The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by John Bemelmans Marciano

  Interior illustration copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Mock

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Marciano, John Bemelmans, author.

  Title: The No-Good Nine / by John Bemelmans Marciano.

  Description: New York : Viking, [2018]. | Summary: In 1931, nine naughty children who received coal in their stockings travel from Pittsburgh to the North Pole to plead their case to Santa Claus. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018000523 (print) | LCCN 2018008039 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101997864 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101997840 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Behavior—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Santa Claus—Fiction. | Christmas—Fiction. | Depressions—1929—Fiction. | United States—History—1919–1933—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Runaways.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M328556 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.M328556 No 2018 (print) |

  DDC [Fic]—dc23 | LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000523

  Version_1

  TO THE SO-GOOD READERS OF RED HOOK:

  Pearl, Thea, Nathan, Jasper, Oliver, Odette, Imogen, Cy, and Galatea

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE: The Secret Origin of the No-Good NineEpisode One: Meet the No-Good Nine1. THE KNOW-IT-ALL

  2. ME

  3. THE BRAT

  4. THE NEXT DAY

  5. THE CRUEL

  6. THREE MORE MEMBERS

  Episode Two: Escape from Pittsburgh7. THE FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING OF THE NO-GOOD NINE COMES TO ORDER

  8. MY ARCHENEMY

  9. THE FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING OF THE NO-GOOD NINE CONTINUES

  10. WHAT HAPPENED ON THE WAY HOME

  11. HOW TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME

  12. SHOWDOWN AT UNION STATION

  Episode Three: The Thief13. HAPPY 1932!

  14. PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ

  15. MUMMY RUMMY

  16. THIEVES THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

  17. A TURN FOR THE WORSE

  18. WHERE IT ALL FALLS APART

  19. A LONG COLD WALK IN WHEREVER THE HECK THIS IS

  20. SURPRISE!

  21. AND THEN THERE WERE EIGHT

  Episode Four: Mush!22. OFF TO THE RACES

  23. CAMPFIRE TALES

  24. WE WERE NOT ALONE

  25. LIFE WITH THE INUIT

  26. A CHAPTER YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP IF YOU’RE SQUEAMISH

  27. AND YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS PART TOO

  28. HELLO, LIGHTHOUSE!

  29. NOT 100 PERCENT WHAT WE WERE EXPECTING

  PART TWO: Adventures in SantalandEpisode Five: Isle X30. THE GREAT AND AMAZING ADVENTURE

  31. ARRIVAL ON ISLE X

  32. THE TOY FACTORY

  33. PLAYTIME!

  34. AN ACCIDENT THAT WAS KIND OF MY FAULT

  35. ONE LAST CHAPTER IN THIS SORRY EPISODE

  Episode Six: Prisoners of Isle X36. UNWELCOME GUESTS

  37. WHAT I WROTE AFTER I WOKE UP

  38. THE EYE IS WATCHING YOU

  39. THE BIG GOODBYE

  40. A TRIO OF UNPLEASANT SURPRISES

  41. WHAT HAPPENED

  42. THE TOUR

  43. WHAT’S FOR DINNER

  44. MUMMY-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP

  Episode Seven: Here Comes Mummy Claus45. THE NINETY-NINE NIGHTS OF THE NO-GOOD NINE

  46. AND ON THE HUNDREDTH DAY

  47. A REALLY SHORT CHAPTER IN WHICH A SWELL PLAN IS AGREED TO

  48. A FAKE FRACAS

  49. BUT SHOULD WE BELIEVE HER?

  50. THE BEST CHAPTER YET!

  51. THE RETURN OF MUMMY CLAUS

  52. THE FLYING SLEIGH RACE

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  The Secret Origin of the No-Good Nine

  You’ve heard of how bad kids get coal in their Christmas stockings, right? You may think it’s a hollow threat, but it really used to happen. And then it stopped. In 1932, if you want to be exact.

  Why did it stop, you ask? It stopped because of us.

  The No-Good Nine!

  Maybe you know how we tangled with Tarzan and journeyed to Oz. Or how we fought alongside Buck Rogers in the future and rescued Sherlock Holmes in the Wild West. And how we might—or might not!—have discovered Atlantis.

  What you don’t know is how we got together in the first place. You can’t know it, because our origin story has been a matter of top-level international security for almost a century. But now—finally—the records can be unsealed, and you can know the true story of how we changed Christmas forever.

  But before we became the No-Good Nine, we were just nine regular kids.

  Well, sort of regular.

  EPISODE ONE:

  MEET THE NO-GOOD NINE

  1. THE KNOW-IT-ALL

  It was nearly the end of 1931, an out-and-out lousy year. In fact, it might have been the worst year ever.

