Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye by Melody McMillian Page A

pushed open the door. He ran across the yard and out to the corner of the street. He paused for a split second, like he was waiting for someone. That split second almost gave me time to catch up to him. Almost, but not quite.
    â€œGet back here!” I yelled.
    He took off like the spaceship in my video game. One second he was there, and the next he was gone. I guess all that running in baseball helped him too.
    He ran so fast that I couldn’t catch up to him. He ran down Pine Street, up Oak Street and across Elm Street. When he got finished with the tree streets, he started on the others. I couldn’t see any pattern to where he was going, sort of like I can’t see a pattern to stuff I learn in math. I think he was trying to confuse me. It takes a lot more than that.
    The light was fading fast. Soon it would be dark. We were in my neighborhood now. He headed toward my street and started to slow down. He must have been getting tired. I bet he was glad that I lived on a corner lot, because he decided to cut right across my lawn to get to the street on the other side of it.
    Now I don’t like to brag or anything, but sometimes I do stuff that comes in handy later, even if people don’t appreciate it at the time. All of my hard work in the yard paid off. Just not how I expected it to.
    You can’t say I didn’t try to warn him. “Trent, wait!” I yelled one more time as I saw his orange back disappearing into the almost-dark yard. That was the last thing I saw of him. I heard him loud and clear though.
    â€œAaaaaaaaah! Help!” I don’t know which was louder, Trent’s voice or the sound of the stones from the statue crashing down. I guess I should have used better glue to hold them together. The chewed-up gum hadn’t worked too well there either.
    You can’t say that Trent wasn’t stubborn. He limped to the gate and disappeared into the backyard. I guess he thought he could jump over the fence into the neighbor’s yard and lose me.
    By now I had almost caught up to him. I could hear Mom’s voice behind me. She must have seen me racing out of the school. I pushed past the open gate just in time to hear Trent scream one last time.
    I guess he didn’t see the big hole in the backyard. Of course he might have been distracted by the mirror that I had hung with fishing line from the old pine tree. I’d wanted the worms to think that the feast that I’d left for them was even bigger than it really was. Most of the holes that I’d dug in the yard were small, but I thought that maybe if I dug just one super-big hole I might get super-big worms coming to it. Worms might like more space. Sort of like how I liked more space to live in. I guess Trent’s foot hadn’t liked that much space though. It got stuck in there, and he went flying into the worm feast of eggshells and banana peels. So did his parcel.
    I quickly stepped over Trent and picked up what he had dropped.
    I didn’t need light to see what it was. Even though I knew better, I could swear that dummy’s eyes were moving.

Chapter Twelve
    â€œYou did it!” Sam cried as he slapped me on the back. “You figured it out! You solved the crime!”
    Sam had come over right after his breakfast the next morning to congratulate me. His mom had told him the news when he’d woken up.
    I poured more syrup on my super-big stack of pancakes. Mom had made an extra big batch today and had even added some organic chocolate bits. I offered some pancakes to Sam.
    â€œHow did you know it was Trent? How did you know it was the dummy he wanted? How did you figure everything out?” Sam asked in between gulps of juice.
    That Sam. He knew I couldn’t answer three things at once. I guess he was too excited to think.
    â€œWell, Sam,” I said, “it was actually something you said that started things simmering in my brain.”
    Sam looked puzzled. I took another bite of