Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

door, “what happened to the mirror that was here in the entryway?”
    â€œOh, I’m borrowing it for the magic show,” I confessed. That was partly true. Alex, the skinny kid who sat next to me in class, was going to use it to create some sort of illusion. He was going to lean the mirror up against a table. Then he was going to stand with one leg behind the mirror and the other leg in front of the mirror. He said if he lifted up his front leg it would look like he was floating in the air because you would just see his lifted leg and the image of his lifted leg.
    The main reason I took the mirror though was because Sam had said that mirrors make rooms look bigger. They sort of tricked the eye into thinking that there was more space than there really was. I couldn’t have Mom thinking our entryway was any bigger than it actually was. I needed all the help I could get. Besides, that mirror was always in the way when I tried to bounce a tennis ball off the wall and out the front door. It would be easier to do now.
    After Mom left, Sam showed me some cool optical illusions on the Internet. There were tons of sites. There were some pictures that changed shape right before your eyes if you stared at them long enough. There were others where you’d swear that one line was shorter than the other, but really they were both exactly the same length. It had something to do with arrows at the end of the lines. Some pages had things that looked like they were spinning around when they weren’t. One picture of an old man was really creepy. Even though I knew better, I could swear the guy’s eyes were following me. There were pictures of staircases that looked crooked but really weren’t. I wondered if I could somehow paint the whole house in a way that would make our crooked steps look straight. I found one site that said vertical lines make things look taller. Maybe I could paint stripes on the broken shutters to make them look tall enough to match the windows. Maybe that’s why zebras have stripes. They probably like looking taller than they really are so that lions don’t chase them as much.
    As soon as it got dark, we went outside. I locked the door behind me and we started out. The street was really quiet. A dog barked a few doors down. I jumped a mile. Did you ever notice that when it’s dark, noises seem to be a million times louder? I’d swear I could even hear Sam’s glasses sliding down his nose as we walked. That’s not an optical illusion, it’s some other kind. I don’t know its name.
    We went really slowly so we could watch for anything strange. I was glad there were some cars on the street. That way we didn’t feel quite so alone. I let Sam go in front of me. I mean, he wears glasses, so if something jumped out in front of us, he’d be able to see it better than I would. You have to be logical about things like that.
    The moon was right above our heads. In a way that was good, because the sidewalks were all lit up. In a way it was bad, because where there’s light there are also shadows. Lots of them. I didn’t remember the trees being that big before or the bushes that wide or the shadows that gigantic. Who knew what could be hiding in those gigantic shadows?
    When we got to Becky’s house, we stopped. I closed my eyes and listened. I can hear better when I can’t see. Also it made it easier to ignore the creepy garage when my eyes were shut. Sam could do the looking for us both. It wasn’t that I was afraid or anything, it’s just like I said before—Sam can probably see better because of his glasses.
    Everything sounded normal. Well, as normal as everything can sound in the middle of the night on a dead-end street. I opened my eyes just once to look at the house. I could see the light on in the living room. I could see Becky’s family watching tv. I could see Sam inspecting the garage. By inspecting, I mean taking