Karen's Chain Letter

by Ann M. Martin

  Hannie’s Mistake

  The next day was Friday. Before I left for school, I folded up the letters I had saved for Hannie and Nancy and put them in my backpack. I waited until we were together in our classroom. Then I handed the letters to my friends. I stood between them as they read their copies. I pointed out the important parts, in case Hannie and Nancy missed them.

  “See,” I said. “It says you have to send out ten letters.”

  “Mmm,” said Hannie.

  “But you have to send them to kids only. And after that you have to send a postcard to the person at the top of the list.”

  “You told us that the other day,” said Nancy.

  “But the most important thing,” I continued, ignoring her, “is that you have to do all of this in three days.”

  “Karen,” Nancy snapped at me, “we can read.”

  “I am only trying to help,” I said. “Since I am the one sending you the letter, it is my responsibility to make sure you understand it. I certainly do not want you to do anything that would cause you bad luck.”

  Nancy rolled her eyes, but Hannie nodded solemnly. “Three days,” she repeated.

  At least one of my friends seemed to understand the importance of what I was saying.

  The next day was Saturday. I had a lot to do. I had decided to work on my stamp album so that it would look perfect when I brought it in to show the class. In the afternoon, I called Nancy. I asked her if she had sent out the letter yet.

  “I am typing it right now,” she said. “Do you want to come over and make sure I am doing it right?”

  Nancy did not sound as if she really meant that. Sometimes people do not understand when you are trying to help them.

  After that, I went over to Hannie’s house to play. I helped her with her letters. It took all afternoon. That night, I called her on the phone.

  “Did you address the envelopes yet?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Hannie said when I reminded her. “The envelopes. I will try to address them tomorrow.”

  Hmm. It sounded almost as if she had forgotten. The next morning I went over to her house bright and early to make sure that she remembered. I helped her address the envelopes. We worked very carefully.

  “There,” I said when we were finished. I thought my work was done.

  But Monday morning when we were on the school bus, I found out I was wrong.

  “Did you mail the letters?” I asked.

  I was heading down the aisle, looking for a seat. Hannie was behind me.

  “Not yet,” she answered. “Mommy said she would take them to the post office this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon!” I cried. “That is too late. Your three days are up this morning!”

  Hannie’s face turned pale. “No, they are not,” she said. “I have until tomorrow, don’t I?”

  “I gave the letter to you on Friday morning,” I said. “Count the days from Friday morning. Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning. That is three. I thought you were going to mail them out yesterday after you typed them!”

  “We did not have enough stamps,” said Hannie. “And the post office is closed on Sunday.”

  I tossed my backpack on a seat and sat down. Hannie slid in beside me. Obviously, Hannie was not as good at solving problems as I was. The bus pulled down the street. It was too late to do anything. We were heading toward school. Away from Hannie’s house. Away from the unmailed letters.

  “Do you think I will have really bad luck?” Hannie asked.

  I did not know what to say. Of course she would have bad luck. “I hope not,” I told her.

  “How is a person supposed to mail a letter if she does not have any stamps?” Hannie asked crossly. She thought for a moment. “Maybe Sunday did not really count,” she said. “Because of the post office being closed and all.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I did not think so, but I did not want Hannie to worry.

  “This is terrible,” Hannie said. “Now I will have bad luck. Really bad luck.”

  I was afraid Hannie was right. And I knew it was partly my fault. I should have called her again on Sunday night, but I had been too busy working on my stamp album. How had everything gone so wrong? Where was my good luck?

  Show-and-Share

  At school I did not spend much more time worrying about Hannie. I had other important things to do. I opened my backpack and peeked in. Yup. There it was, sandwiched safely between my book and my notebook. I had worked very hard on my stamp album. Finally it was ready for everyone to see.

  Soon Ms. Colman announced it was time for show-and-share. “Does anyone have anything to show us today?” she asked. My heart started pounding. I almost shouted out, but just in time I clapped my hand over my mouth and remembered to raise my hand.

  Ms. Colman smiled. “Yes, Karen?” she said.

  “Today,” I said when I reached the front of the room, “I have brought in something very special. It is the stamp collection I told you about last week.” I held the album high so everyone could see. I had decorated the cover with red and gold glitter.

  “Ooh!” someone cried out.

  “As you can see,” I continued, “my album is very beautiful. But the important things are the stamps inside.” I opened the book. In the center of the first page was a stamp with a picture of a red flower. On the page around it, I had drawn lots of red bouquets.

  “Every year,” I told my classmates, “the post office prints stamps with different pictures on them. They are called special-issue stamps.” I turned the pages of my album — slowly, carefully — so the class could see all the different stamps I had collected.

  “If you are a stamp collector, you can also collect stamps from different countries,” I said. By this time I was turning the last, most impressive, pages of my book. “I am lucky, because my big sister, Kristy, gets mail from other countries. As you can see, these Canadian stamps are very colorful.”

  And now I had reached the last page. On it was a stamp from England. “This stamp is the queen,” I said. “The queen of England. If you grow up to be a famous person like the queen, you might be important enough to have your picture on a stamp.”

