Addison Addley and the Things That Aren't There (7 page)

Everyone gasped as Tiffany flew out of the room with the disgusting junk dripping from her mouth.

Miss Steane ran after her but came back to the class in a couple of seconds.

“Mrs. Wilson has taken Tiffany to get cleaned up,” she said. “Let's all try to settle down and hear the end of the speech. We're sorry for the interruption, Addison.”

“No problem,” I said. Heck, it was great. I'd have to thank the Lamp after school for throwing up. I guess she was telling the truth—I really did make her sick. Miss Steane had said that we could use props to make our speech better. I couldn't think of a better prop than that.

Besides, it had given me a few extra seconds to think. My brain kicked in at last.

Without Tiffany in the room, those lines decided to come back from vacation.

Black holes, wormholes, atoms and ghosts.
With an open mind, you can see the most.

I bowed. The class clapped, real clapping this time, not the polite stuff.

Miss Steane looked at her watch. “It's a few seconds short, but I guess that's understandable since you were probably thrown off by Tiffany.”

Like I said before, I like Miss Steane. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I liked Tiffany, but she'd sure come in handy today. I couldn't have timed her green face any better if I had tried myself. Which, of course, I wouldn't have.

After Miss Steane recorded her marks, we all voted for our favorite speech. I voted for Becky.

Miss Steane counted up the votes. We all held our breath. I thought for sure that Becky would win because everyone felt sorry for her. As long as it wasn't Tiffany I didn't really care.

Miss Steane looked surprised. “This year's contest was close,” she said, “but we have a winner. I have to admit that it was a strange but interesting speech. The favorite speech trophy goes to Addison Addley for
The Things That Aren't There
,” she announced with a half-smile. She probably didn't want to look too happy for me, even though she was.

I couldn't believe that I had actually won! As I said before, sometimes a big mouth is as handy as a big brain.

I accepted the trophy from Miss Steane and took a big bow. The trophy was a cup with two little handles and a plaque. I would have preferred a gold medal or something I could sell later on, but winners can't be choosy.

I don't like to brag, but maybe I really did deserve the trophy. Miss Steane had said that the speech had to be entertaining, and, boy, had I been entertaining. Well, at least my special effects had been. I guess everybody had enjoyed watching Tiffany throw up. It sure beat listening to the history of industrialization or learning how to be polite. I guess Tiffany had learned something from her own speech though. After all, she had tried to excuse herself politely before she got sick.

I was just about to take another bow when Mrs. Wilson stormed into the class. She practically ran right at me.

“What did you put into that punch?” she yelled.

The punch? Mom's prize-winning punch? What did that have to do with anything?

Then I remembered the stream of stuff coming out of Tiffany's mouth. She must have been drinking it. That would explain the mud brown color she had spit out. What I couldn't understand was why it would have made her sick. It was Mom's prize-winning punch. Everybody liked it.

“Answer me,” the Lamp's mother continued to yell. I didn't know why she was so upset. If her daughter hadn't been so greedy, none of this would have happened.

“I followed a recipe,” I explained. At this point I didn't want to tell her it was Mom's recipe. I had the feeling Mrs. Wilson wasn't too impressed by the punch.

I fumbled around in my pocket. “Here. See for yourself,” I said, handing her a crumpled piece of paper with some used gum on it. I pulled off the gum to save for later.

Miss Steane took the recipe from the Lamp's mother. She smoothed it out and read the list of ingredients and instructions. “Are you sure you followed the recipe exactly, Addison?” she asked.

“Yeah, I multiplied everything by three to get enough for the class,” I said proudly. “I didn't even use my calculator.” Miss Steane read the list back to me.

1 cup organic grape juice x 3 = 3 cups

2 cups organic cranberry juice x 3 = 6 cups

1 cup organic orange juice x 3 = 3 cups

2 cups organic iced tea x 3 = 6 cups

3 tsp organic honey x 3 = 9 tsp

2 tsp organic flaxseed oil x 3 = 6 tsp

½ cup organic soy milk x 3 = 3 ½ cups

“Three-and-a-half cups?” Miss Steane asked. “That's wrong, Addison. One half cup times three is three half cups or one-and-a-half cups. It's not three-and-a-half cups. You put in far too much soy milk.”

Did I mention that I can't multiply very well? Especially fractions? Sometimes those pesky numbers just get mixed up. Like I said before, fractions sometimes have a disgusting way of catching up to you.
I couldn't think of anything more disgusting than what had come out of Tiffany's mouth.

Miss Steane was frowning. “That doesn't explain why the punch was so dark or why it would make Tiffany sick,” she said. “You had way too much soy milk but Tiffany's not allergic to soy products—no one in the class is.”

“But I didn't have too much soy milk,” I said with a smile.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's switching things around. I hadn't been able to find any soy milk at the corner grocery store, so I had found something just like it instead. Well, maybe not just like it, but close.

“Don't worry about the soy milk,” I explained. “I didn't put any in. I substituted that other soy stuff instead.” I was proud of myself.

“What other stuff?” Miss Steane asked slowly.

“You know—the stuff we put on Chinese food. Soy sauce.” Milk, sauce, what's the difference? They were both made of soy.

Mrs. Wilson looked like she was going to strangle me. Her eyes bulged out of her head even more than Tiffany's. “You mean to say that you put three-and-a-half
cups of soy
sauce
in that punch? No wonder my baby got sick!”