  The Great Depression was in full swing, and it wasn’t called that because everyone was depressed. (Although that was true, too.) It was the Great Depression because nobody had any money or a job. Nearly nobody, anyway.

  The newspapers were filled with stories of people jumping off buildings and hoboes riding train cars, but today was the day when no one was supposed to worry about stuff like that. Because today was Christmas, the best day of the year! Right?

  Wrong!

  Wrong, in particular, for the Know-It-All. It was right before dawn when the Know-It-All—or Peter, as he would still be called for a few more days—woke up with that amazing feeling you get once a year. When your first thought is: It’s Christmas!

  He shook his sister awake and they crept down the creaky stairs together.

  “Santa was here!” Peter’s little sister screeched.

  “Of course he was h-h-here. It’s Christmas,” Peter said, in that know-it-all-y way of his, which had to be as annoying to his little sister as it was to the rest of us.

  In the living room, two stockings were hanging over the fireplace. The one marked BETSY was lumpy, packed, and overflowing. The one marked PETER looked different.

  As in empty.

  Stunned—worried—conf
used—Peter quickly ran through all the things on his Christmas list, which is reproduced below for your convenience.

  September 1, 1931

  Sewickley, Penn.

  Dear Mr. Santa Claus,

  Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the gifts you have given me in the past. Most especially I’d like to thank you for last year, when I asked for more presents than ever and you managed to get me every single one. I truly appreciate it.

  I would also like you to know that I would completely understand if this year, which has been so bad for so many children, you were not able to entirely fulfill my wishes. I’ll be happy and grateful for whatever you are able to give me. After all, I am one of the lucky kids whose father still has a job, a fact for which I am thankful every single day.

  As for my list, I would like:

  An Erector set

  Lincoln Logs

  A Lionel Train

  One novel, preferably Tarzan at the Earth’s Core

  One pulp magazine subscription, preferably Amazing Stories

  Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia

  A new compass

  and

  Fruit

  As ever, thank you, Mr. Claus, and thanks also to your entire staff of elves who do such excellent work, year in and year out.

  Yours sincerely,

  Peter Czaplynsky

  Why any kid would want an encyclopedia for Christmas, I have no clue. But that was the Know-It-All for you. He wanted to know it all.

  But right now Peter was regretting his letter. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to tell Santa it was O.K. to take care of the less fortunate kids and not him.

  “There is a lump in the toe,” his little sister said, feeling at the stocking. “Something is in here!”

  But he hadn’t asked for anything that small. Unless it was—groan—the fruit! Why did he even bother asking for that, anyway?

  Peter turned over his stocking. What was stuck in the toe was something far worse than fruit.

  It was coal.

  The horrible truth hit Peter like a punch to the stomach:

  He had been put on Santa’s Naughty List!

  How could this be? Peter thought. There must be some kind of mistake!

  When Peter’s parents came down, Betsy couldn’t contain herself.

  “Santa brought Peter coal! Santa brought Peter coal!” she said, jumping up and down. “And I got everything I wanted!! Peter’s NAUGHTY and I’m NICE!”

  “How can that be?” Peter’s father said.

  “There must be some kind of mistake!” Peter’s mother said.

  After all, Peter had been a good boy all year long, the same as ever. Betsy, on the other hand, spent half of first grade sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on or getting the back of her hand slapped with a ruler. (Yeah, that stuff really happened in 1931.)

  Peter felt sick all that day, like the hurt of that punch just wouldn’t go away. Even at Christmas dinner at Grandma’s with his cousins, he couldn’t be happy.

  And it wasn’t just because he didn’t get any presents. It was because he was so ashamed.

  That night there was no getting to sleep. Everyone was so sure it was a mistake. What if it really was? Couldn’t Santa make a mistake? After all, everyone makes mistakes. And when you make a mistake, you try to fix it, right? So Peter snuck back downstairs to see if Santa had come back to deliver his presents.

  He had not.

  Peter started looking under furniture and behind the stacked wood to see if there was any place a present could’ve gotten left by accident, until the only place to look was in the heap of ashes in the fireplace. Maybe something had fallen out of Santa’s bag when he was coming down the chimney?

  Peter got on his hands and knees and started searching through the cinders. It was a desperate act, not to mention a dirty one. And that was when he found it.

  No, not a present.

  A list.

  It was burned at the edges and half covered in soot. At first, Peter thought it was one of his mom’s shopping lists. But the handwriting wasn’t hers—it was in some kind of fancy script.

  He looked more closely at the paper. It was a list of kids. On the page were their names, ages, and addresses, along with a nasty-sounding description of each. Thief, Brat, Biter, Cruel, Bully, Liar, and so on.

  Boy, you wouldn’t want to be called any of the things on this list. This was a list of really bad kids.