  When I had finished, lots of hands shot up. My classmates had plenty of questions.

  “How do you take the stamps off the envelopes?” asked Sara Ford.

  “I cut them off with scissors,” I said. “You have to be very careful not to nick the stamps.”

  “And how do you put them on the page?” asked Addie.

  “Glue,” I answered. “Regular glue.”

  “Thank you, Karen,” said Ms. Colman when I had answered all the questions. “That was very interesting.”

  “I forgot one thing,” I added quickly. “If anyone would like to start a stamp collection, please feel free to ask me any question anytime.”

  “That is very generous of you,” said Ms. Colman. Then she called on the next person who had something to talk about.

  I cannot say that I paid much attention. I was still glowing from my own talk. I was very proud of my stamp collection and all the work I had done. Soon, I thought, lots of postcards would start rolling in from the chain letter I had sent. Each one would have a stamp. And then my collection would be even better.

  I counted back the days in my head to Thursday. That was the day I had mailed out the chain letter. I knew it was too early to expect any postcards yet, but I wondered when they would start to arrive. Tomorrow maybe? The next day? How long would I have to wait before my good luck began?

  One thing was certain. It was very lucky that I had written the school address on my letter. Lucky for my classmates. Now they would be able to see all my beautiful new stamps as soon as they arrived.

  Waiting for Mail

  The next morning when the bus dropped Hannie and me off at school, I decided not to go straight to my classroom. I walked past the school office and waved to Ms. Agna, the secretary. I figured that if any mail for me had been delivered to the office, she would be t
he first person to know.

  “Hello, Ms. Agna,” I said. “That is a very pretty dress.” It was true. Her dress had big pictures of teapots printed on it. Ms. Agna always wears cool clothes.

  “Thank you,” she said. But she did not say anything about any mail.

  The next morning I walked by the office again. This time I stopped and talked a bit longer.

  “I do not know if you remember me from last year,” I said, “but my name is Karen Brewer.” I reached out and shook Ms. Agna’s hand. She looked a little surprised.

  “I am glad to meet you, Karen,” she said.

  “I am in Ms. Colman’s second grade,” I said. “If you need me for any reason, you can find me there. For instance, if any mail arrives for me.”

  “I will remember that,” she said. Then the phone rang and she answered it. I hurried off to class.

  Every morning that week I stopped to talk to Ms. Agna. Never once did she say anything to me about any mail. And that was not the only thing that worried me. In class all my friends had started talking about stamps. Stamps, stamps, and more stamps. I was not the only stamp collector in the class anymore. Nancy announced that she had started a collection. Hannie had started one too. Then Pamela started one, then Addie, and Ricky Torres, and Terri and Tammy Barkan. Each day at show-and-share, someone new brought in stamps to show. And then I noticed something terrible. Lots of kids were bringing in stamps that were better than mine.

  “Look what I have,” Nancy said to me one day on the playground. She fished in her pocket and pulled out an envelope. She picked out some stamps and laid them across her palm. She had queen stamps from England! They were just like the one I had, only Nancy had four of them and they were all different colors!

  “Stamps from other countries are very cool,” said Nancy. “My uncle does a lot of traveling for his work and he gets mail from all over the world.”

  “No fair,” I muttered.

  “What?” said Nancy.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. I knew I had sounded like a meanie-mo, but I could not help it. Stamp collecting was my hobby, my idea. Everyone else in the class was being a copycat. Copycats with better stamps. If only my postcards would start coming in. Then my good-luck streak would finally start, and my collection would be the best again.

  Well, until that happened, I would just have to work a little harder. After school that day, I talked to the people in my family.

  “Kristy,” I began, “have you written your friends who live in other countries lately? They will not write to you if you do not write them first.”

  Kristy grinned. “You need some more stamps, don’t you?” she asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess.”

  “Well, if you write any of your friends in England, could you please ask them to send queen stamps?” I said. “Ones with different colors?”

  “I will,” said Kristy. “When I have a chance to write.”

  That did not sound too promising.

  Next, I tracked down Nannie. I was hoping she might have received some interesting mail. But some of her customers had begun sending their orders by fax. That meant no stamps. I decided to talk to Nannie about this problem.

  “Nannie,” I said, “I do not think it is good that some of your customers have started faxing their orders to you. I am a little bit worried about the post office. How will they ever stay in business if nobody sends mail anymore?”

  Nannie laughed. “I cannot ask my customers to stop using the fax,” she said. “But I know you need stamps, Karen. So I saved you this envelope that came in today’s mail.”

  Nannie handed me an envelope with lots of stamps on it. Some were for five cents, some were for ten cents, and some were for one cent. Together, they all added up to the price of a regular stamp. I had not seen any stamps like that before. They were kind of cool.

  “Gee, thanks, Nannie,” I said.

  I ran to my room to glue the new stamps in my album. Maybe this was the beginning of my good-luck streak!

