At least I didn’t spend the next day in school all distracted because my mind was dancing through the dictionary. But I still tried not to talk in class.

“What do you think, Logan?” Mr. Vernack asked me a couple of times during the day.

I just shrugged. I wasn’t going to take a chance that the puns would get me in more trouble.

Benedict ignored me. I realized he was angry, but I hoped he’d get over it.

Ms. Glott, the student teacher, started to tell us how much she liked words. “Does anyone know what an oxymoron is?” she asked.

My hand shot up. I yanked it back as quickly as I could. No way was I opening my mouth.

She looked at me for a moment. “Did you raise your hand?” she asked.

I shook my head and tried to look confused.

“I know,” Benedict said. He smirked at me and gave the definition—the same one I’d told him just the other day. He even mentioned the part about it being Greek. That was fine—if he needed to show off, I wasn’t going to stop him.

“Impressive,” Mr. Vernack said. “Very impressive.” He almost never repeated himself. I could see he was suddenly thinking about Benedict as perfect student-of-the-month material. Maybe Benedict would finally win that pizza he wanted so badly.

Ms. Glott went on to tell the class about oxymorons and anagrams and a couple other things. The coolest one was redundancies. Those were words you didn’t need. Like when people talked about a free gift. Since a gift is always free, you don’t need the extra word. Another redundancy was unexpected surprise. A surprise is always unexpected. Also, pre-recorded. Anything that’s been recorded has obviously been pre-recorded. She pointed out that pre- and previous were often redundant. I hoped my next task was redundancies, because now I’d have a head start. Or a pre-start.

Then Ms. Glott told us some of her favorite words, including serendipity. That was what you call it when you find something you aren’t looking for—kind of like being at the right place at the right time. I thought about the Argentine tangerine. Talk about serendipity. Of course, right now, I couldn’t talk about anything.

After class, I went across town to the library. What if he’s not there? I wondered as I hurried downstairs to the reference section. Was there a word for when you don’t find the thing you’re desperately looking for? Neresdipity? Dipitsereny?

But he was right at the table.

“Seven anagrams,” I said as I handed him the bag.

He bounced the bag up and down in his palm for a second, as if weighing it, then nodded and said, “Very good.”

“What’s next?” I asked. “Redundancies?”