by David Estes
Chapter Thirteen: Spencer gets a shock (of the electrical variety)
She watched in horror as lightning bolt after lightning bolt struck an old farmhouse, tearing it apart bit by bit. Splinters of wood sprayed through the air, shingles dropped to the ground like dead birds, and windows cracked down the center. She felt someone shaking her while she screamed in fear.
Nikki awoke with a start and the terrors of her nightmare began to fade like a distant memory. Someone was shaking her. It was just her mom.
“Nikki, Nikki,” she cooed, “It was just a bad dream, honey.”
Nikki looked at her mom and smiled. “I’m okay, Mom. I don’t remember it already.”
“That’s good, you had better get dressed though. You have a visitor.”
“Spencer!” Nikki exclaimed.
Her mom smiled and left her to get ready.
Nikki hurriedly threw on a pair of comfortable denim shorts and a loose fitting t-shirt. She remembered to pocket the magical chest before running down the stairs. Spencer was waiting for her on the couch, sipping an orange juice and chatting with her mom as if they were best friends, rather than he and Nikki.
“So, Mrs. Nickerson,” Spencer was saying when Nikki walked in, “how is chess club? Have you moved up any levels?” he asked her. Spencer sounded very adult.
“Since we had our last match, Spence, I think I’ve plateaued,” her mom answered.
“We’ll have to play again soon; I can give you a few pointers that I’ve picked up at school.” Spencer was a member of the chess club at school and sometimes he played with Mrs. Nickerson when he spent the day at their house. Nikki wondered to herself how she had become friends with someone so nerdy when she was so cool? She chuckled at her joke, knowing full well that she was every bit as dorky as Spencer was—that was one of the main reasons they got along so well.
“Welcome back, Spence!” Nikki interrupted.
“Hey, Freckle-Face, did you miss me?” he replied. He was wearing the crooked grin that made Nikki so happy every time she saw him. His braces further accentuated his toothy smile; the orthodontist had only put the metal teeth straighteners on Spencer’s teeth a couple of months earlier and Nikki was still getting used to them. His dirty blond hair was messy, like he had just woken up, which apparently he had, sleeping most of the plane ride home. His face was covered in freckles, like hers, just another thing to add to the list of things that they had in common. He was nearly half-a-foot shorter than she was, and about 15 pounds lighter. Between his small stature and glasses, he gave the bullies at school plenty of ammunition to pick on him, but it never seemed to bother him.
“Who you callin’ Freckle-Face? Your face is even frecklier than mine! And you were only gone a week, Spence, I was fully prepared for a full month Spencer-free,” she said, laughing.
“Well, I’m sure you both have enough to catch up on, so I’ll leave you to it,” Mrs. Nickerson said, standing up to leave.
“Thanks for the OJ,” Spencer said politely.
“You’re very welcome, Spencer,” she replied. “I’m heading to arts and crafts now, please leave me a note if you decide to go anywhere.”
“No problem, Mom, see you later,” Nikki said with a wave.
As soon as her mom closed the front door, Spencer looked at her seriously and said, “Show me.”
“First, I need to show you an e-mail I got.”
Spencer looked at her curiously and then followed her up the stairs. She opened her laptop and showed him the message from Jimmy.
“What do you make of it?” she asked.
“Probably just some goofball-nutcase throwing darts at a board. I wouldn’t be surprised if he e-mailed every kid that goes to our school, hoping the right one would get spooked and tell him the truth. I wouldn’t even respond.”
“I think I need to, even if only to deny it. If I don’t respond, I will appear guilty.” Nikki realized that she was thinking and talking like a common criminal. She was supposed to be a hero!
“I see your point, Cheerio,” Spencer said.
Nikki drafted a simple e-mail, the wording of which they both agreed on. They used a thesaurus to spice it up a little with adult-sounding words. She held her breath and pressed send. Her message read:
“Dearest Jimmy,
I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you have corroborating evidence for your claims, I suggest you refrain from e-mailing me again.
Ms. Nickerson
PS- Are you the gorilla?”
Ten minutes later they received a response from Jimmy:
“Ms. Nickerson,
I have conducted a simple height and weight analysis from the photo I took. I have also used picture-zoom technology to detect subtle features of the masked girl who flew into town. The result of my work is that I have determined with 99% certainty that you are, in fact, the girl who can fly.
Jimmy
PS- Have you seen any Weebles lately?”
Once finished reading the e-mail, they looked at each other with narrowed eyes. Spencer said, “He seems legit and like he knows what he’s talking about.”
“I agree. He knows that I saw a Weeble, which I don’t even think is a real creature. How could he know that?”
Spencer hummed to himself, puzzling over her last question. “There are only two possibilities, Lucky-Ducky. One, he followed you down the path that day and spied on you while you talked to the Weeble, or two, he has also seen a Weeble.”
