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.”