He shook himself.
“But why am I explaining myself?” he said. “You’re the ones who don’t belong here!”
So we explained why we were there. (More or less, anyway.)
Lefty said he was sorry that we were all on the Naughty List. “But you still have to leave! You’re not allowed on Isle X—no humans are. There are international laws and treaties against it! And besides, Santa will be furious if he finds out there are human children here!” Lefty shuddered at the thought of it. “Santa hates children!”
“How can Santa hate children?” Goody said.
“Never mind that!” Lefty said. “However you came, you have to leave the same way!”
When the Brat explained that we had come on the monthly supply ship, Lefty held his head in his hands.
“That is not good. No, that is not good at all.”
“Look, we came all this way,” the Rude said. “Can’t we just play with some toys a little, and then we’ll get out of your hair? We promise!”
“Yeah, we promise!” we all said.
Lefty wavered. He didn’t want to let us, but he finally said O.K.
His agreeing might have had something to do with a tiny little fib I told about a rare blood disease and Goody-Two-Shoes only having two weeks left to live. When a tear came to the elf’s eye, I felt bad. But I had to do it, right?
“You can play with the toys, but only for five minutes,” Lefty said. “And then do you promise to leave?”
“We promise!” we said.
Making us all a bunch of liars.
33. PLAYTIME!
Lefty quickly solved the mystery of where all the toys were.
“As soon as they’re finished, they get brought in here,” he said, walking to a gigantic sliding door at the back of the factory. With an effort, he pulled it open to reveal a whole other building—a massive warehouse filled to the rafters.
With toys.
TOYS!
“Now, let me show you kids around a little,” Lefty said.
We listened to the elf for about three seconds.
Then we all went C-R-A-Z-Y.
There were cap guns and pogo sticks and bicycles and toy soldiers and model trains! And Erector sets! And—wow!—a whole wall of play swords! And then I saw the sporting supplies.
Bats and balls and mitts and catcher’s masks and boxing gloves and punching bags!
My family never could afford any of this stuff! We played stickball in the streets with broom handles because no one had bats. But here was the mother lode!
I tried one after the other. First the Babe Ruth model, then the Ty Cobb, then Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig! I tossed the balls up and banged them off the walls, the ceiling, and—whoops!—through a window.
CRASH!
“I didn’t do that!” I said.
But no one was listening.
Well, no one except Lefty. He was hollering for us all to stop, but I pretended not to hear him.
What I needed was someone to play ball with. But where had all the others gone?
I went searching through the aisles and found the Rude unbundling bales of play money. “I’m rich, I’m rich!” he said, throwing bills in the air. “Look at me, I’m Sparky Von Brat III! Now you have to do everything I say!”
The Brat might have been angry, but he was too busy putting together a massive train set.
Neither of them wanted to play baseball.
The Thief zipped by on a bright red bike.
“Heydoyouwanna . . .” I called to her, but she was gone.
I next asked the Know-It-All, but he had found the books. There were stacks of books, great towering cliffs of books.
“LOOK!” he said, pointing at one twenty-foot-high wall of them. “Nothing but Tarzans!”
The book aisle was the last place I wanted to be, so I left as soon as possible. The Thief zipped right by me going the other way on a bright blue bike.
“Heydoyouwanna . . .” I called, but she was gone again.
Goody-Two-Shoes was into the arts and crafts supplies. She had glue, paper, paints, brushes—you name it. “There are so many different colors of paint, I can’t believe it!”
I didn’t even bother asking her. The Hooligan maybe?
“Forget baseball!” he said. “Let’s play soldier—or gangster! Look at this!” He went to a huge pile of cap boxes, ripped one open, and put a roll in a cap gun.
POP!
the gun went as it struck the cap.
“Take that, nice kids of the world!” he said, smoke rising from the cap gun.
POP!
“And that!”
POP POP POP!
The Thief zipped right by me on a bright orange bike. And . . .
I didn’t bother.
The only one left was the Cruel. She was sitting in the middle of about five hundred dolls with glass eyes and blinking eyelashes that fluttered open and closed.
“Aren’t you too . . .” I was about to say old to play with that stuff, but she shot me a look that made me think the better of it. “. . . lucky to have found those dolls!”
“You lied to me!” Lefty the elf said. “All of you! I never should have let you come in here! How will we ever clean all this up? And the noise you’re making! Someone will come! And then you’ll be in trouble! Big trouble!”
“What trouble?” I said. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Haven’t done anything wrong? Haven’t done anything wrong?” Lefty said, sputtering. “Do you have any idea how many laws you’ve broken? Trespassing, breaking and entering. And stealing!”
“We haven’t stolen anything!”
“What about her?” he said, pointing to the Thief.
Finally off the bikes, the Thief had started stuffing toys under her shirt. It looked like she was pregnant. With triplets.
“And is that . . . graffiti?”
On one wall, it read
THANK YOU, NICE KIDZ,
YOU’RE MY-T FINE,
TO SHARE YER TOYZ
WITH THE NO-GOOD 9!
