Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 02 Competition's A Witch (10 page)

“Those were mortal sleepovers, Mom.” How do you explain kewl to someone who hasn’t clued in to the concept in over three hundred years? A woman who once wore Earth shoes into Barneys? “Remember? I’m not supposed to do things the mortal way until I get up to speed on my magic?”

“Oh, Pru … sixteen-year-old mortals? Sixteen-year-old witches? How different can a sleepover be?” She sounded amused.

Amused! Clearly she still didn’t fully understand what I was asking for. “Mom. I know how to throw a sleepover in
the mortal realm. But what should I do to make it magically spectacular? You know, instead of the Cinderella ball with the coach-and-four and the castle and the prince that Adriana’s big sister had last year? Should I turn mice into footmen for real?”

Mom bit her lip and looked at me. She. So. Did. Not. Get. It. “Music. Dancing. Games. All of those things cross the mortal-witch divide. Honey, I think you’re worrying too much. Witches are just as pleased as mortals are when they’re invited to a well-thrown party.”

I noticed the bracelet on my wrist was tingling. Great. My mom was lying to me. “So could I set this up for weekend after next?”

“Weekend after next?” Mom hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do it so soon?”

Ummm. Yes. What good is it to have a party after it has been confirmed that I don’t deserve kewl status? “I’d like to bond with my team sooner rather than later, Mom. Regionals are coming up fast, and we’re nowhere near ready.”

“Fine. Then weekend after next it is.” Mom smiled. “It’s going to be great, honey. You’ll feel like a part of Agatha’s after this, I’m sure.”

My bracelet tingled again. I know that sometimes moms lie when they give you the standard pep talk. But it doesn’t feel good to have my bracelet confirm she was telling the whopper to end all whoppers.

If I could have, I would have taken the bracelet off just so I wouldn’t know what she really thought. I’d thought detecting lies would make life easier, but it was a real confidence-buster. Why was she lying to me, anyway? Didn’t she think I could handle the truth?

Before I could find a way to ask her without letting her know about the bracelet, Dad walked into the kitchen, whistling. He had a bunch of pink roses in one hand and his briefcase in the other. He kissed Mom on the cheek, but didn’t give her the roses. Instead, he handed them to me and said, “Pink roses to cheer up my best girl.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I didn’t know what else to say. I mean, if I wanted pink roses, I could summon them. He knew that, on some level. But I guess there wasn’t really any other way for him to act but mortal, since he was one. Unlike me. I popped the flowers into a vase and tried not to notice how his smile froze a little.

Mom gave Dad a hug and smiled at me. “See? Everything is going to work out. Flowers today, a sweet sixteen party in two weeks. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you manifest your Talent before Christmas.”

“You decided to have the party after all?” Dad asked.

“I didn’t want to get a reputation for being a non-party girl,” I joked. Better to keep it light with Dad. He didn’t like his little girl being the unhappy new kid on the block, but he wasn’t exactly the go-to guy for advice on how
to magic up a party and leave the mortal realm behind.

“I’m proud of you for being so grown up, honey.” Dad kissed me on the forehead and headed upstairs to his office.

I looked at Mom. “He’s going to freak when he finds out I’m planning a magic party.”

She didn’t help my already shredded confidence any when she didn’t argue with me. Instead, she just said, “I think I’ll suggest he take a golfing weekend. He loves to do that. A house full of witches is probably a little more than he can handle right now.”

“Good. That way I don’t have to worry about him getting mad at me.” Or going really quiet and retreating to the little study/office/library Mom had whipped up for him in the attic. He was spending an awful lot of time there while his children practiced magic in every other room of the house.

But what did it mean that the party that would make me or break me as a kewl kid drove my dad, the uptight mortal, out of the house? I had always taken it for granted that my parents were the weird happy kind of parents who might argue but would never split up. Until we got to Salem.

If I felt like I was running behind and was never going to catch up, what must Dad feel like? He was a mortal among witches. We didn’t have to hide our magic from him, which was good for us. And I know he wanted us to do well, even in our magic classes. Even if we went places and did things that he would never be able to do.

Oh well. I refused to worry. I’d just have to call on Team Pru to get the best ever sweet sixteen party ever planned. For witches. Samuel would have some kewl ideas, I bet. And I could tell him like it was and why it was so important. For the cheerleaders, I’d have to be careful not to let them know I didn’t have any idea at all what would be kewl for a witch party. I’d just have to find a way to pick their brains without clueing them in to how clueless I was.

Witches rock!
Witches roll!
Watch that clock!
Meet your goal!

Tara clapped her hands together and called out, “Okay! Enough chatter. Time to work. I need the flyers with me. Dirt shufflers go with Pru.”

Cute. The “dirt shufflers”—a name Tara had made up to refer to the floor exercises Coach had authorized me to teach in preparation for the regional competition—came toward me enthusiastically enough.

Yvette, a tiny flyer who had decided she wanted to follow
my four rules—most of the time—asked, “What will you teach us today, Pru? Can we do one of those pyramid things?”

Being asked a question by someone who cared about the answer almost makes me feel like a full member of the squad. Almost.

“No pyramid today, Yvette. We’re going to keep our feet on the ground until we get our form as sharp as a diamond chip.” Which should have been fun, because I can do perfect form with my eyes closed … or I could back in my old school in Beverly Hills. Here, if I kept my eyes closed, I might end up with a broken leg, or an arm slapping into my face.

