The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  A snow grenade just barely missed the windshield as the Brat swerved the car around in a U-turn, and he jammed it into third gear. The Mug Uglies were running after us, hurling their snow bombs. One nailed the trunk, denting it.

  “No!” the Brat yelled.

  Strike three.

  * * *

  • • •

  We retired to the nearest soda shop to think out our options.

  “Maybe we need to be a little more choosy,” the Know-It-All said.

  “Ya think?” I said, and slurped loudly on a straw.

  “I could have taken that Hooligan,” the Brat said, brushing his black hair flap back into place—again. “Him and his gang.”

  “Yeah, you and your army of servants, maybe,” I said.

  The Brat wanted to forget about finding any more members, but the Know-It-All insisted on finishing the list. The Brat thought it should be his choice, since he was the one paying for everybody’s tickets, while the Know-It-All believed it should be his choice, since he was the one who had found the list and knew how to get to Santa’s.

  “Hey, guys, how about this one?” I said, pointing to:

  Billy Cunkel, 12, LAZY

  “At least he should be easy to run away from.”

  Which wound up being true.

  We found the Lazy lying in his room, staring at the wall. Which, apparently, was pretty much all he ever did.

  However, he did accept our invitation without looking like he wanted to kill us. (Or actually trying to.)

  “Well, that’s one recruit,” I said when we got back into the Doozy.

  The other two looked at me like I was nuts.

  But what was nuts was who were going to meet next.

  The Cruel!

  5. THE CRUEL

  The Brat was the only one who wanted to recruit:

  Tuesday Commons, 13, CRUEL

  “This sounds like just the kind of guy we need to go face Santa,” the Brat said.

  “But how c-c-c-cruel is he?” the Know-It-All asked.

  And what kind of a name was Tuesday?

  Not the name of a guy, as it turned out, which we only realized when we found ourselves in front of St. Hedwig’s Home for Foundling Girls.

  “Foundling Girls?” I said. “How are we gonna be the Secret Society of He-Man Naughty Listers if the Cruel is a girl?”

  “We already decided we’re not calling ourselves that,” the Brat said, getting out of the car.

  The orphanage had a large stone courtyard that was walled in by a tall metal fence. It looked like a prison yard.

  There were girls hanging around inside, including a really young one who was lost in some kind of imaginary game, talking to herself and hopping around on one leg. She was playing right near the fence, so we went up to her and asked if she knew Tuesday Commons.

  Whatever fantasy land she was playing in disappeared, and a look of fear came over her face. She nodded yes.

  “She’s not so nice, huh?” I said.

  The little girl shook her head no.

  “How m-m-m-mean is she?” the Know-It-All asked.

  “So mean that her own parents gave her away when she was only six weeks old!” she whispered.

  The girl told us that the Cruel was left on a Tuesday in the Commons—hence her orphan name—and that her parents pinned a note to her basket that read:

  BEWARE WHOEVER TAKES THIS BABY

  FOR SHE IS THE MEANEST BABY

  IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

  GOOD LUCK!!!

  YOU’LL NEED IT.

  Once the little girl started talking about the Cruel, it was hard to get her to stop.

  The favorite part of any day for the Cruel was getting another girl to cry, she said, and an even better day was getting another girl in trouble for something she herself had done. But her very favorite thing was blackmailing the other girls into doing her chores by threatening to make up stories about them and tattling to Sister Mary Magdalen.

  “And the younger and sweeter a girl is, the more she enjoys torturing them,” the girl said. “I’m her favorite target!”

  The most galling thing, however, was that the Cruel got away with everything. This was because she was Sister Mary Magdalen’s favorite. (Sister Mary Magdalen being, like most people who ran orphanages, extremely cruel herself.)

  The Brat asked the girl if the Cruel got coal in her stocking on Christmas.

  “Yes!” she said, and smiled, remembering. “Oh, that was the best! The look on her face when she found that sparkly lump of coal. . . .”

  Maybe the Naughty List wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  The Brat asked which one the Cruel was, and the little girl’s face turned fearful again as she pointed across the yard. The girl she was pointing to was tall and beautiful and had two long braids of white-blonde hair that made her look like some kind of Viking warrior princess.

  “How can anyone that p-p-pretty be on the Naughty List?” the Know-It-All said.

  “She ain’t that pretty,” I said.

  “You are the biggest liar in the world,” the Brat said.

  “Well, I still don’t want her in the club,” I said.

  “She’s definitely in the club,” the Brat said.

  But which one of us had the guts to go up and talk to her? None of us, it turned out, so we shot rounds of odds and evens to see who would give her the invite.

  I lost.

  It seemed like it took forever for the three of us to walk around the perimeter of the fence to the other side of the courtyard. When we got near the Cruel, the Brat pushed me forward.

  I went Psst! louder and louder until I finally got her attention.

  She looked completely disgusted to see me. She actually snarled.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  As I gave her the spiel, the Cruel gave me a stare so withering—so full of loathing—that I wanted to vanish inside my coat. Or maybe even my soul.

  I didn’t stop feeling like I wanted to die until I handed her the invite.

