by David Lubar
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Confusing Explanation
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.
CHAPTER FIVE
Opposites Attract
As I walked away from the fish department, I wondered if I’d find any other oxymorons in the supermarket. Dozens of foods flashed through my mind. “Cold hot dogs!” I said as the idea hit me. I ran to the cooler where they had all the packaged meats and tried to take a picture of a pack of franks.
No click.The camera didn’t work. I started to get worried, but then I realized the problem. “Cold” was the opposite of “hot,” but it wasn’t the opposite of “hot dogs.” So while “cold hot dogs” might be a strange phrase, it wasn’t an oxymoron.
As I wandered down the next aisle, I tried to think of words I’d find in the supermarket. “Fresh” was one.They used that a lot. “Fresh sour cream,” I said out loud. But that wasn’t any better than “cold hot dogs.”
When I reached the ice cream, I watched a guy open the door, stare inside for a moment, then close it. That gave me a great idea. The inside of the door was frosty. I went over and wrote on it with my finger. True lies. That was an oxymoron. Feeling proud of my cleverness, I raised the camera.
No click.
I guess that was cheating. I had to find the oxymorons out in the world, not make them myself.
Then, as I scanned the rest of the aisles, I saw a display of paper plates, and—stacked up right next to it—glasses. Made of plastic. “Plastic glasses,” I said, testing the feel of the oxymoron as I spoke it out loud. It felt right.
As I raised the camera, I was pretty sure it would work.
CLICK!
Thank goodness. That made two.
I found the third oxymoron without even looking for it. I was walking past the area where the store sold cooked food. It was like a small cafeteria right next to the deli section. I spotted two big soup pots. One held clam chowder, which I don’t like at all. The other had chili.The sign above it read: “Red-hot chili.” It almost didn’t sink in at first. Then I got to thinking: Chili sounds just like chilly, which means “cold.”
CLICK!
It looked like an oxymoron could contain a pun! The important thing was that I already had almost half of what I needed. I figured the rest would be easy.
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After cruising all the aisles several times without finding anything else, I decided to hunt around town for the other four. I could always come back to the market later.
On the way out, I ran into Benedict.
“Hey, what are you doing with that?” he asked, pointing to the camera.
“When someone lens you a camera, you have to snap up the offer,” I said.
“Logan, this is getting ridiculous,” said Benedict.
“Sorry. Wait,” I said. “I’ll give you a click explanation.”
Maybe Benedict could help me. I told him what an oxymoron was and told him I needed to find four more of them for a project I was working on. I didn’t say anything about the professor or about being punished. I didn’t think he’d believe that part. The whole time I talked, the puns kept coming, but Benedict seemed to understand what I needed.
“I know,” he said. “Don’t try to think up the whole thing at once. First, you need to just think of words that describe stuff,” he said.
“Yeah.Adjectives,”I told him, remembering what I’d learned in language arts. I had to admit Benedict’s idea was a good one. If I started with the right first word, it might make it easier to come up with a whole oxymoron. Benedict was pretty smart sometimes, even if he did think football was better than baseball.
Benedict nodded. “I know some. Large, small, tiny, sharp, light.”
“Hey, light. That’s a bright idea,” I said. I realized light meant two things. It meant “bright,” but it also meant “not heavy.” Maybe we could find an oxymoron using light.
“I know just where to look,” Benedict said, snapping his fingers. He ran off. I followed him down the street to the lamp store.
“Good thinking,” I said. “Watt a delightful idea.”
Benedict groaned. “You’ll have to go into the lamp shop by yourself,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“The last time I was in there, they told me not to come back.”
I pushed open the door.
“Be careful,” Benedict said. “Most of the stuff they sell breaks real easily.”
I walked inside, staying right in the middle of the aisles, as far as possible from the glass. I saw dozens of lamps with all sorts of different shades. I looked for dim lights or dull lights, but no oxymorons leaped out at me. I didn’t even see anything that could be a heavy light.
I was about to give up when I realized I’d been staring at an answer the whole time. “Light shade!” I shouted. Since a shade blocks light, I figured light was the opposite of shade. I raised the camera and pointed it at a wall of different kinds of lampshades.
CLICK! Four down. I wondered how many other oxymorons I’d missed.
“The lamp shop was a brilliant suggestion,” I told Benedict when I got back outside.
He groaned, then said, “Hey, let’s try the hardware store. They have tons of stuff.”
“Great. Let’s lumber over there and see if we can nail down a couple oxymorons,” I said.
Benedict let out a groan that was loud enough to be a scream. He shuddered and shook his head, but he didn’t run away.
We went down the block to the hardware store and started looking around. One section was filled with all sorts of stuff for hanging things on walls. And there it was—a package labeled “straight hooks.”
That will make five, I thought. I raised the camera.
CLICK!
Now I only needed two more. Benedict and I searched the rest of the hardware store, and then ran around town until dinnertime, but we didn’t find anything else.
“Well, I’ll see you in school,” he said when we’d arrived at his house.
“Lesson I see you first.”I waved and headed home.
That evening, I couldn’t believe how many oxymorons I heard. They seemed to pop up everywhere. Of course, I’d never known about them before. But the ones I heard at home weren’t the kind I could take pictures of.