Nikki’s head was spinning. “Spencer, it can’t be the first option because Mr. Miyagi was with me the whole time. He has a nose like a bloodhound and would have been barking his head off if he smelled someone hiding in the bushes. That means this Jimmy character has seen a Weeble too. But how could he?”
“He might be asking the same thing about you, Nikki. What if he was led down a secret path, to a secret clearing, talked to a Weeble, and was given a treasure chest, just like you?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“Sure, why not? It happened to you, didn’t it?”
“I guess so. I just wouldn’t expect something like this to happen to two kids. It is crazy enough that it happened to me. Wouldn’t we have seen something on the news about a child superhero in some other town?”
“Not necessarily. Do you want people to know about your powers? If he was scared he might have decided to keep his powers a secret, just like you.” Spencer seemed to have an answer for everything.
“Do you think I should meet him?”
“Not yet. I think we should do some research first, to see if we can find out who we’re dealing with.” Spencer grabbed Nikki’s laptop and typed an e-mail back to Jimmy:
“Jimmy,
I believe you. Let me think about whether I want to meet. I know you have probably seen a Weeble and have powers of your own. I’ll contact you soon.
Nikki”
Satisfied with his work, Spencer sent the e-mail and then typed “mischief vandalism” into the Google search bar. He clicked “Search” and the results were instantaneous. The top ten results were all related articles about a vandalism epidemic in San Francisco. The “acts of mischief,” as the article called them, were all unexplained and all likely caused by kids with too much time on their hands. The article went on to say that the vandalism seemed to be getting worse and that the latest act, “the complete disruption of the city government’s cyber-network by hackers,” was an outrage to the city and the perpetrators needed to be brought to justice.
The article also explained that it was clear that all of the acts of vandalism and cyber-vandalism were linked, because the kid left a calling card at each site that said, “Brought to you by Jimmy, Boy Wonder!” When the government computers were hacked, the same message was left as the screensaver on all government employees’ computers.
“It’s him!” Nikki practically screamed.
“Checkmate,” Spencer said with a sly grin.
“But how did you know?” N
ikki asked.
“I didn’t know anything. I just guessed. Given the tone of his e-mails, I could tell he was up to no good. For every hero, there’s a villain.”
“You think he’s my villain?” Nikki asked, looking worried.
“I dunno, maybe. One thing’s for sure: I would be very careful anytime you make a public appearance. I have a feeling Jimmy will be looking to embarrass you in front of a crowd.”
“Maybe I should just forget the whole thing with the gloves and put them back where I found them. I don’t know how to be a hero anyway.”
“C’mon, Powder-Puff. I think you know how to be a hero better than most people. And anyway, if you don’t stand up to Jimmy, who will?”
Nikki cringed. It was a lot to handle for a nine-year-old girl.
“Okay, I’ll think about it. But first, let me show you what I can do.”
Without another word, Nikki grabbed his hand and led him back downstairs, through the kitchen and out the door into the backyard. The Nickerson’s backyard was surrounded by a high fence to allow Mr. Miyagi to do his business each day without anyone watching him, as well as to prevent him from running away. Her dog was waiting and ran up to greet them. He especially liked Spencer, who was always willing to take a few minutes to give him a good scratching.
Spencer crouched and used one hand to rub him behind the ears while Mr. Miyagi licked his other hand in a show of affection. Only distracted for a moment, Spencer stood up when Nikki reached in her pocket and pulled out the small box.
“That’s it?” Spencer asked, looking confused.
“Yep,” Nikki said, enjoying seeing her friend’s reaction. “Now watch this.” She placed the box on the grass and carried the attached string a few feet back. “Hold Mr. Miyagi,” she instructed.
As she had done in her bedroom, Nikki gave the thread a gentle but firm pull, and the lid popped off. Magically, the chest doubled in size. Then it doubled again, and again, until it had reached its full size.
“Incredible, it’s cooler than the first time Luke Skywalker used his light sword in Star Wars,” Spencer whispered.
“That’s nothing compared to what’s inside.” Spencer followed Nikki over to the chest and watched as she pulled out the black and yellow gloves with the lightning bolt symbol. “These are the ones I accidentally caused the flooding with.” In succession, she showed him the white, red, and light blue gloves and explained what she could do with them. Spencer listened in fascination.
“What about the others?” Spencer asked, gazing at the remaining gloves in the chest.
“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Nikki said. “I was too freaked out after the thunderstorm.”
Always organized, Spencer reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and a pencil. “We need to handle this logically. The first thing we should do is try them all and create a list.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Nikki replied.
Spencer looked her in the eyes and said, “Pizza-Hut, I know you’re scared, but trust me on this, we will get through this together. The best way to figure out whether we can do any good is to first try to understand what we are working with.”