Who kept doing that?
At the moment, I didn’t care. I started hitting baseballs off the walls again, which really drove Lefty crazy.
“I bet that girl isn’t even dying! You lied about everything, didn’t you? Ohhh, you really are nothing but a bunch of no-good Naughty Listers! I should never have trusted you! Oh no, oh dear . . .”
I was just about to start feeling guilty again and stop when
“Candy canes!”
Candy canes?
I followed the sound of the Hooligan’s voice and found him standing in a crate full of nothing but CANDY CANES!
We all descended upon them, and began tearing open more and more boxes.
There were CARAMELS.
And LICORICE whips.
And CHOCOLATE.
And BUBBLE GUM.
And CARAMELS—did I mention them? (I love caramels.)
And ROCK CANDY.
And TAFFY.
We grabbed fistfuls, which became mouthfuls. There was so much of it, we just started throwing it at each other.
Candy fight!
Then we really went crazy. In fact, we got downright delirious.
On roller skates.
And pogo sticks.
And then I found the fireworks.
Oh, but I just loved fireworks!
I took out a pair of Roman candles and lit them, holding one in each hand as they spit out fountains of sparks.
“No!” Lefty hollered. “Not the fireworks! Do NOT play with the fireworks!”
“What fireworks?” I said. “I’m not playing with any fireworks.”
“Yes, you are!” the elf shouted at me. “They’re in your hands!”
&
nbsp; “No, they’re not!” I said. And then I did something pretty dumb.
I threw them away.
And I didn’t even look where I was throwing them. Which wound up being—unfortunately—right into that big pile of cap gun cap boxes.
“NO!” Lefty yelled. “Not that way!!”
But it was too late.
34. AN ACCIDENT THAT WAS KIND OF MY FAULT
POP!
POP POP!
POP POP POP POP POP POP!
It sounded like a war in here!
I rushed to stamp out the fire, but it was too much. Red-orange cap gun rolls were flying around my head like confetti in a parade.
The other No-Good Ninesters realized what was happening and rushed to help.
But then something really bad happened.
A flaming roll of caps landed in the pile of dolls the Cruel had been playing with, and
FWOOM!
the hair ignited, and the toy warehouse seemed to catch fire everywhere at once.
Lefty pulled the fire alarm. A siren began to wail, drowning out the sound of explosions.
We ran. All of us made it out O.K., except for some coughing.
“Fireworks!” the Cruel said to me once we were safely outside. “You had to play with the fireworks?”
She then called me a bunch of not-very-nice names.
And the Hooligan slugged me on the shoulder.
What really hurt, though, was the way Goody-Two-Shoes was looking at me in disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but then caught myself. “I mean, I am not sorry. Meaning I really am sorry.”
The Hooligan slugged me again.
Elves began to arrive. They looked at the flaming building, horrified and confused, and then at us, and got even more confused.
Together with the elves, we watched the fire grow bigger
and the roof cave in
and one of the sides of the building fall down.
The Elf Fire Brigade finally arrived, its ancient fire wagon pulled by a couple of reindeer. They didn’t even bother hosing down the toy warehouse because it was too far gone, so they turned their hoses on the Toy Factory, which was now on fire, too. But it didn’t help.
Yes. You read that right. We—I—burned down Santa’s toy factory.
I know it says that on the book jacket, but still, it’s pretty shocking when you actually read it, isn’t it?
35. ONE LAST CHAPTER IN THIS SORRY EPISODE
Standing there, looking at their factory ablaze, most of the worker elves were frozen in stunned silence. A couple of them cried.
Then came the sound of a loud, booming voice from the back of the crowd.
“What—what is going on here? What HAPPENED?” the voice thundered. “Let me through! Let me THROUGH!”
Then we saw him. And it was really him. The red suit, the hat, the long white beard—everything but the ho-ho-hos.
Santa!
I have to admit, I was starstruck.
As for Santa, well . . . he seemed pretty darn upset.
“WHAT!” he screamed, seeing the fire. “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FACTORY!?!”
Another wall collapsed, and everyone jumped back amidst the sparks and smoke and flames.
“It’s gone! My factory is GONE!” Santa said. He was apoplectic. “WHO is responsible for this? WHO?!”
The crowd of elves parted, and pointed back at us.
Santa stared in our direction for a moment. He shook his head and blinked his eyes like he was trying to break out of a hallucination.
“Are you . . . children?” Santa said, walking closer to us and squinting. “HUMAN children?”
“Geez, we sure are sorry about the fire, Mistuh Santa, sir,” the Hooligan said, shaking his head at the shame of it all. “It sure is a tough break.”
“Yes, we’re very sorry,” Goody said. “We didn’t mean for anything bad to happen. We just came to play with the toys.”
“The toys . . .” the Rude said, nodding.
“You . . . children . . . burned my factory down? Because you came to play with . . . the toys?” Santa said. “Don’t you know that NO ONE gets to play with the toys before CHRISTMAS! Why couldn’t you all just WAIT?!”
