Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye
Addison Addley
AND THE TRICK OF THE EYE
M
ELODY
D
EFIELDS
M
CMILLAN
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
12 11 10 09 ⢠4 3 2 1
To my little family and my big family
Contents
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. Theâ”
“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.
“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.