Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye Read online

  Addison Addley

  AND THE TRICK OF THE EYE

  MELODY DEFIELDS MCMILLAN

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2009 Melody DeFields McMillan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McMillan, Melody DeFields, 1956-

  Addison Addley and the trick of the eye / Melody DeFields McMillan.

  Electronic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 9781554691906(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554695676 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8625.M54A66 2009 jC813’.6 C2009-903347-X

  First published in the United States, 2009

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929318

  Summary: Addison’s mother wants to move, so Addison uses optical illusions and his own overheated imagination to convince her to stay in their old house.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Typesetting by Bruce Collins

  Cover artwork by Peter Ferguson

  Author photo by Justin McMillan

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

  To my little family and my big family

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Sometimes, you’ve just got to expect the unexpected. That’s what I should have been doing last Sunday when Mom dropped the bombshell on me. It wasn’t a big bombshell, just four little words. Four little words too many.

  “We need to move,” she said.

  I choked. My raspberry smoothie didn’t taste so smooth anymore.

  I was right in the middle of adding peanut-butter chips to the grocery list. First I thought maybe she was just trying to scare me into doing a better job of being in charge of the weekly budget. Ever since I had a math catastrophe at school, she’s been making me keep the budget. She tells me how much we spend, and I record it. I’m in charge of figuring out what percentage we spend on each category, like food or entertainment. Mom likes to analyze things. You’d think she would have analyzed me enough by now to know that I’m not great at numbers. Besides, if it were up to me, I’d spend a bigger percentage on entertainment. I’d buy some new video games and invite my friends over. They’d bring a bunch of chips and pop, so that would take care of the food percentage too. Mom doesn’t usually try to scare me though, because she knows I’m not much afraid of anything. I’m probably the bravest guy in my grade-five class.

  Maybe I’d heard her wrong.

  “Move, like in moving the furniture again?” I asked hopefully. Last summer we had moved the old couch fourteen times to get it to look just right in the newly painted living room. That old couch had ended up exactly where it started, right up against the window. My back ached just thinking about moving it again, but if it was a choice of moving the couch or moving me, the couch was the hands-down winner.

  Mom shook her head as she dished up a bowl of vegetarian chili.

  Maybe Mom’s astronomy club was doing weird things to her brain again. Sometimes she thinks too much. She was probably worried that the stars weren’t lined up right and that we needed to be in a different place in case a meteoroid came crashing down. She’s always second-guessing herself. Or third-or fourth-guessing. She really thought too hard the time we painted the living room. I thought her head was going to explode. She covered the entire wall in little paint sample chips and left it that way for six months. She couldn’t decide on a color. Even after we painted it, she couldn’t decide on the color and thought we should repaint it. Then she thought people would think we were crazy to paint the same wall twice in two days. We never did repaint it, but I still catch her staring at it sometimes. Personally I would have just left all of those little paint chips up there. They would have saved me a lot of work.

  The astronomy angle gave me an idea. “You mean move, like how the earth moves around the sun? We’re moving all the time, right?” I’d picked up a couple of things from all her star talk, which surprised me because usually things like that just float right out of my brain. I have a problem remembering school stuff too. Unless it’s important, like how many times I can hand in my homework late before I get a detention. Mom shook her head again.

  I tried one last time. “You mean move, like we’re moving up in the world, getting rich and famous?” That would be great. Of course I already knew that I would be rich and famous one day for my incredible inventions, but it would be nice to see Mom get rich too. Maybe if she studied the night sky long enough, she might just discover a new planet. Then she’d have to go on tv and talk about it and maybe someone would pay her a lot of money to write a book.

  This time Mom groaned.

  “That’s just it,” she explained. “We’re not getting rich and famous. Not that I’d really want to be famous. But having a bit more money would be nice.”

  She swept her hand in front of her. “This house,” she said emphatically, “is just too big. Too big for the two of us. There’s just too much to take care of.”

  Too big? Was I hearing things? A kingdom is too big. A castle is too big. Even a dungeon is too big. I looked around the kitchen. This house was definitely not too big. You could barely open the fridge door without hitting the kitchen table, where we ate all our meals. I guess we could be using the dining-room table, but it was the perfect place to store my comic books and Mom’s star maps. The living room was just the right width for me to do ten kicking karate chops when I was playing my Ancient Warrior video game. I didn’t understand how she could think the house was too big. Maybe she meant there were too many rooms. The only time we used the guest bedroom downstairs was when we had guest mice. We needed that room. Where else were the mice supposed to stay when they got tired of sleeping in the attic?

  The only thing that was really big was the yard. It was huge. I liked it that way, even though I complained about it when I had to cut the grass.