  Bales of Mail

  Finally, on Friday, I had a big surprise. I was in class and we were reading silently. Ms. Colman had said we could find comfortable reading seats so I had flopped down on one of the big, fluffy pillows in our reading corner. Hannie was sitting beside me. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “She has the coolest clothes of any grown-up I know.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Hannie pointed. Oh, my gosh! Ms. Agna was standing in our doorway talking to Ms. Colman. In her arms she held a plastic sack.

  “Karen?” said Ms. Colman. She motioned to me. I ran to her and she held the sack open for me to look inside. “Apparently you have received some mail at school,” she said.

  “My postcards!” I cried. “From my chain letter.”

  “Chain letter?” repeated Ms. Colman.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is sponsored by Kidsnetwork. These are postcards from all over the world!”

  “Well,” said Ms. Colman, “I can see that you are very excited. Perhaps you could share some of the postcards with the rest of the class.”

  Ms. Agna left, and Ms. Colman sorted through the cards and picked out one for me to read aloud. It was from a girl who lived on an island near Seattle. She had to ride on a ferryboat every day to go to school. “How do you get to school?” she asked. At the bottom of the postcard she had printed her name and address, so I could write back.

  I did not read any more of the postcards then, though. Ms. Colman took the bag and kept it at her desk. When it was time for lunch and recess, she handed the bag to me. “You might want to look at them outside,” she suggested.

  Later, on the playground, everyone crowded around.

  “Is that a horse stamp?” asked Pamela. She grabbed a postcard out of the sack.

  It was not a horse stamp. It was a regular old postcard stamp. Oh no. I had forgotten about postcard stamps. There are not as many kinds. So they are usually not as interesting as letter stamps. I looked through the bag quickly. Good. Not all of the cards had postcard stamps. Some had letter stamps. Pamela grabbed another card out of the bag.

  “Here is a horse stamp,” she said.

  Nancy reached in too. “And here are two more,” she said. “Hey, you have so many. Would you share some of them? Please?”

  Everyone was staring at me. I would look like a meanie-mo if I did not say yes. “Okay,” I said. I tore off two stamps and gave one to Nancy and one to Pamela. “But the rest are all mine,” I said. “And everyone is crowding me. Could you please stand back?” I closed up the bag tightly. Maybe it would be better to look through the cards later, when I was alone.

  Across the yard, some kids from another class were playing keep-away. I ran to join them. The bag bumped against my stomach. I thought of all the cards inside. Even though some of the stamps were postcard stamps, there were sure to be lots of wonderful letter stamps too. My good-luck streak was definitely beginning. It had started when I spotted Ms. Agna standing in our door.

  I ran past Ms. Colman. She was talking to another teacher.

  “Oh, Karen,” she called to me. “I would like to speak with you, please. In the classroom. Alone.”

  Alone? Uh-oh. That could only mean trouble. I slung my bag over my shoulder and waved to Hannie and Nancy so they would know I was leaving. My friends watched me as I followed Ms. Colman back into school. What could the problem be now?

  Trouble

  As soon as we were inside the classroom, Ms. Colman closed the door. Yikes. I wondered what she was going to ask me. She perched herself on a corner of her desk and folded her hands.

  “I want to speak with you about the chain letter,” she said. Oh. Was that all? “Did you know that some chain letters are against the law?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said quickly. “Do not worry about a thing. No one is going to be arrested. This chain letter is perfectly legal. You only send postcards, not money. And you are only supposed to send it to kids.”
<
br />   “That may be so,” said Ms. Colman. “But I would like you to bring in the letter so I can read it myself. And I have another question.”

  “You do?” I asked.

  “Why are the postcards being mailed to you here at school?”

  “Because I put the school address on the chain letter,” I said.

  “But why did you do that?”

  “My daddy suggested it.”

  “Your father told you to use the school’s address?”

  “Yes. He thought it was not very safe for me to give out my home address to strangers. So he said it would be better if the postcards were delivered to me at school.”

  Ms. Colman tapped her fingers together thoughtfully. “Well,” she said slowly, “I can see that your father has your safety at heart, but I am surprised that he did not call the school first to ask if it was okay. Children are not supposed to receive mail here. Not unless it is part of a school project. It is too much work for the office to keep up with. And when our class is interrupted, it disrupts our important work.”

  Oh. I had not thought of that. And I guessed that Daddy had not either. Usually he is very good at keeping the rules of the school in mind. Maybe this time he just forgot.

  There was a knock on the door. I knew it must be my classmates. Recess was over and they were ready to come back inside.

  “Karen,” said Ms. Colman, “after school I will need to call your father. The postcards will continue to come to our class. It is too late to stop them. But I want you and your father to understand the rules.”

  She walked to the door and opened it. Bobby Gianelli pushed through, and the other kids followed. Hannie and Nancy ran to me. I knew they wanted to find out what Ms. Colman had said. But I felt kind of funny. I was not the one in trouble, exactly. It was Daddy. Still, I felt a little bit like I was in trouble too. This was all very confusing.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Nancy.

  “I guess so,” I said.