I didn't see what the big deal was.

Tiffany came back into the classroom. She didn't look sick anymore, except for the brown stuff on her shirt. Her face was shiny and red, just the way it always was. She looked like she was going to kill me.

I coughed politely, the way Tiffany had taught us.

“Um, aren't you forgetting something?” I pointed out. “When did Tiffany get a chance to drink my punch? She must have been the one who broke into the party room at recess. The proof is on her shirt.” And in her stomach, I added to myself. Or at least it had been.

I grinned. Success was sweet. Mrs. Wilson had been right about one thing: Look for the evidence. It will show up. It always does.

Sam and I had a celebratory fishing trip at the creek that night. I took the trophy with me. After all, it wasn't every day that I actually won something.

Sam slapped me on the back. “You did really well today, really good, really well!” he said. He was practically bubbling over with excitement. “Thanks to you, we still got to have our party.”

It really had been a good party. It seems that innocent little Tiffany hadn't been so innocent after all. She had snuck into the party room and helped herself to some punch and cookies. Then she had helped herself to some money too. She was going to use it to bribe her friends to vote for her speech. Instead she had to put the money back and promise to pay for
cleaning Becky's dummy. She also had to apologize to the class.

We got to have our pizza and a dance too. The only person I would have danced with was Becky's dummy, but it smelled too much like my punch. Tiffany just sat in the corner and glared at everyone. I guess she felt stupid because she'd been caught in the act. She knew she'd screwed up, but she'd hated apologizing.

I slept really well that night. There was something about watching Tiffany get what she deserved that made me feel kind of nice and sleepy, like the way I felt after I drank chamomile tea once when I was sick.

I was surprised to see Mrs. Wilson waiting outside the classroom the next day after school. It wasn't a great way to end my day.

She demanded an apology from me. From me? What had I done wrong? All I'd done was make a little mistake with my fractions. And one of the ingredients. They were honest mistakes. I mean, who really cares if ½ times 3 is 1 ½ instead of 3 ½ ? Well, except for Tiffany. Her stomach cared. She shouldn't have been so greedy in the first place. She was the one who'd gulped down the punch when she wasn't even supposed to have been in that room. It wasn't fair that I had to apologize.

“Well, we're waiting,” Mrs. Wilson said, tapping her big foot in its pointed brown shoe. Tiffany had popped up beside her.

I swallowed hard and stared at Mrs. Wilson's big foot. I thought about her sitting at the table in the astronomy club room, tapping her big hand before she voted for the new positions on the board. I thought about black holes and wormholes and things that weren't there, like how I wished I weren't there right then. I decided to take one for the team.

“Sorry, Tiffany,” I mumbled to the floor.

Tiffany smiled a slow, sweet smile. “What was that?” she asked.

I cleared my throat and said it again. “Sorry.”

“And here,” I said quickly, before I changed my mind. I pulled the favorite speech trophy out of my backpack and shoved it at her. “You take this. You deserve it.”

It was just a dumb cup. I didn't need it. I knew I had really won the competition. Sometimes you've just gotta do what you've gotta do.

“Well then,” Mrs. Wilson muttered, not knowing what to say. She smiled at me, a real smile, not even a fake one.

Tiffany's face lit up like a lamp. For a second, just one tiny second, I kind of felt sorry for her. She really wanted that trophy. It must have meant a lot to her. Sort of like what winning the baseball tournament last year had meant to me.

That feeling only lasted for a second because then she scrunched up her face into a twisted sneer again. “Thanks, Oddison,” the Lamp purred. “I'm going to go home and have a victory drink in this with some real punch. Victory. You don't know what that word means, do you?” she whispered to me as she strode away.

Victory. Oh yeah, I knew what that word meant. It was sweet. I thought of Tiffany heading home with her trophy. I thought about her pouring some of her own precious punch into it. I thought about her gulping it down. I thought about how my half of the worms had been sitting in that trophy last night at the creek. Oh yeah, victory was sweet.

I studied the pages in front of me. Ever since Mom had found out that I'd failed my last chapter review in math, she'd found even more ways for me to look at numbers. She said she thought I could use a little practice. More than a little practice, if you ask me.

I was now in charge of the household budget. Mom just didn't get it. With me in charge, we'd be broke in a week. Luckily I was only going to be in charge for a month.

“You know, Mom, if you'd cut back on all of that organic stuff from the health food store, we'd have more money for other food,” I suggested. More real food, like ice cream with chocolate syrup and green
sprinkles. You could never have too much of that stuff lying around the house.

Mom grinned at me. “Nice try, Einstein.” She put down her cup of green tea. “You know, speaking of organic food, I saw Mrs. Wilson coming out of the health food store yesterday. Maybe she's turning into a health nut like me. I think I'll give her the recipe for my organic fruit punch at the next meeting. I bet she'd really enjoy that.”

I coughed up my peppermint tea.

“Yeah, well, you might want to hold off on that,” I said. Mom still didn't know about the punch disaster. No use getting her upset or anything. She'd just been elected to the treasurer position. It had been a close call, five votes to four. I wondered which way good old Mrs. Wilson had voted. I'd made her daughter sick, but then again I'd made her daughter happy by giving her that trophy. Maybe one deed cancelled out the other—like multiplying fractions.