  I took some pepperoni pieces that were hiding in my pocket and slipped them into my chili. Mom’s vegetarian recipes sometimes needed an extra boost.

  “For the same amount that we pay every month for this house, we could get a brand new place,” she said as she sat down. “A smaller one, but one with less upkeep.”

  Upkeep? What was there to keep up? I was in charge of the lawn and the garbage. What else was there?

  Mom could read my mind. “This house needs a complete makeover,” she said. “I’ve been doing
some things, but there’s just too much work. Since your father left, I just can’t keep up with everything.”

  Dad left us four years ago to start a new job in Australia. He’d traded us for a bunch of sheep, just like we were hockey cards. He must be super busy, because I hardly ever hear from him anymore. Dad never was great at fixing things anyway, so I didn’t notice much difference in how the place looked now. I guess Mom looked more closely.

  “The front door needs painting,” she continued. “The shed siding is falling off. The deck needs staining. The lawn is filled with weeds. The window in the bedroom is cracked. The upstairs bathroom tap is leaking. The attic needs new insulation. The trees need cutting back. The porch stairs are sagging. The—”

  “Okay, okay, I get the point,” I interrupted. I still didn’t get it really. All the things on her list added personality to the old place. “So you want a smaller place that has nothing broken.” And no personality, I added silently.

  “Well, speaking of smaller, there’s a new development that’s opening up next month across town,” she said.

  I didn’t like the sound of the word development. It sounded too serious. What exactly was a development anyway?

  “It’s a new row of townhouses,” Mom said, knocking over her cup of blueberry tea as she reached for a pen. She wiped up the mess with a paper towel and then started drawing on a clean one. She drew some rectangles and a squiggly line that was supposed to be a road. She pointed to the rectangles. “They’re just the size we need, and the monthly payments would be slightly less than what I’m paying now. There’s going to be an open house there in a few weeks. If everything looks good, I’d like to be first on the waiting list. Those units will go fast.”

  Townhouse? Was that like an apartment? Apartments were small. Very small. I couldn’t imagine moving to something smaller than our house. My friend Sam’s grandmother had an apartment. I couldn’t think of anything smaller than that. Well, maybe a shoe box.

  “It’s close to the new industrial park,” Mom continued.

  Industrial park? Those two words didn’t go together. “You mean where the new shoe factory is?” I asked. There was no way on earth I was going to live near a shoe factory. I mean, how much soul could a shoe factory have? I liked that line. I’d have to use it on Mom if I couldn’t get her to come to her senses.

  How could she even think of leaving this place? There were so many memories. There were so many hiding places. There were so many holes in the lawn where I’d buried treasures like my first baby tooth and my 1920 penny. And what about my favorite pine tree? I’d almost burned it down when I was doing an experiment a couple of years ago. I’d accidentally set it on fire when I was trying to see if sparks fly like fireflies do. Turns out they don’t. At least not ones made from burning popsicle sticks.

  Mom put down her spoon and looked me straight in the eye. “I didn’t want to alarm you, honey,” she whispered, “but there’s another reason for moving.”

  She glanced over her shoulder like someone was hiding behind the fridge.

  “There’s an intruder in our neighborhood. There have been two break-ins in the last two weeks. I just don’t feel safe here anymore.”

  I felt a shiver go up my spine. I’d heard just about enough. I’m not good at math, but two houses in two weeks adds up to a lot of creepiness. Next week would be the third week. I’d have to make sure there wouldn’t be a third break-in.

  It was bad enough thinking about moving to a shoe box near a shoe factory, but now I also had to worry about some stranger prowling around our street. I’d have to move fast. It was time to make a plan, time to turn things around. And I knew just who to turn to.

  Chapter Two

  “Moving!” Sam cried as he dropped his fishing pole and box of worms. He shook his head like he didn’t believe me. His glasses slid off his nose.

  “Moving?” he yelled as he grabbed for them before they tumbled into the creek. “You’re moving?” he asked as he fumbled around on the ground.

  My friend Sam repeats things three times when he gets excited or nervous. I guess he was a little of both right now.

  I reached down and grabbed his glasses. “Here you go,” I said, picking off the two worms that were stuck to the lenses. I grabbed the other worms and stuck them back in Sam’s box. I wouldn’t need them today because I was going to try out my new lure instead.

  “We’ve got to come up with a plan to change your mom’s mind,” Sam said. “You just can’t move.” He was pacing back and forth so fast I was sure he was going to fall into the creek. “Especially not to the new development. You’d be at a different school!”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t want to think about that. I’d be like a fish out of water at that dumb school. Even their baseball team was dumb. The Westside Wildcats, or Whinycats, as we liked to call them, had a kitten as their mascot. I mean, really, who would have a kitten as a mascot unless you were a veterinarian or a pet-shop owner?