  Then at the bottom of the page, he saw his own name.

  Peter Czaplynsky, 12, KNOW-IT-ALL

  1028 Thorn Street

  Finally it hit him—like he was ten pins and this burnt piece of paper was a bowling ball hurtling at him.

  This list—this was Santa’s list.

  THE NAUGHTY LIST!

  And it was this list that led Peter to me.

  2. ME

  It was the morning after Christmas. I was throwing snowballs on the sidewalk outside my house, trying to knock the head off a snowman some little kids in the neighborhood had built. I reared back and

  BAP!

  I knocked the carrot off its face. Jake!

  (Back in 1931, “jake” meant cool.)

  Making another snowball, I saw him walking up the street—Peter. He was looking up and down from a piece of paper, and checking out the building number on my house. He looked confused, like he was lost. But how could he be lost? He lived three streets away.

  “Hey!” I called. “Whattya standin’ there lookin’ stupid for?”

  I knew Peter, although I wouldn’t say we were friends. At least not yet. We were in the same sixth-grade class—sort of.

  (“Sort of” because I didn’t much go to school. More on that later.)

  Peter looked down to his piece of paper again, and said, “I didn’t know your n-n-name was Luigi!”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “Are you l-l-lying, Looie?”

  “No, I’m not lying. My name is Lewis,” I said, throwing the snowball. I knocked out the snowman’s corncob pipe. “Who told you it was Luigi?”

  “Did you get c-c-coal in your stocking at Christmas?” he asked.

  “No, of course not!” I told him Santa gave me the Erector set I’d been wanting all year and how jake it was.

  Peter asked if we could play with it, but I told him I had let my cousin Tony borrow it. “He loves buildin’ stuff.”

  “You’re lying,” Peter said.

  “Prove it,” I said.

  He held out the piece of paper he’d been staring at. It was half burned.

  “What’s that?” I said, suspicious.

  “It’s Santa’s N-N-Naughty List,” Peter said.

  “Wow, gimme that!” I said, and ripped the page out of Peter’s hands.

  “G-g-give it back!” he said.

  “This is so swell!” I said, using another word that meant cool back then. “Hey, look, here’s my name—Luigi Curidi!”

  “I thought you said your name wasn’t Luigi,” Peter said. “But I g-g-guess I shouldn’t be surprised, LIAR!” He pointed at the word right next to my name.

  Luigi Curidi, 12, LIAR

  It was a fair description. I was a liar. For instance, I had lied to Peter about practically everything I had said.

  Santa had not given me an Erector set, and if he had, I certainly wouldn’t have lent it to my jerky cousin Tony. I had gotten coal in my stocking. But unlike with Peter, it was no surprise. I always got coal in my stocking. (Even so, I kept putting up a stocking every year. I too hoped that Santa made an occasional mistake.)

  “Hey, look!” I said, pointing further down the list. “Here you are!”

  “I know,” he said miserably.

  “And it says you’re a know-it-all! Wow,” I said, “Sant
a’s really good at this! You are a know-it-all!”

  The Know-It-All—as I would forever after call the boy formerly known as Peter—looked annoyed and snatched the list back from me.

  I asked if he wanted to do something fun. Go sledding? Build an igloo? Have a snowball fight? But he didn’t.

  He was obsessed with The List.

  “This list is too important!” he said. “We can’t l-l-let it go to waste. It’s been dropped on us for a reason!”

  I pointed out that it wasn’t much of a list—just one lousy page of a much bigger list. A book of lists. And even at that, there were only about thirty or so names you could make out. The rest were all too burnt to read.

  “Well, it’s not fair!” the Know-It-All said. “Having a list like this is an injustice! It’s t-t-t-terrible to give some kids exactly what they want for Christmas and give other ones coal.”

  I shrugged. I always got coal and I was a liar, so I didn’t know how unfair it was. “Besides, I didn’t hear you complaining when Santa was giving you everything you wanted.”

  The Know-It-All ignored me. “We have to do something about this!”

  “But what can we do?” I said.

  As it wound up, the Know-It-All had an idea of exactly what we could do.

  A BIG idea.

  But I didn’t know that—yet.

  3. THE BRAT

  It was a long walk from where the Know-It-All and I lived up to Sewickley Heights, the rich part of town. And when I’m talking rich, I’m talking millionaire rich. This is where the Pittsburghers who had made truckloads of money with steel factories and coal mining and the railroads came to live. And boy, did these millionaires like to live in big houses.

  In fact, you couldn’t call even them houses. They were castles, with big stone walls surrounding them.

  Walking up here, I started to get nervous. Some poor and dirty Italian kid like me could get arrested just for breathing the same air as these people. I wasn’t even an American citizen yet. What if I got deported back to Italy? I didn’t know how to speak Italian!