NIKKI POWERGLOVES
A Hero is Born
David Estes
Copyright 2012 David Estes
This book is dedicated to kids all over the world,
for dreaming BIG,
believing in superheroes,
and loving reading!
Chapter One: The man-eating porcupine-beaver
Nikki Nickerson hated her name. Not so much her first name, Nikki was fine, but when combined with Nickerson it was dreadful! What were her mom and dad thinking? The only thing that saved her from constant teasing at school was a boy named George George. His name was definitely worse than hers, but having the second worst name at school was still nothing to be proud of. When she grew up, one of the first things she would do would be to change her name to something cool, like Shakira or Elektra.
Nikki was also bored of being nine-years-old. Nothing exciting ever happened in her life. She hated to complain, because her life wasn’t too bad as far as lives go; she lived in a small, but nice house, with a small, but nice family. Without any brothers or sisters, Nikki had to entertain herself much of the time during the long summer holiday from school.
First, she tried playing with friends from school, but all the girls ever wanted to do was try on their moms’ makeup and pretend that they were older than they really were. When she asked the boys if she could play with them, they refused; building forts and wrestling was far too difficult for a girl to do, they told her.
Next she tried TV, but her mom said, “That stuff will rot your brain, Nikki. Go outside.”
So outside she went, ready to explore the world! After two hours, she realized that there wasn’t much to see in her little town of Cragglyville. She visited the old museum, but when she tried to touch one of the Native American exhibits, the security man said, “No touching. Get lost, kid!”
She wanted to get lost. At least getting lost would be more exciting than her life, but instead she decided to go down to the old mill on the river. That proved to be even more boring than the museum; she wasn’t allowed inside, and watching the waterwheel churn the muddy water was only cool for about the first five minutes.
She left the mill and went back to town to see if she could get into trouble there.
Like Nikki’s house and family, the town of Cragglyville was small, but nice. The roads were kept clean by a weekly street sweeper and the sidewalks were tended to by Old Man Smithy, the local litter collector. The layout of the town was basic; the flat topography allowed a grid pattern to be used, with one main street running down the town center—the name of the road was Main Street, no joke—while various cross streets intersected it at one block intervals. The town had a rustic feel to it, like it had never been touched by the Industrial Revolution. At any second, one might expect a gang of outlaws to ride up on their black horses and start a gunfight with the local sheriff. Surprisingly, there were no tumbleweeds bouncing along Main Street, but mainly because Smithy was so good at his job.
The town had one of each of the basic necessities: a post office for snail-mail; a Town Hall for government functions; a bakery for tasty treats; a diner for coffee, flapjacks, and gossip—the coffee and pancakes were good, but the gossip was the tastiest of all—a police station to keep order; a hospital for bumps, bruises and the flu; and a bank, of course, as an alternative for keeping your money in a piggy-bank or under your mattress.
Nikki had just walked past the old bank, which was on the corner of Main Street and Rooster Road, when she stopped and scratched her head. Robbing a bank could be exciting, she thought. She could be like Jessie James and Billy the Kid. An outlaw, always one step ahead of the law! No way, the much wiser part of her brain said, your parents will ground you for a month if you rob a bank.
So robbing a bank was out. That left what? A whole lot of nothing, that’s what. Nikki decided to head for home to see if she could find a tree to climb or a bike to ride.
Upon reaching Plantation Road, she cut across the street and off of the sidewalk, opting to take the “short” cut, along the edge of the woods and around the cornfields. In reality, this route wasn’t really shorter, but Nikki found it far more interesting than walking on the same roads, past the same houses.
While she walked along, Nikki picked up a sturdy branch that had fallen from a tree overhanging the fields. Using it as a hiking stick, she imagined that she was a famous explorer discovering the land for the first time. “Discovering what?” she asked herself out loud. A bunch of cornfields, she thought, not very exciting at all. She needed to find an adventure to have!
Nikki stopped and gazed at the endless rows of corn marching into the distance. She hated corn—the look, the taste, the feel. Yuck! Turning in the other direction, toward the woods, she peered into the gloom. How could it be so dark in there when it was so bright outside? The sun rose high above her and she was hot and sweaty from trudging all over town. The forest looked cool and quiet. A light breeze wafted through the crisscross of branches, slowly moving them up and down, as if they were inviting her into their world.
There was a rumor going around school that the forest was haunted. By what, no one knew, but the kids were sure that it was dangerous. Maybe something dangerous is exactly what I need, Nikki thought. “No, Nikki,” the responsible part of her mind said. “It is far too dangerous and your parents would not want you to go in there.”
“Be quiet, why can’t I have any fun?” Nikki muttered to herself. She took another long look at the forest before allowing the cowardly part of her brain to win the argument. Just as she began to walk away, she heard a loud cracking sound from the trees behind her.
She froze.
Slowly turning her head, she looked to see what had caused the noise. That’s when she saw the path. It was not some small, overgrown trail that you might expect to see leading into a forest, but instead, was a wide, clear corridor. Nikki had passed by this way a hundred times before and had never seen this path. Where had it come from?
The ground was almost completely free of branches and leaves, like it had been swept clean by a caretaker, or maybe Smithy; it was as smooth as the marble floor in an art gallery. And sitting directly in the center of the path was a large, fat animal, resembling a cross between a porcupine and a beaver. The furry mammal was sitting atop a broken branch, having fallen from the trees high above. So this was the source of the cracking sound, Nikki realized.
The animal growled, its mouth opening wide to reveal several sets of razor sharp teeth.