“Careful,” Mom told Dad when he was wrapping up some meat to put away. “If you don’t seal it tightly, it’ll get freezer burn.”
Freezer burn, I thought. Unfortunately, everything in the freezer was wrapped up, so there wasn’t any freezer burn to photograph.
There was an ad on the TV for a radio station that played soft rock.
Then Dad talked about a boxer he knew who was a light heavyweight.
Oxymorons were everywhere. But I still needed two more.
After dinner, I searched all around the house for oxymorons. I even opened our dictionary and tried to take a picture of the samples they had under the definition. No luck.
In the middle of all this searching, Kaylee came up to me with a book in her hand. “Read me a story?” she asked. She loved books. And she loved drawing pictures. So she especially loved picture books.
“Sure.” I figured that would be safe. Besides, I was ready for a break. I sat on the couch with her, opened the book, and started reading.
“Puns upon a dime, deer were tree litter pegs.” Oh boy, none of it was coming out right.
But Kaylee giggled and snuggled up next to me. “Don’t stop. I like the way you read it.”
So I read her the rest of the book and then returned to my oxymoron hunt. I searched until it was time for bed. But I didn’t have any luck. When I went back to my room, I tried to find out how bad my punishment really was. From what I’d seen—or heard—so far, I knew I could say a really short sentence without making a pun. I closed the door and then said, “Hello.”
No pun. Okay, so I could say one word. I tried two. “Thank you.”
That worked. “I am Logan,” I said.
So far, so good. “It dozen always happen,” I said. Shoot. It looked like three was as high as I could go. I tried again, just to make sure that four was my limit. "One, two, three, floor.” It looked like that was it. I got into bed and went back to thinking up oxymorons.
As I lay with my eyes closed and my head on the pillow, I felt as if I were trying to fall asleep inside a dictionary. I’m in big trouble, I thought. But that was nothing new.
“New!” I said as I sat up in bed. That word gave me an idea. I rushed to the garage.We had a ton of newspapers stacked up against the back wall for recycling. You could call them “old news.”
CLICK!
Just one more. But I was totally out of ideas.
As I went to sleep, I realized I wasn’t just out of ideas. I was also in running out of time. If I didn’t find my seventh oxymoron by the end of the school day, I’d be punished forever.
CHAPTER SIX
Slowly Running Out of Time
As I sat in school the next day, every tick of the clock seemed like an explosion. Time was racing away. I kept reaching into my pocket to make sure the camera was there.
“Still looking for oxymorons?” Benedict asked when we sat down in the cafeteria for lunch.
I nodded. As much as possible, I was trying to keep my mouth shut. I held up my index finger to show him I just needed one more.
“How about cafeteria food?” he asked. “Anything they serve in this place really isn’t food.”
That was funny, but I didn’t know if it was a real oxymoron. I checked around to make sure nobody was watching me, then took out the camera, aimed it at the slowly hardening mass of gunky macaroni on my plate, and pushed the button.
Nope. No luck.
“Is it broke?” Benedict asked. I guess he’d noticed it hadn’t clicked.
“Broken,” I said, automatically, just like Professor Robert Wordsworth had said to me. I shook my head. “Nope.”
When we got back from lunch, Ms. Glott took over the lesson. “I love words,” she said. “There are so many ways to have fun with them. I’ll be sharing a lot of that with you while I’m here.”
I stopped listening. I was desperately searching the room for that last oxymoron. I ran every adjective I could think of through my mind. Tall, short, big, little, slow, fast, and tons of others.
Nothi
ng.
I could feel sweat trickling down my forehead. Dry sweat? No. Fast trickle? No. Soft forehead? No,no,no.
The bell rang. I checked the clock. Three-thirty. It would take me half an hour to get to the library. And I only had until 4:05 to find my last oxymoron.
As I walked toward the door, I glanced over my shoulder at the front desk. Mr. Vernack was talking with Ms. Glott. They were laughing and discussing onomatopoeia. Normally, I’d be happy to have such a fun student teacher, but I had too much on my mind right now. I needed that last oxymoron.
“Student teacher!” I shouted, smacking myself on the forehead. I couldn’t believe I’d been searching all over the place when the answer was right in front of me. Student was the opposite of teacher. I whipped out the camera and pointed it at her.
Ms. Glott glanced over toward me and smiled.
Please, I thought as I pressed the button.
CLICK!
Whirrrrrrr.
It sounded like some gears were turning inside. I left the classroom and hurried to the library.
“Seven oxymorons,” I said, putting the camera down on the table in front of the professor.
He took the camera and slipped it into his pocket. “Did anyone help you?” he asked.
I thought about Benedict running around with me. I guess he tried to help, but I’d been the one who’d found the oxymorons. “Sort of,” I admitted.
“Do your own work from now on,” he said. “If you tell anyone too much, you might never be cured.”
He reached into another pocket and pulled out a small, cloth bag that was tied at the top with a piece of gold string.
“Seven anagrams,” he said.
I took the bag from him. It felt just like the purple cloth they used for the curtains on the school stage, except it wasn’t dusty. “What are anagrams?” I asked.
He gave me an annoyed frown. “And where are we? And what do we have all around us?”
