Once in her room, Nikki locked the door to prevent anyone from accidentally discovering her secrets. Adults wouldn’t understand this sort of thing, so she wanted to be very careful to hide the gloves from her parents.
Spencer, on the other hand, was a different story. She shared everything with him and this would be no exception. Flipping her phone open, Nikki sent a simple text message to him:
U busy?
Her phone vibrated less than a minute later and she looked at his response.
Yep, eating at GGs, what’s up?
“GG” was what Spencer called his grandmother who lived in New York. Whenever he spent the summer with his dad, he would also spend a lot of time with GG. Nikki replied:
Call me ASAP. BIG news!
And seconds later, Spencer responded with:
OK, gimme 1 hr, Popsicle
Nikki laughed to herself. Spencer was always saying weird things and calling her random names like Popsicle or Juicy-Fruit. Most kids at school thought that he was strange, but Nikki loved his quirkiness.
Still smiling, she snapped her phone shut and reached under the bed to retrieve her backpack. Unzipping it, she laid the gloves with the bird picture onto her bed. She looked at them for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do next. Giving in to the temptation, she put them on and pressed her thumb against the bird symbol.
In her mind, a battle commenced between her more responsible half and her adventure-seeking half—almost like the classic angel and devil argument. The “angel” said, “Wait until you’re outside, Nikki, you haven’t really mastered flying yet.” And the “devil” responded, “Don’t be such a wimp, flying is fun and you won’t get better unless you practice.”
The devil has a point, Nikki thought. So she thought hard about her body rising off the floor by a couple of feet. Slam! Her body burst upwards and smashed into the ceiling. Thud! Gravity reclaimed her and she fell through the air, crashing hard onto the floor.
She lay there trying to breathe, the wind knocked out of her lungs from the impact. “Nikki!” she heard her dad yell. “Is everything alright?”
She took three large breaths and then, finding her voice, shouted, “Everything’s fine, I just knocked something over!”
Hoping her response would keep her parents from coming up to check on her, Nikki pulled herself up onto her bed. “New rule,” she said aloud. “No flying in the house.” She slipped the gloves off and placed them next to her, before pulling the baby chest out of her pocket once more. Interested to see what the gloves would look like when they were really small, she used her thumb and index finger to pluck the lid off.
Whack!
Nikki was nearly knocked off her bed from the impact, as the chest magically expanded, reaching full-size in mere seconds. Because it was not sitting securely on the floor when she opened it, the chest teetered on the edge of the bed before toppling over and colliding with the floor, making a loud crash that vibrated through the walls and floorboards.
The sound will definitely get my parents’ attention this time, Nikki thought. She hopped off of the bed and tried to flip over the capsized chest, but it was too heavy. Instead, she decided to try to lift the less-heavy lid and slide it back onto the sideways chest. When she reached the lid, she heard someone rattle the doorknob, trying to open her bedroom door. Finding the door locked, the someone knocked hard and demanded, “Nikki, let me in right this instant!” It was her father.
Trying to buy time while she dragged the lid over to the chest, Nikki said, “Just a minute, Dad!”
Reaching the edge of the chest, Nikki heaved and lifted the lid, pushing it with all her might, as she heard her mom say, “I have the key, dear.”
The lid snapped into place and the chunky chest disappeared from sight, returning to its miniature form. It was not a moment too soon as she heard the key turn in the lock and the door click open. Her dad’s face was red with anger and her mom’s brow was wrinkled in concern.
Nikki sat on her bed like she had been there the entire time, and shifted her foot to cover the chest, which was now no bigger than a marble. “What is going on in here?” her dad demanded.
“Nothing, Dad, I was just getting ready for bed and knocked over a lamp. Then when I tried to set it back up, I tripped and fell. I am such a klutz sometimes,” Nikki said, laughing at her own expense.
“It sounded like something much bigger than a lamp, Nikki.”
“Like what? There is nothing much bigger in here, unless you think I knocked my dresser over. Or maybe it was my bed. Trust me, Dad, it was just the sound being magnified through the house by the old floorboards or something.” Nikki impressed even herself with her last lie; it gave some plausibility to her entire story.
Her father didn’t seem convinced, however, but seeing that his daughter was uninjured and nothing appeared to be broken, he turned and shepherded his wife out the door. Calling over his shoulder, he said, “Whatever you are doing, just please be careful. And don’t lock your door again. Okay, Nikks?”
