“No. Nothing that easy.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a handful of rubber bands, and dropped them on the table.They lay there looking like exhausted worms. “Seven palindromes,” he said.

“What’s—” I caught myself as I picked up the rubber bands. That should be a snap. I grinned, and then groaned as I realized I was even making puns in my mind now.

I headed for the dictionary and looked up palindromes. It turned out they were very cool. But the more I thought about them, the more I realized they might not be that easy.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Either Way, It’s the Same

The definition was simple. A palindrome is a word or sentence that is spelled the same forward and backward. The names Otto and Hannah were each palindromes. I didn’t know any Ottos or Hannahs. I guess a palindrome was actually a special kind of anagram. But this was the cool part—a whole sentence could be a palindrome, too. Like Madam, I’m Adam.

This might be tough.

“Think small,” I told myself as I walked home. I started running small words through my mind. I’d already used rat art for an anagram. I wondered if there was anything called rat tar. Yuck—if there was, it sounded pretty disgusting.

When I got home, I flipped through my dictionary, looking for short words. That’s how I came up with my first palindrome. As soon as it hit me, I jumped up and ran to the kitchen.

This isn’t going to be hard at all, I thought, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

There were plenty of pots. And plenty of tops. Pot top. If you spelled it backwards, it was still pot top. I grabbed the smallest pot top and slipped one of the rubber bands over it. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I hoped the top wouldn’t disappear. Mom wouldn’t like that. But I shouldn’t have worried. Instead of making anything vanish, the rubber band started to glow. Then the glow faded. And when the glow was all gone, the rubber band had changed from brown to yellow. I slipped it off and put it in my pocket.

This was great. One down and just six to go. All that stood between me and a normal life was a half dozen more palindromes. I thought about slipping another rubber band over a different pot top, but I was so close to ending my punishment, I didn’t want to take any chances doing something that might be cheating.

I realized I had two palindromes living at home with me. Mom and Dad. Mom was easy.

“Want to see a magic trick?” I asked.

“Sure.” She was in the middle of balancing the checkbook.

“First it’s brown.” I slipped the rubber band over her wrist. “Now it’s yellow.”