“Because we wouldn’t have gotten any!” the Brat said, going into tantrum mode. “We’re on the Naughty List!”
“NAUGHTY LISTERS!” A look of realization swept over Santa’s face. “That explains EVERYTHING! You did this on PURPOSE!”
“No! It wasn’t like that at all,” the Rude said, but Santa didn’t want to hear it.
“My beautiful factory—my life’s work!—it’s ruined! RUINED! And all by a bunch of rotten NAUGHTY LIST miscreants who ought to—
“who ought to—
“who ought to—”
Santa clutched his chest. His eyes rolled back in his head. And he dropped to the ground
THUD!
Lefty ran to try and revive him. But he couldn’t.
“Uh, f-f-fellers,” the Know-It-All said. “I think we just k-k-k-killed Santa Claus.”
* * *
• • •
Meanwhile . . .
Maybe now would be a good time to check in with Mummy and the Truant Officer, don’t you think?
The only thing is that they weren’t doing anything even remotely interesting.
They still had a whole week to wait for the Sinbad to return to Black Tickle, at which point they would try convincing Capt. Smudge to take them to Isle X like he took us.
About the only way for them to pass the time was to play cards. Unfortunately for the Truant Officer, the Vainglorious couldn’t follow any card game other than war, and even then he forgot the rules.
“The higher card wins. That is the only rule!”
What I don’t get is how Mummy kept Mr. and Mrs. Keeper from clueing in my archenemy to the fact that they were prisoners in their own lighthouse. Part of it, maybe, was that the Brothers Jack never let the Keepers out of their sight. A bigger part, more likely, is that the Truant Officer wasn’t any brighter than the Vainglorious when it came to following what the heck was going on.
EPISODE SIX:
PRISONERS OF ISLE X
36. UNWELCOME GUESTS
Let me begin this episode by making one thing very clear: We did not kill Santa Claus.
It wasn’t our fault the man didn’t take better care of himself. He never exercised or went to the doctor for an annual checkup, and do you know that he smoked? He had a pipe in his mouth all day long.
Frankly, it was a miracle Santa hadn’t dropped dead sooner.
And—as it wound up—he wasn’t even dead.
We thought he was dead, but he had only fainted.
(Or suffered a very minor heart attack.)
As you can imagine, there was a major hubbub among the elves after Santa collapsed. Unfortunately for him, the Toyland ambulance wasn’t much better than its fire truck, but it did eventually manage to get Santa to Dr. Elf.
It was a pretty tense few hours there while we waited to hear whether or not the big guy pulled through.
And to see whether or not the Toy Factory would ever stop burning.
Have you ever had someone hate you? Look at you with eyes like they wanted to burn a hole right through you?
Well, that’s pretty much the way every elf was looking at us.
We breathed a huge sigh of relief when we heard the crackle of the loudspeaker and it said
—BZZT!—Excellent news, fellow elves! Santa has survived! Rejoice! Rejoice!—BZZT!—
Rejoicing, however, seemed like the last thing the elves wanted to do. In fact, they didn’t seem to care one way or the other what happened to Santa.
Of course, none of them would talk to us, so what did we kno
w?
Actually, that’s not true—Lefty would talk to us. And thank goodness he did, because otherwise we would have had no place to sleep. Not that the old abandoned elf barracks where he stowed us away were so great. For one thing, they were falling apart. For another, they were built elf height.
“OWTCH!”
The Hooligan kept banging his head on the tops of the doorways.
“OWTCH!”
“How about you try ducking, genius?” the Cruel said.
The beds were pretty crappy, too. They were old and brittle and too short for our legs. Well, except for the legs of one of us.
“I don’t know what you all are complaining about,” the Rude said. “This is comfy!”
“That’s because you’re short,” the Hooligan said. “Now geddup on the top bunk, twerp.”
The Rude refused to go, so the Hooligan grabbed him. As soon as he did, the Rude let out a very loud—and smelly—fart.
“You want the bed now?”
The Hooligan muttered something and climbed to the upper bunk. He swung himself onto the bed and
THWOOP!
crashed right through the mattress, landing on top of the Rude. Then the two of them went crashing
THWOOP!
right through the bottom bunk.
“It’s like rooming with Laurel and Hardy,” the Brat grumbled, turning over in his bunk.
I’d explain who Laurel and Hardy were, but right now I’m too tired just remembering how tired I was. I’m going to sleep!
37. WHAT I WROTE AFTER I WOKE UP
“So w-w-w-what’s going to happen to us?” the Know-It-All asked Lefty.
Lefty shrugged.
“It’s up to the boss,” he said.
The thing was, Santa still hadn’t come out of his house, which stood out on a cliff at the far edge of the island.
On the plus side, at least the fire was finally out.
—BZZT!—All elves report for clean-up duty on the factory at oh eight hundred hours!—BZZT!—
The No-Good Nine Page 14