"I hate the way these letters always try to make you feel guilty," Livvie said. "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. "When are you going to copy yours?" she 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," her mother had told her. "I did my time on those horrid things when I was your age. I'm not going to answer them anymore."

Well, Livvie wasn't going to answer them anymore, either - especially if they were supposed to be so much work. "Watch this," she said. When Joyce looked up, Livvie tore her chain letter in half and threw the pieces in the trash beneath the sink.

Joyce stopped scribbling and put on her glasses, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "That's definitely bad luck. Very definitely, Livvie. That's very bad."

back

Excerpted from The Chain Letter by Julie Schumacher. Copyright© 2004 by Julie Schumacher. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Books for Young Readers, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.