Punished!

For Uncle Ben,
who passed along to me
his passion for puns;
and for Joelle,
who graciously endures
the results.

“T
his is a terrible idea,”I told Benedict as we walked up the stone steps toward the huge wooden door. “We could be having fun.” It was wonderfully warm outside—a perfect day for tossing a baseball around.

“It’s a great idea,” Benedict said. He dashed ahead of me and yanked the door open.

“But we have two weeks. The reports aren’t due until the end of the month.” I left the beautiful May weather behind and followed Benedict into the cool darkness of the old building. The half-dozen lamps scattered around the floor tried their best to brighten the place, but the tall ceiling soaked up most of the light.

“It’s way too soon to get started,” I said as the door closed behind me.

“We’ve got half days next week,” Benedict said. “If we do our reports now, we’ll be free then. Trust me, Logan. This is a good idea.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’re trying to be picked as Student of the Month.” As long as I’d known him, Benedict had wanted that—especially since the award came with a coupon good for a free super-deluxe pizza from Zio’s Kitchen. I’d won the award last January, but I promised myself I’d save my coupon for the perfect summer day. That would be the day I hit my first home run of the Little League season. Perfect pizza, perfect hit, perfect day—it would be worth the wait.

I didn’t think Benedict would ever have to figure out when to use a pizza coupon. One way or another, no matter how hard he tried, he always messed up before the end of the month.

“I’ve got a real shot this month,” he said. “I can almost taste that pizza. Especially since I’m going to write such a great report—as soon as I figure out a good subject.”

“Come on. Let’s just get this over with.” There was no way I’d admit it to Benedict, but his idea sort of made sense. Our teacher, Mr. Vernack, had assigned us reports. We had to write five whole pages on the topic: “What’s So Great about Being a Human?” As far as I was concerned, I could answer that in one word. Baseball. But I had to fill five pages. And we couldn’t just make stuff up. Mr.Vernack said we were supposed to use at least three different sources, not counting the Internet. That meant stuff like books and magazines—which, naturally, meant the library. So Benedict and I had come here right after school.

We walked past the towering rows of bookcases in the adult area and through the hall that led to the kids’ department. I didn’t expect we’d stay very long. Benedict has a hard time sitting still. So do I, but he makes
me
look calm. Even so, I thought we’d stay for more than five minutes.

I was wrong.

When we got to the kids’ area, I grabbed a couple of baseball books from the shelves in the sports section. I knew right where they were because I always checked to see if they’d gotten any new ones in. I love 796.357. That was their Dewey decimal number. I opened the first book and started to flip through it when,
WHACK
, Benedict ran past, smacked me on the back, and yelled, “Tag! You’re it.”

He dashed down the hall. I had no choice. It’s impossible to sit still once you’re tagged. Totally impossible. It’s like if someone sings, “Row, row, row your—” and then stops, you just have to finish it by singing, “boat.” I chased him. He didn’t head back to the adult section. Instead, he made a sharp left and raced down the stairs to the basement.

I followed. A sign near the steps said: REFERENCE SECTION. By the time I reached the bottom, Benedict had vanished among the shelves. But I could hear his footsteps. I rushed after him. “I’ll get you!” I shouted.

I reached the end of the aisle. From the echo of his footsteps, it sounded like he’d turned right. I swung that way and caught a glimpse of him as I hurried to the end of the next aisle.

“Slowpoke!” he called.

“Oh yeah?” I put my head down and pumped my legs hard,running full force.Benedict might be fast, but I knew I could catch him.

I didn’t even see the old guy until I crashed into him.

“O
oofff,” I said as I bounced back from the collision.A quick glance at the man showed me I hadn’t done any damage. He barely even looked surprised. “Sorry,” I said as I started to run around him.

He put out a hand and stopped me. “This is a library,” he said, staring at me through the bottom part of those glasses that have a line right across the middle of each lens. “Not a playground.”

“No kidding.” I hate it when people tell me obvious stuff. I wondered if he worked in the library. I’d never seen him before, but I didn’t pay much attention to the people outside the kids’ area. He was an old guy, dressed kind of like a teacher, with a jacket but no tie. He had a book in his other hand—the hand that wasn’t keeping me from chasing Benedict.

“Hey, I said I was sorry,” I told him.

“Words aren’t always enough.” He glanced at the books that surrounded us and let out a small chuckle. “They should be, but they aren’t. That’s a lesson you obviously haven’t learned yet. Maybe you need to be punished.”

Punished?
My stomach squeezed tight as his words sunk in. Was he threatening me? I backed away from him and got ready to make a sprint for the stairs.

He didn’t try to stop me. Instead, he nodded and said, “Yes. Punished. I suspect it would do you some good.” He raised the book he was holding and blew on it. A puff of dust swirled through the air. I closed my eyes as the dust tickled my face.

“Hey, cut it out!” I wiped my face with my sleeve and then opened my eyes. He was gone.

WHACK!

“Tag again!” Benedict shouted, running up from behind and giving me another slap on the back.

“Cut it out,” I said. I glared at him so he’d know I wasn’t fooling around. “You almost got me in trouble.” I rubbed my eyes. They still felt dusty. I blinked hard. Everything looked funny for a moment, like I was seeing through someone else’s eyes. But after another hard blink, things looked normal again.

“Sorry,” Benedict said, but he couldn’t keep from grinning. He started to climb one of the bookcases.

“Will you please try to behave your shelf?” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Behave yourself,” I told him again.

We returned to the kids’ section, and I got back to work. Benedict worked a tiny bit, too, but mostly he ran around until Mrs. Tanaka, the kids’ librarian, told him to stop. Then he sat for a while. Actually, he sat for thirty-eight seconds. I know, because I counted. Then he ran around some more. He reminded me of one of those old wind-up toys that are all shaky and jerky. The kind that will stop so it looks like they’ve run down, then jerk back to life and start moving again. But Mrs. Tanaka took it easy on him. She’s pretty nice. She never shushes us. And she’s always seeing if she can help us.

While I was working, she came over and asked, “Did you find everything you needed?”

“Yup,” I told her, “Eyebrows the books all the time to see what’s new.”

She smiled. “I browse the books all the time, too. I really enjoy it.”

“Alphabet that you do,” I said.

She laughed like I’d made a joke. “I’ll bet I do, too.”

“I don’t see what’s so punny.”

She groaned, then muttered, “Very punny.” Shaking her head, she walked away from me.

I had no idea why she was laughing. Or why she was groaning. I took a few more notes, then got my stuff together and grabbed Benedict as he ran past my table, making airplane sounds.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah. House about we head home?”

“Stop that,” he said.

“Stop what?” I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

But instead of answering, Benedict turned away from me and walked toward the door. I had no idea what was bothering him, so I just followed him outside.

When we got to the bottom of the steps, he said, “Want to come over and throw around the football?”

“Sure,”I said.Benedict likes football as much as I like baseball, so we usually take turns playing each game. “We can tackle the reports later.”

“Will you please knock it off, Logan? You’re starting to sound like my Uncle Horace. And he’s really annoying.”

“Knock what off?” I wished he’d tell me what he meant. “If you expect me to hike all the way over to your yard, you’d better start making sense. Besides, I don’t really field like football. Baseball is a batter game.”

“Oh, just forget it,” Benedict said. “Call me when you decide to be normal again.” He walked off, slapping parking meters as he passed them and shouting, “Hi-i-i-i-yah!”

I had no idea why he was angry with me. I also had no idea that things were about to get a lot worse.