Free Punished! by David Lubar Page A

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.

CHAPTER TWO
Running into Trouble

    “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