  She opened it.

  “He-Men? Is that supposed to be the three of you?” the Cruel said with an arched eyebrow. “And what am I supposed to be—a She-Woman?”

  “We’re not keeping the n-n-n-n-name!” the Know-It-All said, piping up

  “Yeah, it was his dumb idea!” the Brat said, pointing at me.

  “Why on earth would I come to this whatever you call it?” the Cruel said, holding up the invite like it was someone else’s snotty handkerchief.

  “Well, it’s g-g-going to be very informative,” the Know-It-All said. “And we’ll be discussing a p-p-p-p-petition, and—”

  “Revenge,” the Brat said, cutting off the Know-It-All. “That’s why. We’re going to get back at Santa for blacklisting us in favor of all the simpering nice kids of the world.”

  The Cruel’s lips formed into an icy Viking smirk. She couldn’t help herself.

  She folded the invite and slipped it into her coat.

  Then she swept us away with the back of her hand.

  We were dismissed.

  6. THREE MORE MEMBERS

  There were four more kids on the list. One of them—the Cheater—wasn’t home, but the other three all took the invites. Even if we wished one of them hadn’t.

  And that one was most definitely:

  Maxwell Cooper, 12, VAINGLORIOUS

  When we got to his house, his big sister answered the door and took us upstairs to the bedroom hallway. Standing at the end of it, beside a grandfather clock, was the Vainglorious, making faces into a mirror.

  If he had been making funny faces, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But he was making serious faces. And angry faces. And then—yuck—kissy faces.

  “He thinks he’s gonna be a movie star,” his sister sai
d, rolling her eyes. “Like Rudolph Valentino or somebody.”

  The amazing thing was that he didn’t stop looking at himself to say hello to us, and not when we handed him the invite, either.

  “I’m trying to find my best angle,” he said, sucking his cheeks in.

  On top of being full of himself, the Vainglorious wasn’t very bright. Nothing we said seemed the least bit surprising to him. As if random people came to his house every day saying they had found Santa’s Naughty List and he was on it.

  He only perked up when I told him why he was on the list.

  “Because I’m glorious?”

  “No. Not ‘glorious,’ vainglorious,” I said.

  “But there, you said it again,” he said, raising a finger. “Vainglorious!”

  “Which doesn’t mean glorious,” I said. “It means you like looking at yourself in the mirror too much.”

  “Actually,” the Know-It-All said, “it originally meant ‘worthless glory,’ but its present definition is ‘vain, excessively boastful, and possessing too much pride.’”

  The Vainglorious ignored us and arched his eyebrows dramatically, his face practically touching the mirror.

  I tried to take the invite back, but the Vainglorious pulled it away.

  “I’m sure I will have something better to do that day,” he said. “But I’d hate for your meeting to be ruined by not having the Glorious there.”

  “No, that’s O.K.,” the Know-It-All said. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Really,” the Brat said. “Don’t.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” the Vainglorious said, shoving the invite in his back pocket. “The Glorious will be there!”

  The last two kids had to be better than him, and they were. Both of them lived in the Hill District, the African American part of town. We first went looking for:

  John Colson, 11, RUDE

  The Rude wasn’t at the boardinghouse where he lived, but the guy at the front desk told us we could find him at either the racetrack or a boxing gym called Punchin’ Judy’s. He had jobs at both places.

  It was at Punchin’ Judy’s where we found him. We didn’t even have to go inside, because the Rude was walking out when we arrived, carrying a pair of buckets.

  “Are you John Colson?” the Brat said.

  He looked the Brat up and down—mostly up, because the Rude was so short—and then the Know-It-All and me, too.

  “Who wants to know?” he said, and let out a loud, open-mouthed burp. He took one of the pails—which were spit buckets—and tossed its contents onto a mound of iced-over snow, adding to an iceberg of snot, spit, and blood. The new goop oozed down until it froze, too.

  It was pretty much the grossest thing I had ever seen.

  “We’ve g-g-g-got an invite for you.”

  The Rude tossed out the other spit bucket and took the invite from the Know-It-All. He read it quickly and put it back in the envelope.

  “Count me in,” he said.

  “Uh, don’t you want to know more about it?” I said.

  “Well, if it’s a secret society and you’re having a secret meeting, I figure we’re not supposed to talk about it right here,” he said, motioning to the people hanging out in front of the gym. “And I’ve got a pretty good idea of why I’m invited.”

  He then let out another open-mouthed burp and told us to go away.

  “Before someone thinks I’m friends with you three or sump’m’.”

  Back in the car, we drove to the other side of the Hill District—the nice side. Because it was such a well-kept part of town, the graffiti we saw on the side of a building stood out all the more. It read:

  I HATE SANTA!

  For graffiti, the handwriting was remarkably neat.

  “Now that’s my kind of graffiti!” the Brat said, somehow not also noting that it was remarkably coincidental. (Of course, the Know-It-All and I didn’t notice it either. But still.)

  The red-painted declaration was on the side of Choice’s Restaurant, which was across from Choice’s Grocery, which was next to Choice’s Laundry.

