Read Online Addison Addley and the Things That Aren't There by Melody DeFields McMillan - Free Book Online

Chapter One
    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.
    â€œNow, 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 andthen 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.
    â€œBreakfast!” 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?

Chapter Two
    â€œWhat’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 itwas 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