Chain Letter

Livvie and Joyce got the chain letters in November. They didn't know who had sent them. Dear friend, the letters started. This chain letter has not been broken for fifteen years. "Right," Livvie said. "Who do they think they're kidding?" Joyce was sitting at the kitchen table at Livvie's house, copying the letter onto notebook paper. Her handwriting was short and square, as if every word had been squashed. "The only other chain letters I've ever gotten have been on e-mail," she said. "But a girl I met at camp last summer told me those aren't as powerful. You're supposed to write every single copy by hand. Otherwise it's bad luck." "It's bad luck just to get a chain letter," Livvie said. "They're a waste of time. Besides, you think everything is bad luck." She opened the refrigerator. She wanted something sweet and hot--maybe a warm brownie with hot fudge and nuts and whipped cream--but her mother had some unexplainable bias against chocolate. Livvie couldn't remember what it was. "I don't think everything is bad luck," Joyce said. "Just some things." "Black cats," Livvie said, staring into the refrigerator. "Ladders. The number thirteen. Opening an umbrella indoors." "And mice," Joyce said. "Mice are bad luck. Most people don't know that." She tore another piece of paper out of her notebook. "Also worms when it isn't raining. When it's raining I think they're all right." "It's weird that we both got these letters on the same day," Livvie said. They had walked home from school together, stopping first at Joyce's house, where the mail carrier had been stuffing the metal box full of catalogs and bills. Joyce had found her letter in the middle of the stack and brought it with her. A second, identical letter had been waiting for Livvie, at Livvie's house. "I wonder why they're typed--and not signed," Joyce said. She finished her sixth handwritten copy and began on the seventh. "Who do you think they're from?" Lazily and without enthusiasm, Livvie looked at her envelope. The postmark was blurry, and there was no return address. "It looks like somebody dropped mine in a snowbank." She looked over Joyce's shoulder. "I hate the way these letters always try to make you feel guilty. Don't break the chain! This letter began one hundred thousand years ago when it was scratched into stone by cavemen! You will be a very bad, bad person if you don't send it to all your friends!" "Better to send it to your friends than bring all that bad luck onto yourself," Joyce said. "I'm almost finished. Only three left." She had taken off her glasses, and now she was leaning so close to the table that the tip of her nose almost touched the letter. "Well, hurry up," Livvie said. "I'm hungry, and there's nothing good to eat around here." Livvie's mother wouldn't get home from work for another hour and a half. She was a physical therapist and worked with disabled kids, and she didn't have a lot of sympathy for people who complained about a lack of snack food. "I'm reminded every day," she told Livvie at least once a week, "how incredibly fortunate both of us are." "When are you going to copy yours?" Joyce asked. "I think you really are supposed to do it the same day you get the letter." "No way," Livvie said. The few times she had been suckered into taking part in a chain letter, she had been told that she would soon be receiving dollar bills in the mail. First a few, trickling in, and then bucketsful! Hundreds! She would be rich! But all she got after forwarding her letters were dirty looks from some of the people she had included in the chain. Her mother, for example. "Take my name off that list,&Schumacher, Julie is the author of 'Chain Letter', published 2006 under ISBN 9780440420118 and ISBN 0440420113.