The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  “What are we doing here again?” I asked the Know-It-All.

  “Meeting one of the other kids on the l-l-list,” he said.

  The first part of the Know-It-All’s big idea was to go around and talk to other Naughty Listers. But as far as I knew, that was all we were doing.

  “And why do we want to go around meeting a bunch of rotten kids?” I asked.

  “How do you know they’re so r-r-rotten?” he said. “We’re on the l-l-list, too.”

  “Yeah, but for nothin’ dangerous,” I said. The other kids on the list were cheats, thieves, bullies, and hooligans. One kid—with the crazy name Tuesday—was labeled CRUEL. “We might get ourselves killed!”

  “Well, the one who l-l-lives up here is the Brat,” the Know-It-All said. “That doesn’t sound too d-d-d-d-dangerous.”

  It didn’t sound like my new best friend, either.

  Henry Alistair Chaudfront III, 12, BRAT

  When we got to the Brat’s address, it wound up he lived in the biggest, fanciest mansion of them all. It had a tower and iron gates twelve feet tall that led into the driveway. About the only thing it didn’t have was a moat and a drawbridge. Looking at it, I couldn’t blame Henry Chaudfront III for being a brat. If I lived here, I’d have been a brat too.

  While the Know-It-All double-checked the name and address, someone yelled, “Hey! What are you kids doing out there?”

  My heart jumped and I looked over to see a man in a yellow uniform walking toward us on the other side of the gate. He must have been a servant.

  I wanted to run, but the Know-It-All said, “We’re l-l-looking for Henry!”

  “You mean Sparky?” the yellow-uniformed man said.

  “Yeah, Sparky,” I said. “We’re pals of his. Good ol’ Sparky!”

  The guy squinted.

  “Sparky’s a monster,” he said. “And Sparky doesn’t have friends.”

  But he went to go get him anyway.

  “Are you sure we want to do this?” I said.

  The kid who came out was like no kid I’d ever seen before, except maybe in a movie. He looked like a miniature adult, with a flap of slicked-back hair and a bow tie around his neck.

  What kind of kid wears a tie?

  The Brat looked the both of us up and down like we were gum that might get stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

  “What do you two hoodlums want?” he said.

  The Know-It-All explained what had happened. Sort of. He wasn’t the best explainer when he was nervous. For one thing, there was that stutter. For another, he had trouble getting to the point. Or maybe it was just that his point didn’t seem like the point. He kept talking about how unfair it was that some kids got presents and others didn’t.

  “Well, I get lots of presents,” the Brat said.

  “Yeah, the ones your parents bought for you,” I said.

  “Free presents are for poor people,” he said. “My family doesn’t need some fat old elf’s charity.”

  The Know-It-All then brought out the list. He pointed to the name Henry Alistair Chaudfront III and then to his Naughty Crime—BRAT.

  What happened next, you wouldn’t believe unless you saw it. (And boy, would I see it a lot over the years.)

  The Brat got mad. But not mad like how normal people get mad. With him, it was like sticking a thermometer in a pot of boiling water and watching the mercury rise until it exploded.

  His face changed colors. It went from pink to red to dark red to something darker than dark red. And it wasn’t just one part of his face, like his cheeks or his ears. It was his entire head.

  Well, except for his eyeballs. Those just looked like they were going to pop out of his skull.

  “We have to do something about this!” he said.

  “Yes, we d-d-do!” the Know-It-All said. “We have a plan!”

  “We do?” I said.

  “Yes, we d-d-do,” the Know-It-All said. “And the plan is to go to Santa’s workshop.”

  “Wait, to what?” I said.

  He wanted to go to Santa’s? That was totally ridiculous! Except the Know-It-All, with his know-it-all-ness, had figured out how to get there.

  Or so he claimed.

  He said we had to take a train to Quebec, where we would switch to a boat that would take us up the Saint Lawrence River. Once we got to the sea, we’d switch to a different boat that would take us to a magical lighthouse where there existed some kind of ferry service to Santa’s workshop.