“Sure, Dad,” Nikki replied, thankful that she had been able to talk her way out of trouble, and even more relieved that she had been able to shrink the chest before her parents barged into her room.
As soon as they left, Nikki walked across her room, closed the door, and relocked it, despite her father’s clear instructions to the contrary. Whatever punishment she might get for disobeying him would be far better than what could happen if they found the chest or the gloves.
She picked up the toy chest again, but this time she placed it on the floor in the center of the room, away from any furniture. She opened one of her drawers and found a beginner’s sewing kit her mom had bought her for Christmas last year, and drew out a long piece of black thread. Using a small knob located on top of the lid, Nikki secured the string to the lid and, while still holding the other end of the thread, she backed away several steps.
Ever so gently, she pulled the end of the string and lifted the lid off the chest. Once the lid was removed, the box’s frame burst outwards, and moments later the full-size magical chest stood open in front of her.
Nikki returned the flying gloves to the box and pulled out another pair, one she hadn’t tried yet. These gloves were two colors—black on one side and yellow on the other—and had a picture of a lightning bolt on them. Nikki could guess what that meant.
She excitedly pulled on the gloves and crawled onto her bed and over to the window. She concentrated, trying to picture dark clouds rolling in. Within seconds, the previously clear night sky was obscured by black clouds that covered all evidence of the moon and the stars.
Nikki smiled and proceeded to use her mind to open up the clouds and release a torrential downpour. There were deafening roars of thunder and rapid bursts of lightning, followed by a period of hail for good measure.
Nikki was practically giddy with excitement as she watched the fireworks display—her fireworks display. After twenty minutes of controlling the weather, Nikki was ready to move on to the next power, so she slipped off the gloves and, instantly, the storm ended and the clouds disappeared, revealing the clear, night sky once more.
She threw the lightning gloves back in the chest and was about to grab another pair, when a large yawn caught her by surprise. She felt drained, a testament to the busy day she’d had, both physically and mentally. She remembered that she had the whole rest of the summer to explore the many powers the gloves could give her.
After returning the lid to the chest, Nikki placed the now-shrunken box under her pillow for safe-keeping, opened the door to let Mr. Miyagi in, and then lay down to sleep.
Her head had barely touched her pillow when her cell phone rang. In all of her excitement she had forgotten about Spencer. Nikki accepted the call and answered, “Hi, Spence, you are never gonna believe what I did today.”
Spencer was silent as Nikki told him about following the Weeble along the secret path into the forest and how she had been given the magical treasure chest as a gift. She described all of the different kinds of gloves and the powers she had discovered so far. When she finished, Spencer exclaimed, “Wow, Nikky-Nacky! You might be the luckiest kid in the world! You found powergloves! Kazaa!”
“What do you mean?” Nikki asked.
“You found a bunch of gloves that have different powers, they should be called powergloves! Hoot hoot!” he practically shouted. Spencer was talking faster and faster and making more and more strange noises the more excited he got.
Nikki thought about it for a minute. Powergloves. It had a nice ring to it. She liked it. “Powergloves! That’s awesome!”
“And now you have to think about coming up with a superhero name, something with powergloves in the name. It’s like Ghostbusters, they put ghost in their name and it worked perfectly.”
“Whoa, hold on a minute, Spence. I haven’t done anything yet. I’m no superhero!”
“Well, what are you planning on doing with the powergloves, Cocoa-Puff? You can’t have such a power and not use it for good. Remember what Spiderman’s uncle said? ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”
“But I haven’t even really learned how to use them yet and there are a lot of gloves I haven’t even tried yet. But it would be cool to have another name. I’m really tired of being called ‘Nikk-Nick’ at school.”
“That’s the spirit,” Spencer said. He started humming in the background. As usual, Spencer was thinking. After a minute, he said, “I got it! What about Nikki Powergloves? Shazaam!”
As soon as Nikki heard the words roll off of Spencer’s tongue, she fell in love with them. “I love it, Spence! I would get to keep my first name, which I like, and change my annoying last name to something way cooler. Nikki Powergloves it is!”
And just like that, a hero was born, Nikki Powergloves. The only problem was that she hadn’t done anything heroic yet.