  I cast my line out into the water and leaned back against the old oak tree. The creek was so shallow and the water was so clear you could easily see the bottom. I tried to imagine living in the new townhouse, walking to the new school. Then I tried not to imagine it. I decided to think about fish instead. That was easier. I put down my pole and closed my eyes.

  Thinking about fish was a whole lot nicer than thinking about a shoe box.

  It’s a good thing Sam and I were able to think about fish, because that’s about all we ever did with them. We sure couldn’t catch them. I had a sneaking suspicion that nobody had ever caught a fish in that creek. It was fun trying though. Not to mention that the creek made a great hiding place from chores and annoying people.

  Sam must have been thinking about annoying people too. “At least you’d be away from Tiffany,” he said as he sat down on the bank. “But then you’d be at the same school as Tiffany’s cousin.”

  If there was anyone more annoying than Tiffany Wilson, the meanest kid in my grade-five class, it was her cousin, Trent. He had just moved here last month. He thought he was the smartest kid on the planet, and the best baseball player this side of Mars, according to Tiffany. Whenever Tiffany took a break from bragging about herself, which wasn’t very often, she bragged about Trent. I couldn’t decide which was worse.

  I didn’t have much time to think about Trent, because suddenly I had a bite. At least I thought I had one. I’d left the pole lying on the ground, so I really couldn’t tell if there had been a tug on it or not. But when I opened my eyes, the lure was sparkling at least a foot from where I had thrown it. Logically, something must have dragged it there. A fish was probably waiting behind the big rock next to it, ready to pounce on it again. I’d have to move fast to catch it by surprise when it went for the lure again. My brain may not work too fast but it sure could outwit a fish. I knew that fish would be back. He wasn’t there yet, but I bet he would be there in seconds. I’d use my incredible timing to pull it in just as it was going for the prize. Sometimes you’ve just got to take the gamble and trust yourself. I counted to three to give the fish time to come back. Then I stood up and yanked as hard as I could on the line. It came out easily. Too easily. It flew back and the hook just missed the tree—and Sam’s nose.

  Sam jumped up. “What are you doing?” he cried. “You could have sliced me open! You could have broken my glasses! You could have ripped out my hair!”

  He stomped three times. “You didn’t even have a bite,” he said.

  So much for logic. “The lure moved closer to that bank,” I explained as I cast my line back into the shallow water. “I thought maybe a fish had pulled it there and was hiding behind that big rock. I was sure he would come back for it. He must have seen a better lure down the creek. Next time I’m using my worms.”

  You really couldn’t go wrong with worms. They were the best. I don’t know why I hadn’t used them in the first place. The news about moving must have scrambled my brain and jumbled up my heart, because I
was usually a pretty loyal worm-user. I hoped worms didn’t have feelings. I didn’t want them to feel left out.

  Sam scratched his head while he peered into the creek. He bent down and looked some more. He thought for a minute, and then he nodded his head.

  “Refraction,” he said.

  “Re—what?” I asked.

  “Refraction. It’s a science term. It’s sort of like an optical illusion,” he explained.

  “You mean like a magician sort of thing?” I asked. I liked magicians. They tricked people and made it look easy. You could probably get pretty rich being a magician and not even have to do a lot of work. That sounded like my sort of job.

  “Sort of,” Sam said. “I guess you could say that. Refraction’s cool. I read all about it in my dad’s science magazine.”

  Why anyone would want to read a science magazine was beyond me. It was hard enough keeping up with my comic books.

  “That lure is not where you think it is,” Sam said, jumping up quickly. He pointed to the water. “You see, when light goes through the air, it goes in a straight line. When it passes from the air to the water though, it gets bent, or refracted.”

  Now it was my turn to scratch my head. Maybe Sam’s brain was refracted. “How can light bend?” I asked. This just didn’t make sense. That’s the problem with having a best friend who’s so smart. A lot of the time he just doesn’t make sense. I don’t hold that against him though. He comes in handy a lot.

  “The air has a different density than the water,” Sam said, practically bubbling over with enthusiasm. He likes having me around to explain things to. That’s okay. I like to do my bit for our friendship. “When the light hits the water, it changes speed and bends.”

  He pointed to the lure glistening in the creek. “That lure is actually in a different spot than you think. The light makes it look like it’s moved. If you looked at it from a different angle, like lower down, it would look like it moved again.”

  I still didn’t get it. Did a fish look like it was in a different place than where it was too? How would an eagle catch a fish if it wasn’t where it was supposed to be? Eagles didn’t learn about laws of refraction.