Punished! (2 page)

“H
ow was the library?”Mom asked when I got back home.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath through my nose. Mmmmmm. Something smelled great.

“I’m making pot roast,” Mom told me.

I lifted the lid and peeked into the pot. “It smells totally stew-pendous.”

“Can you stick this in the fridge for me?” Mom asked, pointing to the dessert she’d just made. “It’s your favorite flavor—butterscotch.”

I took the bowl from the counter. It was still warm. “Sure. I don’t mind pudding it away.”

Mom stared at me for a moment. “We’ll be eating in fifteen minutes,” she finally said.

“The spooner you lettuce eat, the better,” I told her.

I left the kitchen and headed to my room to drop off my backpack. Behind me, I heard Mom muttering something about me going through a phase.

I ran into Dad as I was coming out of my room. “Hey, Logan,” he said, “don’t forget we have some yard work to finish this weekend.”

“Is there a lot mower to do?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Dad said, giving me a funny look, “there’s a lot more to do. We need to put that fence around the tomatoes.”

“Right. Weed need to be garden them from the rabbits.”

Dad groaned and shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I was getting tired of all the groaning. Benedict had groaned at me. So had Mrs. Tanaka. Mom had groaned, and now Dad was groaning, too.

“Nothing,” Dad said. “I guess I was just as silly when I was your age.” He reached out and ruffled my hair the way he does when he talks about the good old days. Then he headed downstairs. I followed him into the kitchen.

My little sister Kaylee was already there. I sat, and we started to eat. But every time I said something, they all groaned and rolled their eyes up at the ceiling. Except Kaylee. She kept giggling.

I bent under the table and looked at Buster, my dog, who was waiting for me to slip him a treat.

Buster panted. That was a relief. “At leash my own dog doesn’t groan at me,” I whispered as I patted him.

Buster groaned.

Maybe it was really a yawn, but it sure sounded like a groan. I dropped a piece of pot roast on the floor for him anyhow.

After dinner, when we’d finished clearing the table, Kaylee came over to me, grinned, and said, “You’re funny, Logan. Just like my cartoons.”

“Thanks,” I said, although I wasn’t sure it was a compliment. But she was the only one who wasn’t groaning at me, so I figured I’d better take whatever nice words I could get.

And it turned out the problem followed me to school. I had trouble right away the next day. First thing after morning announcements, we had language arts, which is a fancy way to say English. There was a woman standing up front with Mr. Vernack. She was short and thin with a friendly face and long, black hair. “Class,” Mr.Vernack said, “this is Ms. Glott. Say hello.”

“Hello, Ms. Glott,” we all said.

“She’ll be joining our class for the next month as a student teacher,” Mr.Vernack told us.

“I’m thrilled to be here,” Ms. Glott said, giving us a big smile that made her look even friendlier.

“You’ll find we have some very clever students,” Mr. Vernack said. “And I don’t think there will be any problems while you are here.” He glanced at Benedict as he said that. “Now, let’s get to work.”

He pointed to the vocabulary list on the board. “Logan, the first word is
isolate
. Can you use it in a sentence?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m sorry isolate getting here.”

Everyone started laughing. Everyone except Mr. Vernack. He frowned and gave me the next word.
Justice
.

“Justice I was leaving home, my dog got loose.”

Mr. Vernack’s frown grew so big, his eyes became slits. He said one word: “Decide.”

“My dog chased a cat around decide of my house.”

“Logan, is this some kind of joke?” Mr. Vernack asked.

“No, Mister Vernack. I was jest doing wit you asked.” I clamped my mouth shut. Nothing seemed to be coming out right.

He stared at me for a long time. Then he sighed and said, “Very well, I’ll give you one more chance. The next word is
industry
.”

That was easy. There was no way I could mess it up. “The cat got stuck up industry and wouldn’t come down.”

I listened, as surprised as everyone else when the words came out of my mouth. I sure hadn’t meant to say that.

Mr. Vernack spoke just two words of his own. He pointed toward the door. “Principal” was the first word. “Now” was the second.

I walked down the long hall.

“What seems to be the problem?” Principal Chumpski asked when I stepped into her office.

I started to explain. But every time I said something, she chuckled. Then she started laughing. Finally, I sat back and waited for her to stop laughing.

“You’re quite some boy,” she said between laughs.

I nodded, afraid to open my mouth.

“Don’t lose that sense of humor, no matter how much other people groan,” she said after she’d managed to catch her breath. “But keep it to yourself in class. Mr. Vernack is a wonderful teacher, but I suspect he’s never going to appreciate your talent for word play. Now go buzz on back to your room and behave.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to beehive myself.” I got up from the chair and breathed a big sigh of relief.

Principal Chumpski started laughing again. Finally, she shook her head and waved toward the door.

As I left the principal’s office, I thought about the strange stuff that had been happening to me. I hadn’t noticed right away, but once I started paying attention, I realized one thing for sure: Words weren’t coming out of my mouth the right way. They left my brain just fine, but after that they went horribly wrong.

I was so used to saying what I meant, I had to listen carefully to catch the mistake. But there was no doubt. Every time I opened my mouth and said more than two or three words, a joke came out. No, not a joke. Worse than a joke—a pun. And people seemed to hate puns. They might laugh, but after they laughed, they groaned.

