The Power

When Mr. Gardener hands back the latest math tests, most of the class has done poorly - but Nicholas "Nikki" Adamsworth and Rusty Gordon have scored one hundred percent for the fourth time in a row. Isaac Morton smells a rat. Nikki may be a genius, but Rusty runs with the Bones of Wrath, a gang that thinks studying is for wimps. Something strange is going on, and Isaac talks it over with his friend Sam Johnson at Whit's End, where they spot Nikki and Rusty in a corner booth holding what looks like a business meeting with Charles Thompson.

The clues pile up fast. Sam sees Charles washing and waxing Nikki's bike before school, and that same morning Charles - who famously panics on pop quizzes - gets a perfect score in history and even spells Roosevelt correctly. Cornered by Isaac and Sam and threatened with a merciless tickling, Charles confesses everything: Nikki has broken into the school's computer files. He can read teachers' files, attendance records, even the principal's files, and he trades advance copies of tests for favors and chores. Charles begs them not to cross Nikki, warning that a kid with that kind of power can rewrite anybody's history. Isaac refuses to be scared off and reports the whole scheme to the principal.

It does not go the way he hopes. Nikki, it turns out, has been keeping a notebook since childhood listing everyone who ever made fun of him, and now he is settling scores - ruining one boy's honor-roll record with a few keystrokes and recruiting Rusty as his personal bodyguard in exchange for erasing fourteen tardies from his attendance record. After squeezing Isaac's name out of a terrified Charles, Nikki strikes back. Principal Skinner, new to the school, calls Isaac in and reads him a record that now shows fights, lying, and missing homework. The library computer claims Isaac owes fines on twenty-seven overdue books. Rusty threatens to pound him, and even Sam gets too frightened to be seen with him. Alone and out of ideas, Isaac pours out his troubles to Whit, who reminds him that this is no time to give up - and that the first thing to do, before anything else, is pray, because God is a good deal more powerful than Nicholas and his computer.

That very night, while Nikki sits at his keyboard planning to have a field day with Isaac's records and his parents' financial files, a thunderstorm knocks out the electricity. When the power returns, a lightning surge has fried his equipment - the disk is erased, the hard drive is ruined, and every access number and password is gone. Rusty, suddenly free of Nikki's threats, remembers what he said about his fist. The next day the news is all over school: Nikki was traced while tampering with a financial network, he is in big trouble, and Principal Skinner wants to see him in his office. Sporting a black eye, Nikki vows he will be back stronger than ever, but Isaac points out that his power only ever lasted as long as the electricity did. When Sam marvels that the storm wrecked Nikki's computer just in the nick of time, Isaac quietly gives thanks - that, he says, is just what he gets for praying.