  “Choice!” the Know-It-All said. “That’s the name of the last kid we’re looking for!”

  Mimi Choice, 12, V—

  As for what the V stood for, we had no idea. Her naughty crime was singed off the list. And for all we knew, that V was half a W, or the middle part of an M.

  She lived in a fancy house—not a castle like the Brat did, but a heck of a lot nicer one than any other home I had ever visited. As we walked down the path to the front door, we could hear the faint sound of a piano.

  The door was answered by the V’s mom.

  I told her we were there on account of our church group having a Help the Orphans food drive. “We thought Mimi might be interested in volunteering.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Mimi would love that!” her mom said. “She’s always trying to help those less fortunate. Why, do you know that she’s been volunteering at the hospital? Just last week she made her first cast! It was for a poor boy who broke his arm playing football.”

  As we walked down the hall, the music got louder, and then stopped when we entered the parlor. The V got up from the piano as her mom introduced us. That done, she left, and the V put on a pair of glasses, like she didn’t want her mom to see she was wearing them.

  Now, why would someone have to hide wearing glasses from their mother?

  But the V was different in lots of ways. She didn’t act like the other kids when the Know-It-All told her why we were really there. The others all got angry at being on the Naughty List or pretended not to care.

  Mimi burst into tears.

  “Yes, YES, it’s true!” she sobbed. “I’m not nice enough! In April, I lied about feeling sick so I wouldn’t have to go to choir practice. And not only that! On the Fourth of July, I stayed up past my bedtime on purpose so I could watch the fireworks. And sometimes I don’t even listen in school!”

  The three of us looked at each other.

  “M-m-maybe Santa made a mistake,” the Know-It-All said. “If that’s all you did, then every kid in the world would be on the N-N-N-Naughty List.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The rest of us are really bad. Like, all the time!”

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t come to our meeting, so I handed her the invite. (The HE-MAN was now scribbled out, so it just read THE SECRET SOCIETY OF HE-MAN NAUGHTY LISTERS.)

  “It’s a very nice-looking invitation,” she said, and blew her nose. She then showed us to the door and waved goodbye.

  Of course, the V knew exactly why she was on the Naughty List. And it had nothing to do with pretending to be sick or not listening in school.

  * * *

  • • •

  On the drive home, I counted up all of our successfully invited Naughty Listers.

  “There are the three of us,” I said, “plus the Lazy, Cruel, Vainglorious, Rude, and Goody-Two-Shoes back there. That’s nine. So, how about this: we call ourselves the Naughty Nine!”

  “You counted wrong,” the Know-It-All said. “That’s only eight.”

  I counted again, this time on my fingers. The Know-It-All was right, dang it. I always did stink at math.

  “Well, it’s still a great name.”

  “No it’s not,” the Brat said. “I don’t want to be called the Naughty anything.”

  “Well, how about the Notorious Nine?” I said.

  The Brat shook his head.

  “The Nefarious Nine?”

  Still no.

  “The Nitwit Nine?”

  “Can’t you do any better?” the Brat said. “These names are no good at all!”

  “That’s it!” I said, snapping my fingers. “No good! That’s us! THE NO-GOOD NINE!”

  “But we’re not nine!” the Know-It-All said.
“We’re eight!”

  The Brat pointed out that we’d probably be even fewer than that. “There’s no way the Lazy will make it out of bed. And if not paying attention in class is her worst crime, Goody-Two-Shoes is not going to want to run away from home with a bunch of No-Good-whatever-we-are and break into Santa’s workshop.”

  “I don’t think it’s very nice the way you two are calling her Goody-Two-Shoes,” the Know-It-All spoke up from the back seat. “Her name is M-M-Mimi.”

  “Oooooh!” I said. “The Know-It-All’s got a crush!”

  “Do not!”

  “You do!” the Brat said.

  “Do n-n-n-not!”

  Teasing the Know-It-All was the most fun we’d had all day. But if we had been making less fun of him and paying more attention, we might have noticed that we were being followed.

  As for who was following us, well, I should’ve known.

  It was my archenemy.

  Yes, that’s right. I was twelve years old and I had an archenemy.

  And I’m not lying.*

  EPISODE TWO:

  ESCAPE FROM PITTSBURGH

  7. THE FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING OF THE NO-GOOD NINE COMES TO ORDER

  The Brat was wrong about Goody-Two-Shoes. She did show up, and right on time.

  She wasn’t the first one, though. The Rude was at the factory even before the Brat, the Know-It-All, and I pulled up in the Doozy.

  If the Rude hadn’t said much at the boxing gym, it wasn’t because he didn’t like to talk. In fact, he hardly ever stopped. He only paused when Goody-Two-Shoes arrived. And then when the next Naughty Lister came.

  The next one being—unfortunately—the Vainglorious.

  “The meeting can start!” he said. “The Glorious is here!”

  Just as he and the other two were getting acquainted, the door opened again. It let in a frigid blast of cold air, as well as the Cruel.

  She didn’t so much as wave to us, let alone come over to talk to us. And none of us were going to go talk to her.

  Well, none of us except the Vainglorious.