Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye (7 page)

Mom had filled me in on the details of Trent's plans that morning after she had talked to Becky's mom. Now I filled Sam in. It seems that Becky had told Trent that her uncle had only paid fifty dollars for the dummy. Trent had told his friends about it. One of them had just done a school project on ventriloquists. He thought the dummy was worth more. A lot more. Trent did some research and found out just how much more. He said that he was just trying to “borrow” the dummy to get it appraised, but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that fishy story.

Sam scratched his head and then his nose. Then he scratched his chin.

“So then Trent tried to break into the garage. I still don't understand how you figured things out. What about the notes?”

I smiled. That was the good part. “Think about it, Sam. Remember what you said. Sometimes things are completely different, depending on how you look at them. Even words.
Sam 11
didn't have anything to do with you or your birthday. It did have something to do with a specific day though.”

I let the words sink in. They didn't have too far to sink with Sam though. He caught on pretty quickly. Like I said before, he's a smart guy.

Sam's face lit up like a firecracker. “French!” he yelled. “Those words are French!
Sam 11
! The magic fair was on Saturday, May 11.
Samedi
is French for Saturday!
Sam
for short.” Sam looked pleased with himself. And relieved.

I nodded before I gulped down the last of my orange juice. “Yep. I realized it during the magic show. That bulletin board in the library came in handy. I got to thinking about the authors from different countries, and how the same word means different things, depending on how you look at it. Sort of like how Trent's old baseball signals meant something completely different to his new team. Then I started thinking about those notes. Eight cents means eight cents to us. But to the French,
cent
means hundred. That dummy was worth eight hundred dollars. Trent must have been writing the notes to his friends in French so that nobody would figure out what he was planning.”

I shook my head. That dummy probably had more brains than Trent did. “That note must have fallen out of Trent's pocket the next week when he tried to sneak into Becky's garage,” I explained. “He met his friends there, but the dummy was still in Becky's closet, and the garage was locked. They tried to pry to the lock open but it wouldn't work. Then Trent wrote down the date of the magic fair and gave it to his friends. He knew the dummy would be there for sure. He was planning on sneaking it out to them.”

I threw my dishes in the sink. “But Becky's dog got that note and ripped it apart. Becky found the first part about eight cents. We found the second part about
Sam 11
. Becky's mom found the third part about
coin
and
pin
, right before the dog tried to bury it.”

Sam cut in. “But what do
coin
and
pin
have to do with it?”

Sam almost had it. I tried to be patient, but I knew the creek was waiting. I picked up my fishing pole and headed out the door. Sam followed.

“Think about it, Sam,” I urged as we walked to the creek. I pointed to the street sign as we rounded the corner.

Suddenly Sam knew. “
Pin
! That's Pine in French. Our school is on the corner of Pine Street.
Coin
is corner! Those were the directions to the magic fair!”

Sam slapped me on the back. “What a way to figure it out! What a way to solve it! What a way to think!” he gushed as we arrived at the creek.

Yeah, I guess it was a good way to think. Too much thinking for my liking though. Now it was time to fish. Like I said before, fishing and thinking don't go together. I was sure I could fit in a little gloating though. Gloating doesn't take up a whole lot of energy. Just as long as I kept the gloating to myself.

Chapter Thirteen

The next day after school, I found Mom out in the front yard. She hadn't said much about the open house the day before. I figured she didn't want to look too excited about it for my sake. She probably felt sorry for me.

Mom was just finishing throwing the stones from the fallen statue into the old wheelbarrow. I guess she wanted me to take them back to the creek.

“I'll take those back after supper,” I said as I helped her push the old wheelbarrow to the shed.

“Back would be good,” she said as she wiped her hands on her jeans. “The backyard, that is. I think these stones would make a great rock garden.”

Why Mom would want to make a rock garden out of these old stones was a mystery to me. She wouldn't be able to see it from the new townhouse.

“Here,” she said as she tossed me a package.

I thought it might be gum by the shape of it. I opened it up. It was a bunch of flower seeds. Why would I want some dumb flower seeds? I scratched my head and then my nose. I was beginning to feel like Sam.