Nikki thought about it and nodded her head. She knew her friend was right. Being a genius, he usually was.
Knowing they would only have two hours until her mom returned from her Thursday club, they decided to go somewhere more private. After making the chest shrink again—much to Spencer’s amazement—Nikki scrawled a quick note to her mom that said:
Went outside with Spencer, going to enjoy the nice day. Don’t worry, I wore sunscreen this time. Be back for dinner.
They left the house and headed for the Miller’s farm. There was a secret spot on the outskirts of the forest, where there was a thick, circular patch of trees. The trees were surrounded by rosebushes making it seemingly impossible to penetrate; however, Nikki and Spencer had found a way.
There was a particularly low hanging branch that extended out over the thorny rosebushes. While both of them were too short to reach it on their own, they had found a small tree stump they could roll underneath and use as a step to grab hold of the branch. By pulling themselves up, they could work their way along the branch and climb down once they were past the roses.
The first time they did this, they were astonished to find that the center of the patch of trees was mostly empty, with only the tree trunks standing like sentries around the border. The tall trees provided a thick canopy of protection from both rain and sun, and also gave them privacy from any spying eyes that might be passing by.
Using their usual trick, both Nikki and Spencer made it safely into the space they liked to refer to as simply, The Clubhouse.
Once inside, Spencer took control of the situation. “Okay, first I would like you to show me the powers you get from the four gloves you already tried. That way, I will have as much information as you do and we can move forward from there.”
Nikki agreed and decided to go in the same order that she had initially used. White first. She slipped on the snowflake gloves, which fit her perfectly of course, and aimed her finger at a small rock on the ground and thought about how it would look encased in ice. A white stream shot out of the gloves, covering the rock with a thin layer of ice.
Spencer clapped his hands excitedly. “This is the coolest thing ever, Beach-Ball!”
Beaming, Nikki swapped her white gloves for the red ones and proceeded to do her fire trick, melting the ice she had just created. The rock was back to its original form, except a lot hotter. Spencer found this out when he tried to pick it up and burned himself. “Ouch!” he exclaimed
Rolling her eyes, Nikki said, “What did you expect, Spence, that the flames shooting out of my gloves were just a special effect? It’s real fire!”
Next up were the light blue gloves. This presented somewhat of a problem, as there wasn’t enough open air in the interior of the tree cluster for Nikki to really fly around, like she had earlier in the week. For demonstration purposes, Nikki simply levitated several feet off the ground and told Spencer to trust that she could really fly like a bird.
The amazing anti-gravity feat really captured Spencer’s attention, so much that he couldn’t help but to ask, “Would you mind if I tried it out?”
Nikki paused for a second and then answered slowly, “I’m not sure that is such a good idea. The gloves were given to me as a gift and they seem to be tailor-made for my hands.”
As usual, Spencer had an answer for this. “Hold up your hand.” She obeyed and lifted her hand. He put his own hand against hers. They were nearly identical in size. “Are you trying to hog all the fun for yourself, McNugget?” Spencer accused.
Not wanting to sound selfish, Nikki replied, “No, no, sorry, Spence. Of course you can try if you want to.” She handed him the light blue gloves and he proceeded to try to jam his hand into the first one. No matter how hard he tried though, he just couldn’t get his hand or even his fingers into it.
After a minute of trying, he handed them back to her and said, “It looks like they are even more magical than we thought. It seems only you can use them.” He sounded a bit dejected.
Trying to cheer him up, Nikki said, “Just think, what kind of a superhero would I be if someone could just steal my gloves and take all my powers away from me?”
Knowing she had made a good point, Spencer nodded and then got back to business. “Which one is next?”
“The storm ones,” Nikki said, pulling out the black and yellow gloves. “But I don’t think it’s such a good idea to show you, considering the disaster I caused the first time I used them.”
Spencer asked, “Well, what did you think about when you used them the first time?”
Nikki thought back to two nights earlier. She was so excited that she might have gotten a little carried away. “I remember thinking about huge, black clouds and buckets of rain. I pictured many bolts of lightning and loud thunder.”
Spencer laughed. “I wonder why that caused so much destruction,” he said sarcastically.
“Be quiet, Spence,” Nikki retorted. But she saw his point. “Okay, okay, I’ll give them another try.”
Once the gloves were on, she tried her best to think of a tiny raincloud located directly over where they were. She was very careful not to picture any lightning or thunder. They looked up. The sky had darkened over The Clubhouse and a light drizzle careened onto the treetops.
“Amazing! Neek neek! That’s even cooler than Harry Potter’s ability to talk to snakes!” Spencer said. Smiling, Nikki pulled the gloves off and placed them back in the chest. The rain cloud dissipated.
“Satisfied?” Nikki asked.
