“The name ‘Naughtyville’ was a joke,” Miss Purl explained, her good eye twinkling. “A secret handshake. But the Properton folk heard about it and spread the lie that it was a place for failures. They needed a bogeyman to keep their own children obedient.”
For generations, Naughtyville was less a town and more a cautionary whisper on the wind. It sat in a crooked valley where the sun seemed to set two hours early, and the mail always arrived stamped with mud. Parents told their children: “Eat your vegetables, or you’ll be sent to Naughtyville.” Travelers who passed through spoke of picket fences painted in clashing colors, of lawn gnomes posed in rude gestures, and of a mayor who wore his bathrobe to council meetings as a power suit. naughtyville town revelation
And for the first time in a century, the children of Properton looked at their perfectly manicured lawns, their silent dinners, their pressed uniforms, and wondered: Who are the real naughty ones? “The name ‘Naughtyville’ was a joke,” Miss Purl