Why was this happening to me? It was almost like I was being punished.

Pun
-ished!

Oh my word.

As I thought about the man in the library, a shiver ran down my spine. And then it ran back up. And then it slipped into my stomach and gave it a hard kick with a pointy boot.

Maybe you need to be punished.

Those were his words. He’d done this to me. I had to go back to the library. That’s what I’d do. As soon as school was out, I’d go find him. He had to be there. If not, I was doomed.

I
found him in the reference section downstairs, sitting at a table and reading a book.

“Hey,” I said as I walked over to him. “What did you do to me?”

“Shhhhh,” he said. Then he glanced up and smiled at me. “Oh, it’s you. Hello. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Professor Robert Wordsworth.” He held out his hand.

“Logan Quester,” I said automatically as I shook hands with him.

“Wonderfully appropriate,” he said.

That didn’t make any sense, but I wasn’t going to worry about it at the moment. I had more important things to learn. “What did you do to me?” I asked again. “Every time I open my mouth, a pun comes out.” Except then, I realized. Maybe it didn’t happen around him because he was the one who had punished me. If he had to listen to all my bad puns, I guess he’d be punishing himself, too.

“And you think that’s my fault?” he asked.

“You said I should be
punished.
”

He nodded. “Perhaps I’m partly to blame—but you have to admit you brought this on yourself. You weren’t punished for no reason.”

“Well, make it go away,” I said.

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Only you can remove the punishment.” He paused and tapped his finger on his chin as he stared up at the ceiling. “If I remember correctly, it takes three steps. It just so happens I might be able to help you with your quest.” He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a small camera.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Step one—bring me seven oxymorons.” He handed me the camera.

“Oxy-what?” I asked as I took the camera. It was heavier than it looked.

He reached in another pocket and pulled out a pen and a notepad. He wrote one word, tore off a sheet, and handed it to me.

Oxymoron.

“I have no idea what that means,” I told him. “How am I supposed to bring you something if I don’t know what it is?”

He ignored me and started reading his book again.

I pointed the camera at him and pushed the button. Nothing happened.Then I pointed it at myself. Still nothing. “It’s broke,” I said.

He glanced up from his book and shook his head. “You mean
broken.
If you have no money, you’re
broke.
If the camera didn’t work, it would be
broken.
It isn’t. It works perfectly,” he told me, “but only when you’re taking the pictures you’re supposed to take. Now, you’d better get going if you want to make any progress.You need to get all seven pictures within twenty-four hours.” He pointed at the clock on the wall. The time was five minutes after four.

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Why doesn’t
foot
rhyme with
boot
? Why are there two ways to spell
one
and three ways to spell
two
, but only one way to spell
three
? I didn’t make the rules. But if you take more than a day, you can forget about ending the punishment.” He turned away and went back to reading his book.

This was crazy. I had no idea what
oxymoron
meant, and it was obvious he wasn’t going to tell me. I sighed and looked around at the shelves that surrounded us. “Of course,” I said, hitting myself on the side of the head with my palm. “I can look it up.”

I ran off to find a dictionary.

“No running,” he called after me.

I grabbed a dictionary and looked up the word, even though I had a feeling it wouldn’t be there. It sure didn’t look like a real word. But it was.
Oxymoron.
It meant “a phrase containing contradictory terms.” Great—I still didn’t have a clue. On top of that, now I needed to look up another word to make sure it meant what I thought it did. I kept my place with one finger and thumbed through the dictionary to find
contradictory
. In my mind, I imagined going from one word to the next, until I had all ten fingers holding places like they’d been caught in some sort of awful paper trap, never finding out what anything meant.

But it wasn’t that bad.

It turned out that an oxymoron was pretty simple—just a phrase where the two parts seemed to have opposite meanings. The dictionary gave some examples: “pretty ugly,” “strangely normal,” and “sweet sorrow.” I got it.
Pretty
was the opposite of
ugly.
So, even though
pretty
meant something different when you said “pretty ugly,” it still made you think of opposites. Even
oxymoron
was an oxymoron. It came from a couple of Greek words that mean “sharp” and “dull.”

I had to admit the idea itself was kind of fun. It would all be really cool—if my entire future weren’t in danger.

I tried to think of where I could get a picture of something made up of opposites. And not just one—I needed seven! Right off, I got an idea. I left the library and went down the road to the supermarket. It sold fish—all kinds of fish. It even had a tank with lobsters. And, if I was lucky, it might have something else.

Most places that sell fish sell shrimp, too. And
shrimp
also means “small.” I went through the door and followed my nose to the seafood section.

They should call it the “smellfish” section
, I thought. Sure enough, there in the case, on ice, were these really huge shrimp. And I saw the sign I’d remembered from last week when I went to the market with Mom and Dad: “JUMBO SHRIMP.”
Shrimp
means “small” and
jumbo
means “big.” That absolutely had to be an oxymoron.

I pointed the camera at the shrimp, held my breath, and pressed the button. If nothing happened, I’d be in big trouble.

CLICK!

Big sigh.

One down, six to go.