“No use letting all of those perfectly good holes in the backyard go to waste,” she said. “Now these seeds have someplace to go.”

We headed toward the house. “One more thing,” she added as we went inside. “You didn't get to do your invisible-ink trick at the magic fair. Here's your note. I found it upstairs.”

It was nice of Mom to think about me. She probably thought I had put a lot of work into it when really it had only taken about thirty seconds. Well, maybe forty if you count the time I had to spend cleaning up the lemon juice after I'd accidentally spilled it in the sugar bowl. I'd been mixing up a bit of lemonade while I was writing the note. No sense wasting perfectly good lemon juice on paper alone.

Mom handed me the note and the iron, which she'd just unplugged.

I felt stupid doing the trick for just one person, but I shrugged and started anyway. I guess Mom was hard up for entertainment.

“Sometimes things seem different, depending on how you look at them,” I said. “You probably see a plain piece of paper. I, however, see something else. Concentrate hard and letters will appear right before your very own eyes.”

I ran the iron over the paper and waited for the words
Optical Illusion
to appear. I hoped I had spelled them right.

The two words slowly came into view. They weren't the words I was watching for, or even the words I was waiting for, but they sure were the words that I'd been wishing for all along.

I rubbed my eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on me and then I read the words out loud.

“
Welcome home
.”

I looked up at Mom. “This isn't my note,” I said. “What's going on?”

“You're not the only one who can write invisible notes, you know.” She laughed and looked out the window at the hockey-stick fence. “You've made quite a mess around here, but you got me thinking.”

I guess some people would call it a mess. I called it a masterpiece. “I was just trying to make the house look better. I wanted you to look at it from a different angle,” I said.

“That's just it,” she pointed out. “I did look at it from a different angle. From a different point of view. Yours.”

I held my breath and stopped chewing my gum.

“You went to all of this effort,” she continued. “It's obvious how much this place means to you. I never realized it until now, after seeing the place through your eyes. And now that the break-ins have been solved, the street feels safe again.”

I started chewing.

“I think we should just stay here,” she said as she dumped her organic rice into the pot.

I started breathing.

“Besides,” she added, “how could I possibly see the stars at night with all of the lights in the new development? And how could we fit all our outdoor things into that little townhouse? And it would cost more in gas for me to get to work. I'm going to be putting in some extra hours at the downtown office. And just think about all of those horrible stop lights.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Right, Mom. Hadn't I told her all of that stuff before? I was so happy that I didn't even point that out. I guess some people take a while to let things sink in, the way it takes a while for water to sink into a wormhole.

I grabbed my hole digger from where I'd been storing it under the kitchen table and headed outside.

“Watch out for that gate,” Mom called after me. “It doesn't seem to close too well.”

I couldn't wait to plant those seeds. If Mom wanted a flower garden and a rock garden to make the place look better, I could do it easily. I was handy at stuff like that.

I looked up at the trees and ran through the yard. It's strange how sometimes you just feel like flying.

Yep, this place had potential. I would keep a corner of the yard for my worm business. Maybe I could try an ant farm under the pine tree. Plus there were lots more treasures that I needed to bury, like the old brass button that had fallen off the dummy's shirt when Trent fell into the hole in my yard.

I started digging. I would make our place look like a mansion, heck, a castle. A big one. As big as I wanted. I'd get Sam to help me. I'd already proven that two sets of eyes are better than one.

Ideas started dancing in front of me like a shimmering mirage. I could just see it now. Some people would soon call our house a mansion. Some people, like Tiffany, would call it a dump. Like I said before, it all depends on how you look at it. I didn't really care what it was called. As long as it was still called home.

Melody DeFields McMillan
is a teacher who lives in Simcoe, Ontario, not far from where she grew up. She is the mother of two adult children. When she's not writing, she's enjoying all that nature has to offer. Her first book about the irrepressible Addison,
Addison Addley and the Things That Aren't There
, was nominated for a Silver Birch Award.