Addison Addley and the Things That Aren't There

Addison Addley
AND THE THINGS THAT ARE'T THERE

M
ELODY
D
E
F
IELDS
, M
C
M
ILLAN

Text copyright © 2008 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 Things that Aren't There / written by Melody DeFields McMillan.

(Orca young readers)
ISBN 978-1-55143-949-5

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8625.M54A64 2008     jC813'.6     C2007-906964-9

First published in the United States, 2008
Library of Congress Control Number:
2007940947

Summary:
Addison has to give a speech at school, but he'd
rather be fishing or playing baseball than writing.

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

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11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1

To Taryn and Justin

Thanks to my editor, Sarah Harvey, for all her help.

I hate doing speeches. I hate doing speeches more than I hate being the skinniest guy on the baseball team. Just because my name is Addison, everyone thinks I should be smart or something. Maybe they're confusing me with Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. Maybe they think that my yellow hair sends some sort of weird Vitamin Cenergy to my brain. I don't know.

My name may be smart, but I'm sure not. Not at school stuff, anyway. I could be, my teacher tells me, if I would “apply” myself. Apply myself to what? It sounds like I need a giant tube of glue.

“Now, Addison,” I can hear her say, “if only you would apply yourself, you'd grasp fractions in no time at all.”

Now I can think of a lot of things I'd like to grasp, like maybe the controller for my new video game or the reel of my old fishing pole, but fractions aren't on the list. Besides, who would want to be an expert on fractions anyway? They're useless except for the odd saying like
I'm halfway done my ice cream
or
If I had half a brain, I'd be able to come up with a topic for my speech
.

That's what I was thinking about on Saturday morning. If I had half a brain, I'd be able to come up with some incredible idea that would stun all the other kids in my grade five class, I thought. Heck, I'd even settle for a quarter of a brain. It's not that I don't have much of a brain. It's just that I choose not to waste my brain on school stuff. Personally, I think I've got more common sense than anybody I know, except for the guy at the gas station where I buy my worms. He's got to be pretty smart to make people pay for those slimy creatures. I'd probably make a great worm seller.

If I could think of a really great topic, I might be able to just make up the speech right while I was saying it. No sense wasting energy, I told myself as I brushed my teeth. Let me get that straight. I wasn't really brushing them, just giving them a quick scrape and
then pretending they were clean. Sometimes I just let the water run and then I spit as loudly as I can into the sink to make it sound like I'm brushing them. I always pay for it at the next trip to the dentist though. Things have a disgusting way of catching up to you. In the back of my mind I knew I should be brushing longer. But that's where the thought usually stays—in the very back of my mind, where it belongs. This was definitely going to be a quick-scrape day.

I spit one more time and closed my eyes, trying to force a quarter of my brain into action.

“Breakfast!” Mom called from downstairs.

Saved by the yell. That was enough work for now anyway. Little did I know that by the time breakfast was over, I'd have my incredible topic. And how was I to know that, like dirty teeth, fractions have a disgusting way of catching up to you?

“What's up?” I asked as I caught the piece of French toast that came flying through the kitchen doorway. Mom sometimes goes crazy in the kitchen. If she doesn't get to cook a big meal for a couple of days, she saves up all her energy and throws it into the food. Once she made three different salads, four kinds of sandwiches and two types of pudding, all for my lunch and all in ten minutes. I bet she could make breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once, in between rearranging the kitchen furniture.

Saturdays were French toast days. French toast days were sometimes good, sometimes bad. It all depended on what wacky health-food-store ingredients Mom had decided to use that day. Last week it
was honey and alfalfa sprouts—definitely not a good day. The week before it was organic sunflower with burnt crusts. I'm not sure if the burnt crusts were organic or not.

This week looked better. There seemed to be almonds and cherries flattened into the bread. At least I hoped they were cherries. They might have been kidney beans. With my mom you never know.

“What's the big rush?” I asked as I watched her throw another piece into the frying pan.

“It's the big astronomy event today,” she said between gulps of organic papaya juice.

Now, I might not know much about science, but I was pretty sure that the stars came out at night, not at eight o'clock in the morning.

“Ah, Mom...I think that maybe you've got your times mixed up,” I offered helpfully. Mom sometimes gets confused. I remember once when she showed up at the baseball field with five dozen carob chip and apple muffins. That was really nice of her and all, but completely unnecessary. Our team wasn't even playing that day. It was the firefighters' guinea pig races instead. I guess I forgot to mention to her that our tournament had been postponed. The firefighters
liked the muffins though. I think the guinea pigs did too. If we ever have a fire, I bet the trucks will get to our house really fast.

Mom looked flushed for a minute, as if she actually believed me for once, but then she suddenly remembered.

“No, no, no. We're driving to Williamstown to look at the new observatory. We're eating lunch at the Galaxy restaurant. Then we're having a meeting to discuss the election of officers next month. I would die to be the treasurer.”

I looked at Mom to see if she was sick. She looked fine but I couldn't be sure. She'd been trying to keep really busy lately. Maybe she was too busy to think straight. Since she and Dad got divorced four years ago, she had tried at least eight different clubs. First she'd tried belly dancing. Next it was bread making. Then came basket weaving. I guess that was so she'd have something to put the bread in. Herb drying, yoga, Japanese gardening, Chinese lantern making and Greek cooking rounded out the list. I had used my calculator to figure out that was two clubs a year. She usually quit after a couple of months, but maybe this one would stick.

But treasurer? It was a mystery to me why anyone would want to do a job without getting paid, especially a job involving numbers. Come to think of it, I didn't really get what was so exciting about staring at a bunch of stars.

“Why do you like looking at stars so much?” I asked as I picked the almonds out of the toast and stuffed them in my pocket. The squirrels would like them better than I did. I had to do my part for animal welfare. I always leave the garage window open a crack just in case the bats need someplace to sleep. Mom's not real keen on that one. She didn't really like the toad house I built out of her new bamboo placemats either.

Mom looked at me like I came from Mars, which I'm sure she hopes to see at the astronomy club.

“How could you not like looking at the stars?” she asked, shooting me a look that said I must have been adopted. “I love the stars. And I want to be the treasurer because it's a way of meeting people,” she explained. “I don't think I stand much of a chance because the only experience I have working with numbers, in an official sense, was when I volunteered with the humane society. I had to collect and record the donations we received for the feed-a-kitten day. I don't think that
kitten food expenses are in the same category as big telescope expenses, but I'm going to try anyway,” she said happily.