my parents I’m one of her best students ever,” added Jessi.
“Then it’s over,” I told my friends. “No matter where the chain letter came from, just like I said before — the bad-luck mystery is over.”
“We can stop being witches and go back to being baby-sitters,” said Kristy.
I opened Claudia’s compact. I closed it. It had a nice clasp.
Claudia handed me a jar of eye shadow. “Here. Try putting this on,” she said.
I opened the compact again. And then — I dropped the jar of eye makeup. It landed on the compact.
It broke the mirror.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
And Jessi, wide-eyed, added, “Oh, no, Mary Anne. You know what that means, don’t you? Seven years of bad luck!”
“No! Really?” I cried, but I was laughing. “Well, I can take it. I’ve decided that since my mustard seed is a symbol of faith, we’re protected…. Because I have faith that we’re protected. So, go ahead, you guys. Break all the mirrors you want!”
* * *
Dear Reader,
Mary Anne’s Bad-Luck Mystery is the second spooky book in the Baby-sitters Club series, and the first book that takes us to Old Hickory’s grave in Stoneybrook’s cemetery. When I was young, I was fascinated by graveyards. And like the rest of my friends, I believed in a superstition about them — that I must hold my breath if I went by a graveyard. For this very reason, when my family was on long car trips, my father would often park our car in front of a graveyard. Then my sister and I would try to hold our breaths for as long as we were parked there!
The idea for this story, however, came to me after I received a chain letter in the mail. It was not an eerie chain letter like the one Mary Anne receives. It was just a regular one. But I hate chain letters, and began to wonder if this would make a good plot for a mystery. I think it did. And later, it led to The Baby-sitters Club Chain Letter book, which is all about an unusual chain letter that is passed through the members of the BSC.
Happy reading,
Ann M. Martin
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1988 by Ann M. Martin.
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, 1996
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-53453-6
Ann M. Martin, Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery
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