  Thinking back on it, it sounds like a really stupid plan. What I should have done was walk back home and never talk to either of these two Naughty Listers again.

  But right then the plan sounded pretty swell.

  And to the Brat?

  “That’s genius!” he said. “We go to that grubby old elf’s factory and we break all the toys of the nice kids of the world!”

  “Can’t we play with them first?” I said. “The toys, I mean.”

  “Good idea!” the Brat said. “We play with them and then we break them and then we go to Santa and show him what we think of him and his rotten list!”

  “That’s the part I w-w-want to talk about,” the Know-It-All said, and fumbled to take out a notebook.

  “I’ve been working on a sternly w-w-worded petition to read to Santa about the unfairness of the Naughty List,” he said. “About its lack of democratic principles, and the v-v-violation of habeas corpus and—”

  “Hay-bee-is whats-is?” I said.

  “Forget the fancy words,” the Brat said. “The only thing we need to give that stupid old elf is a punch in his big, fat stomach.”

  “But the p-p-p-petition,” the Know-It-All said, holding up his marbled composition book.

  “Oh fine,” the Brat said, rolling his eyes. “You read your petition, and then I’ll punch him in his stomach.”

  There was one problem. All these train and boat tickets were going to cost a lot of money. But that wound up not being a problem at all, because the Brat offered to pay our way.

  “So . . . is this gonna be like a club?” I said.

  I had always wanted to be in a club. A secret club. The kind with special code names and secret handshakes and stuff. And a password.

  “Ice bucket!” I said.

  “What?” the Brat said.

  “Ice bucket!” I repeated. “That can be our secret password.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” he said.

  But it was decided. We were forming a secret society of Naughty Listers, with the aim of going to Santa’s and playing with the toys of the nice kids of the world.

  And the next day, we would go in search of members.

  4. THE NEXT DAY

  It was early, and the Know-It-All and I were walking to the meeting place. We had both been busy.

  The Know-It-All had spent half the night going through the list and plotting the addresses of each of the other kids on a map of Pittsburgh, which was where the rest of the Naughty Listers lived.

  Our particular page of the Naughty List covered only the greater Pittsburgh area and only kids with last names starting Ce to Cz. The whole of the Naughty List had to be huge!

  “Extrapolating from population size and the relative alphabetical distribution of these names,” the Know-It-All said, “I calculate that the complete Naughty List contains approximately 328,453 children in the United States alone.”

  Which is a whole lot of horrible kids.

  But we weren’t looking to recruit all of them, not even all the ones on our single page. We just wanted kids our own age—give or take a year—and nobody who had committed any actual crimes. That meant no Pickpocket, no Shoplifter, no Robber, and no Murderer. Yes, there really was a murderer on the list. I’m not lying!*

  Oh yeah—and no girls.

  This all narrowed t
he list considerably.

  When we got to the old abandoned icehouse on the edge of town, there was no sign of the Brat. It was his idea to meet here, although I wasn’t sure why. To get to Pittsburgh, I usually just hopped the train. If you hid in the bathroom long enough, the conductor could never check your ticket.

  Mr. Richer-than-Rich said he’d see to us getting into the city some other way. Even so, it never occurred to me he might be driving the car that came rumbling up. This was because of what kind of car it was—a Doozy. Literally.

  (Doozy was the nickname for a Duesenberg, a long, open car so amazing that anything amazing came to be called a doozy.)

  Of course, I couldn’t see who it was, since the driver’s face was covered in a racing cap, goggles, and a scarf.

  “What’s the password?” I asked.

  “It’s me, stupid,” the Brat said, taking off his goggles.

  That was a really good password. Much better than ice bucket. “O.K., forget the old password,” I said. “The new password is It’s me, stupid!”

  “How can you be driving!” the Know-It-All said. “You’re not old enough to d-d-drive!”

  “But I am rich,” the Brat said. “Which makes me old enough to do whatever I want.”