“Yep,” Spencer answered. “Now we can begin to inventory all of them. Let’s start by lining up all of the gloves in the chest so we can see what we’re working with.” After saying this, Spencer started to reach his hands into the chest. As he did so, there was a blinding light and a searing bolt of electricity. His body convulsed and he was thrown backwards, smashing into a tree trunk and crumpling to the ground.
“Oh my gosh, Spencer!” Nikki yelled, running to where he lay. “Are you okay?”
He rolled over onto his back and looked up at her. “That felt like the time Big Danny rammed me into my locker. It was like Bigfoot gave me a swift kick into a tree.”
Nikki laughed, glad that her friend was well enough to make a joke, and offered him a hand to help him to his feet. He accepted it and stood gingerly.
“That is really gonna hurt tomorrow,” he said. “It seems that not only can I not put your gloves on, I can’t even reach into the chest. It was like a massive electric shock. I still feel a little bit tingly.”
“Sorry, Spence. I didn’t realize I had such a good security system.”
“That’s okay, maybe you could just lay them out in the chest and I can peek around you.” He seemed afraid to go anywhere near the chest after his last experience with it.
Nikki easily reached into the chest and organized the gloves into matching pairs and then spread them out so that each color was visible, along with the symbol printed on it. Spencer began writing frantically and after a few minutes displayed his inventory. There were three columns, one for glove color, one to describe each drawing, and one to describe the power. His initial notes were:
Powergloves Inventory
Glove Color---Symbol---Power!
White---Snowflake---Ability to create ice
Red---Flame---Ability to create fire
Light blue---Bird---Ability to fly
Black & yellow---Lightning bolt---Ability to control the weather
Green---Leaf---?
Purple---Muscly arm making a fist---?
Orange---Shoes---?
Gray---No drawing---?
Brown---Paw print---?
Pink---Tarot card---?
Gold---Clock---?
Skin-colored---Two identical stick figures---?
“Where should we start?” Spencer asked.
Before Nikki could respond, she heard crazy laughter from above her. She looked up and saw something big and black—it was blocking the few rays of sunlight that had managed to slip through the trees, casting a shadow across her face. With a crack, the black something fell, snapping branches and scraping past leaves, as it hurtled toward them.
“Run, Spence!” she yelled, grabbing his hand and sprinting for cover. She could feel the weight of the falling object bearing down upon them, even though it hadn’t reached them yet. When she knew a collision was imminent, Nikki shoved Spencer and then dove after him, landing awkwardly in a jumble of arms and legs on the edge of the clearing. THUD! Whatever had fallen sounded like it had been shoved deep into the dirt.
When they were able to untangle themselves and stand up again, they were shocked to see what lay before them. A giant, black, stone statue of a horse and rider was half-buried in the dirt. The front legs of the horse protruded from the ground while the rider remained fully visible. The statue was chipped and broken, a missing tail here and a missing ear there.
“Arthur Munroe!” Nikki exclaimed.
“Yep,” Spencer said.
“You don’t think…”
“Yes, I do, Crazy-Horse. I’ll give you three guesses as to who did this, but you will only need one.”
“Jimmy.”
“He’s a jerk. That statue means a lot to this town.”
Arthur Munroe was the explorer who originally discovered the land that the town was built on. His statue had stood in the Town Center for more than a century. It was the pride of Cragglyville. Jimmy had now personally attacked the town twice: first it was the steps of Town Hall and now it was a historic monument.
“He’s a jerk,” Spencer repeated.
They heard laughter from above. When she looked up, Nikki had to shield her eyes with a hand, as a ray of light penetrated the foliage. A shadowy form was silhouetted against the sun. Jimmy, she thought.
“Get him! Charge!” Spencer yelled.
Nikki nodded and jammed on her flying gloves. Leaping, she shot into the air. As she gave chase, Jimmy used a burst of speed to arc across the sky. Right when she felt like she was gaining on him, he disappeared. Just like before. One moment he was there, and the next he wasn’t.
Nikki returned to the ground and in response to Spencer’s questioning face, she said, “He got away.”
“Darn.”
“I don’t know if I will ever be able to catch him. Not with that disappearing trick of his. He’s going to destroy the whole town!”
Spencer put his arm around her. “No he won’t, Gizmo. You’ll stop him, I know you will. But he has the advantage of knowing his powers and has probably practiced a lot with them. We just need to learn about your powers as soon as possible, so you’ll be ready the next time.”
“Okay, I’m ready.” Nikki started to move toward the center of the clearing, but stopped when she noticed the statue again. “Uh, what should we do with that?”
“Nothing for now. If we take it back, Jimmy will just steal it again and destroy it more. Plus, it will need quite a bit of repair. Let’s just keep working on your powers and we can decide what to do with it later. Which power should we start with?”