When is Mary Anne's bad luck going to end?

The Baby-sitters Club #17: Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery

I don't really get Halloween. I mean, I enjoy a good masquerade ball as much as the next girl (actually, I've never been to a masquerade ball, but I have no doubt that I would enjoy it very much, should I ever achieve my dream of travelling back to 1868 and actually getting to attend one.) And of course, I like candy far more than I probably should. What don't I like? Any day that exhorts the vast majority of the world's children to act even more like spoiled, entitled little brats than they normally do any day of the week. Any day where I am encouraged, nay, expected to dress up like Donatella Versace and squeeze into a subway car shared with a gorilla, 6 women wearing pointy black hats, and a fat guy in an orange sweatsuit who I think is supposed to be a pumpkin, but might just be a fat guy with very little fashion sense. Any day where the grocery store cashier ringing up my loaf of bread and 12-pack of Diet Coke is likely to be wearing any of the above costumes. Halloween is when the freaks come out. And I have very little patience with freaks.

But here we have arrived at a BSC Halloween, no doubt the first of many in their never-ending 8th grade year (actually, I can't think of any others at this moment, but given that they went to SMS for, like, 15 years, I'd say it's probably a pretty safe bet they celebrated other Halloweens!) Mary Anne receives a chain letter saying she and her family and friends will have bad luck if she breaks the chain. Jessi and Mal are terrified, but no one else really gives a shit. Mary Anne throws the letter away.

Well, then all hell breaks loose the next day. MA falls out of bed, spills a glass of juice on her white dress (white dress? MA, you are neither a bride nor a debutante. There is no need to wear a white dress to school in October. Did you wear white shoes too? The horror!), drops a tray of mac and cheese in the cafeteria, snaps at Logan, and forgets about a sitting job. So when she receives a mysterious package containing a necklace (a "bad-luck charm", which makes no sense. So if wearing a good-luck charm brings you good luck, then doesn't it follow that wearing a bad-luck charm would bring you bad luck? So why would you do that? Why not just not wear it? What does she think is going to happen to her? Is she going to have even worse luck if she doesn't wear it? Why am I even trying to find logic in this ridiculous book?) that she is supposed to wear all the time, she and the rest of the BSC freak out. Seriously, not a single one of them can see how ridiculous this is? Not even Kristy? These girls really freaking need Stacey back.

The whole BSC seems to be having bad luck, so they look in the library for spells that will help ward it off, but they come up empty-handed. Finally, some of them attend the Halloween Hop on Friday, October 30, where Cokie Mason (Cokie Mason is so delightfully bitchy! How is it possible that I love both the BSC and their mortal enemies?) anyway, that bitch Cokie Mason comments on MA's bad luck charm. The next day, MA gets a letter telling her and the BSC to go to some dude's grave that night at midnight, and they all decide that they'd better do so. Not a single one of them thinks that someone might be playing a trick on them. They are convinced that a "evil powermaster" is coming for them. No, seriously, Kristy says that.

So they tell their parents that they're having a sleepover at Kristy's, and Charlie comes to pick them all up at 10:30 pm and drive them to the cemetery. Ok, first of all, would their parents be okay with them having a sleepover that starts at 10:30 pm? It seems like Richard Spier, at least, might take issue with that. Doesn't MA have to go to bed at like 8:30 pm or something? And second of all, they just plan it that morning and Kristy is all "Oh, Charlie, will totally drive us around and not tell my mom about the whole "dropping off a bunch of middle-schoolers in cemetery at midnight" thing. Is Charlie that much of a loser? Wouldn't he have a party or a date or even just plans to go out with his friends? And even if he didn't, would he really want to risk the wrath of several parents, including his own mother, by going along with this ludicrous plan? Why doesn't he just tell them they're idiots and be done with it?

Anyway, that evening, MA has an epiphany that she never told Cokie Mason (Cokie Mason must always be referred to by both names. It's part of her charm. Just calling her Cokie would never do) about her bad-luck charm, ergo, Cokie must have sent it to her. She then realizes that Cokie Mason and her friends must be trying to play a trick on her, so the BSC comes up with a plan to get to the graveyard early and scare the bejeezus out of them. The plan involves some white sheets, flashlights, and a tape player. It's not very sophisticated, but it works.

Cokie Mason is terrified into admitting that she started the whole "bad-luck charm thing" as some really convoluted way to make MA and the BSC look like idiots in front of Logan (Logan shows up at the graveyard because Cokie Mason tipped him off, but instead he sees Cokie Mason being embarrassed by the BSC). Apparently, other girls at SMS think Logan is hot stuff too, but he only has eyes for Mary Anne. Why, I do not know.

Final thoughts: I'd make fun of Charlie more for being a 17 year old with a car who spends a Halloween Saturday night driving his little sister and her dumbass BSC friends to the cemetery, but I'm the loser 24 year old who lives in New York and is spending a Friday night writing about it, so there's not much room for me to talk here.