  The Know-It-All felt the same rules should apply to everyone. The Brat agreed—so long as it was everyone else.

  All I cared about was I was going to get to ride in a Doozy!

  “Take your filthy shoes off before you come in the car, you twit!” the Brat said.

  He grinded the Doozy into gear, jammed on the gas, and kicked up dirt and snow under the back wheels as we sped off.

  With the way the Brat was driving, it looked like the Know-It-All was going to barf.

  Me, I loved it.

  “This is so great!” I shouted above the car noise. “The first official mission of the Secret Society of He-Man Naughty Listers is under way!”

  “We are not calling ourselves the Secret Society of He-Man Naughty Listers!” the Brat shouted back.

  “He’s right!” the Know-It-All yelled from the back. “That is a d-d-dumb name!”

  But we had to call ourselves that, because the name was already on the invitations.

  This was what I had been busy with.

  YOU ARE INVITED TO THE FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING

  of

  THE SECRET SOCIETY OF HE-MAN NAUGHTY LISTERS

  at

  THE UNITED PITTSBURGH MUNITIONS FACTORY

  at

  HIGH NOON, DECEMBER 28, 1931

  ::

  TELL NO ONE!

  It looked darn good, I thought. Almost like a professional invite.

  “This l-l-looks like it was scratched out by a chicken,” the Know-It-All said.

  “A dimwitted chicken,” the Brat said. “With its left claw.”

  I snatched the invites back. No one understands a true artist.

  Pittsburgh was about fifteen miles away, and we were getting close. You could tell because everything was beginning to turn black. The snow on the ground, the houses—all black. As we got farther in, the air itself became a black fog, and the street lamps were on, even though it was the middle of the morning. And you know why everything was black?

  Coal!

  Coal wasn’t just for stockings in 1931. Coal powered pretty much everything in Pittsburgh, a city that had two nicknames: Steel City and Hell with the Lid Off. The first was because of all the factories; the second because Pittsburgh was so polluted, the rivers occasionally caught on fire.

  The first kid we went to see was:

  Sammy Cemolian, 11, BULLY

  The Bully lived in a row of small, shabby houses separated by narrow alleys. The Know-It-All and I got out of the car, but the Brat didn’t want to leave the Doozy alone in such an unsavory-looking area.

  I knocked on the Bully’s door. And kept knocking.

  “Y’uns are gonna have to knock a whole lot louder if y’uns are lookin’ for Cemolians!” said a plump lady pinning laundry out a second-story window in the alley. “They left this morning for Scranton. Relatives or sump’m.”

  Strike one.

  The next kid on the map was:

  Ronnie Chickles, 13, FIREBUG

  The Firebug lived just a few streets away and he was home.

  Unfortunately.

  “Should we really be recruiting an a-a-a-arsonist?” the Know-It-All said as we rang the doorbell.

  A minute later, a gangly, weird-looking kid with red hair opened the door.

  “What is it?” he said angrily.

  He had a crazy look, with wide-open eyes that didn’t blink.

  The Know-It-All opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It was like he was stuttering on silence.

  “What are you lookin’ at?” the Firebug said, turning his crazy no-blink eyes on me.

  “The address!” I said, pointing at the house number. “It’s the wrong one!”

  We both turned tail and ran back to the Doozy.

  Strike two.

  We hoped to have more luck with:

  Tommy Crank, 12, HOOLIGAN

  “This time, I’ll do the talking,” the Brat said, parking. “Which one of you wants to stay with the Doozy?”

  “Me!” I said, raising my hand. “Me, me, me, me, me!”

  “Have you ever driven a car before?” the Brat said.

  “Sure I have,” I said. “Lotsa times.”

  “Well, don’t!” the Brat said. “Drive, that is. And don’t let anyone touch the car. Or look at it!”

  The Hooligan lived in an apartment building, but most of the names next to the buzzers were crossed out or missing. There was no Crank anywhere.

  “Who y’uns lookin’ fer?” said a teenager hanging around outside. He was smoking.

