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

time to think of ways to change our house.
    For once I wished my room wasn’t quite so big. Maybe Mom was right about not needing all this space. If my room were smaller, then I wouldn’t have to wonder what might be hiding in the empty space behind the chair where I threw all of my clothes.
    I decided to take the clothes off the chair and throw them on the floor instead. That way I could see through the back rails. Better safe than sorry. Then I decided to take the batteries out of the remote-control car in the corner, just in case. I mean, what if the car just started up by itself in the middle of the night? It would wake up Mom for sure. Either the car would wake her up or I would wake her up with my scream when I saw the car moving on its own. Besides, I could use those batteries for the flashlight that I was planning on taking to bed with me.
    I was almost asleep when I noticed the mirror that I was going to lend to Alex propped up in the corner. I got up again and flipped it around so it faced the wall. Sometimes mirrors look a whole lot better when there’s nothing looking back at you.
    I tried one more time to get to sleep, but now my eyelids didn’t want to behave. Did you ever notice how your eyelids flutter back and forth really fast when you’re trying to be still so you can sleep? The more you want them to stop moving, the faster they jump around. Same with your brain. The more you want it to slow down, the faster ideas and pictures come storming through. Like right now, ripped notes and slimy worms and broken steps were playing hide-and-seek in my head.
    I tried counting sheep, but every time the sheep got to the fence, they tripped and fell on the ground instead.
    I knew I needed to get at least a few hours of sleep because of the baseball game the next day. I’d need to concentrate to win. Then again, we were playing the Whinycats. The boring, annoying Whinycats and the equally boring, annoying Trent. The only good thing about thinking about Trent was that it finally put me right to sleep.

Chapter Seven
    I dragged myself out of bed after the third time Mom called me the next morning. I wished I had felt that tired the night before. I would have slept better. I was too tired to pick the almonds out of the organic muesli to save them for the squirrels. I ate them instead. The squirrels would have to wait. I didn’t even have the energy to complain about the pomegranate juice Mom gave me. She knows I only like juices I can spell.
    At the game Sam looked tired too. Even his hair looked tired, like he’d been scratching his head and thinking all night.
    â€œEverybody knew I was turning eleven,” he said when we got to the field. “My birthday was in February, so I was the first one in the class to turn eleven. That was a big deal. Mom said somebody just wrote the note to remind them to buy an ‘eleven’ birthday card, because they were used to everyone turning ten. She said it had nothing to do with Becky’s house.”
    I didn’t really buy that explanation. You wouldn’t need to write a note to remind yourself that your friend was turning eleven. Maybe Sam’s mom wasn’t so logical after all. It had to have something to do with the break-ins. Both notes were found there. Becky had turned eleven last month. The intruders couldn’t find whatever they were looking for at Becky’s, so they were probably going to go to Sam’s next. I was glad my birthday wasn’t until June. I sure wouldn’t want to find my name and age scrawled on a dirty note near a creepy garage that had been broken into. Still, it was nice of Sam’s mom to come up with some sort of explanation
    â€œYeah, that sounds right,” I said. Sam was trying to sound sure of himself, but I could tell that he really wasn’t. He flares his nostrils three times when he’s pretending. I used to think he was just trying to stop his glasses from sliding down