  The Brat asked if he knew who Tommy Crank was.

  “Sure, I know Tommy Crank. Who doesn’t? The Crank boys is famous. You know that gang the Mug Uglies? Tommy’s brother Jimmy is the one ’at started it.” The kid blew smoke in their faces. “He’s in jail now. They say he might get the Big Chair.”

  “The B-B-B-Big Chair?” the Know-It-All said.

  “Yeah, you know, the Big Chair, the hot squat. BZZT!”

  The teenager shook his whole body like he was getting electrocuted and then went limp. Smoke started twirling out of his nostrils. Then he opened his eyes, laughed, and yelled down the street.

  “Hey, Tommy! These fellers is lookin’ for you!”

  At the corner were three kids—if you could even call them kids. One of them had a mustache.

  “Oh yeah? Who’s they?” the biggest kid said.

  This was the Hooligan.

  The Hooligan and the other two were making snow grenades. Snow grenades were snowballs that were dipped in a pail of water and left out to freeze. They didn’t just hurt when you got hit by one—they could put you in the hospital.

  But neither the snow grenades nor the size of the Hooligan intimidated the Brat, who went right up and told Crank about finding the Naughty List, putting together a secret society, and having a meeting.

  I couldn’t believe how brave he was.

  Or how dumb.

  The whole time the Brat talked, the Hooligan looked stupefied. Then the Brat handed him one of the invites and the Hooligan read it. He had to move his lips while he did, but once he was done, he burst into laughter.

  “What’s this? An invitation to a little baby-aby tea party? Aw, that’s so cute! Lookit these cute baby-aby boys with their baby-aby club,” the Hooligan said to his friends, who were competing for who could laugh the loudest.

  And that was when the thing with the Brat’s face happened again—when it turned all purply red like a bunch of smashed raspberries. “Stop making fun of me, you crumby hoodlum fink!”

&nb
sp; The Hooligan’s face went straight from laughing to furious. He shoved the Brat hard to the ground.

  “You little babies tryin’ to start a gang?” he said. “Well, say hello to a real gang—the Mug Uglies!”

  The Know-It-All picked the Brat up off the sidewalk and whistled as loud as he could.

  “Looie!” the Know-It-All called to me, waving. “B-b-bring the car!”

  I turned the Doozy on and tried to put the stick into gear, but it stalled out. Darn! How did this thing work?

  Meanwhile, the Hooligan and his pals were laughing as the Know-It-All tried to drag away the Brat, who kept screaming to be unhanded.

  “Let me at them!” he shouted. “That wasn’t fair! He caught me when I wasn’t looking. Put up your dukes! Let’s settle this like real men!”

  The Hooligan mocked him, waving his fists up in the air like in one of those old boxing photos. “Yes, let’s put up our dukes,” he said in a fake snooty accent. The other Mug Uglies hooted with laughter.

  “Looie!” the Know-It-All hollered. “The car!”

  I was trying! But every time I put the Doozy in gear and stepped on the gas, it jerked forward and stalled out. I kept gunning the engine and stalling, gunning and stalling.

  “I thought you knew how to d-d-drive!” the Know-It-All yelled.

  “I lied!” I said, just as I finally got the thing moving forward in a herk and a jerk.

  “The car!” the Brat said, suddenly forgetting about the insults. He ran toward the Doozy.

  “Hey, don’t let ’em get away!” the Hooligan yelled, and hurled a snow grenade at the Brat. It plugged him square in the back of the head, knocking his big flap of pomaded hair loose so it fell over his eyes. A couple more whistled by—I was ducking my head under the dash—and then one nailed the Know-It-All in the butt.

  “Ow!” he yelped.

  By now, the two of them had reached the Doozy, which was rolling forward with a horrible screech. The Brat opened the driver’s-side door and pushed me out of the way. “Haven’t you heard of second gear?” he said.

  Oh, right! Second gear!

  The Know-It-All leapt over the side and into the back.