The girls lined up for me, a little haphazardly, but good enough for cheering at mortal games. That was one of the problems I’d discovered during my first few weeks on the team. The girls had two cheer modes: At a mortal game, they wanted to encourage the team, get the crowd making noise, and move around enough to keep warm on the fall football field; at a witch game, they wanted to do all that, plus dazzle the crowd with the special effects they could do with magic. In other words, they were big on razzle-dazzle, but not so much on coordinating movements with each other in the way a competition team needs to.

Of course, as “dirt shuffler” captain, I needed to turn these wobbly witches into precision movers so tight that they could do dance backup for Britney. In other words, I
couldn’t complain about the lack of coordination unless I planned to fix it. No problem. With my feet on the ground, I was a better cheerleader than most. The first thing to work on, as always, was attitude.

You’d think witches would have no problem with attitude. And they didn’t, really. If you wanted attitude that put the individual above the team. Problem is, in a cheerleading competition, you didn’t. We have to act like a unit. Not so easy when someone is feeling crampy and someone else just stole a squad member’s boyfriend. Which is why you need to work on the teamwork concept right from the beginning. Because cramps could be handled with the same mind-over-pain attitude that a cheerleader needs to do the perfect triple backflip, and boys … well, there was always a new boy, and if the jerk was fool enough to go out with one of your fellow cheerleaders and think you wouldn’t catch on, he was definitely on the throwback list.

So. Attitude. I faced the girls and clapped sharply three times. “What does a cheerleader do?”

That one threw them. They reacted as if I were a teacher who had tossed a trick question at them. Silence.

So I tried a page from the teacher book of lame ways to encourage student participation. “Quick. First person to tell me what a cheerleader does gets a gold star.”

Yvette, surprisingly one of the braver girls today, was the first to answer. “Duh. Cheer?”

Since I was in cheer-teacher mode, I jumped up and punched my fist in the air. “Yes! Cheer. Go cheerleaders.” I floated a gold star toward the rather astonished winner. “We support the team, we keep them going when things get tough, and we keep them on their toes when they’re doing well so they won’t let the momentum die.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Yvette had turned the gold star into a tiara and was wearing it, much to the amusement of the other three girls in my “dirt shuffler” group.

“So cheerleaders raise spirits, right?” I asked the question in a “stay with me, people” kind of way. I wanted their attention focused on me, not on how much fun Tara’s group was having as they crawled on the ceiling like miniature spider-women.

They nodded. But I wasn’t sure they were staying with me. Or if they had even stopped wanting to. Normally, I wouldn’t have let a little slip in enthusiasm throw me off my leadership game. But that was before I’d had to face Agatha and the direct possibility that I was destined to be a Talentless drab of a witch forever.

So I think I could be forgiven for the doubts that crowded in as I stood in front of the girls, trying to convince them to become real cheerleaders instead of just doing what they saw cheerleaders doing on TV. And doing it badly, too.

I pointed to Jakeera. “Whose spirits do we raise?”

She looked uncertain. “The football team?”

I nodded and pumped a fist in the air to get the blood going. Not that it seemed to be working, but still, the tide could turn any second and I could have four enthusiastic students on my hands. “Who else?” I pointed to the next girl.

Celestina took advantage of the previous right answer to go for something equally obvious. “The basketball team?”

“Great!” Another fist pump, even higher than before since it seemed I’d be responsible for all enthusiasm in this practice session. “Who else?” I pointed again.

“The crowd, of course,” Elektra answered with a bored drawl, as though I were making her repeat the days of the week.

“Excellent! But there is someone even more important than all the teams or the crowds. Anyone want to guess?”

No one did.

So I answered myself, with a purely pretend peppiness. “The cheerleaders, of course! How can we raise the spirits of the team and the crowd if we don’t do it for ourselves?”

Silence.

I piled on more infomercial peppiness. “We can’t, can we?”

Apparently, I’d really lost Yvette. She was lost enough to show it publicly by asking me point-blank: “What do you mean?”

“We are a team, not out for our own individual glory, but to make the team shine, right?”

They nodded, tentatively. But I’m not sure if it was
because they agreed with me or because they saw Coach Gertie heading our way to check out how our session was going.

I continued, refusing to allow their dulled attention to blunt the sharpness of my delivery. “We cheer ourselves on by doing our moves as perfectly as we possibly can. And we cheer on one another when we spur other cheerleaders on the team to do their best, no matter how unteamlike one person may feel at that moment.”

There were a few nods, and I dared to hope I’d sparked some beginning of understanding about the true meaning of teamwork.

Unfortunately, Tara’s group had been flying close and listening in. They let out a burst of protests that derailed my lesson in pepitude quicker than a bucket of ice chills a bottle of champagne. “But she can’t keep in step.” And, “How many elephants does it take to break a cheerleader’s nose?” (referring to our last witch game and a rather large and enthusiastic witch cheering for the opposing school who got too close, too fast) and, my personal favorite: “It’s just too hard to stay on the ground and do this stuff!”

I looked to Tara, hoping she’d offer some support. We had cemented a very tentative alliance not that long ago when we ditched school and drove around for the afternoon in my brand-new Jetta—a gift from my grandmother as consolation for being the most backward witch in the school.
Not that I had much time to cruise when I had to study 24/7.

But she didn’t really like that Coach was letting me show anybody anything. The gleam in her eyes told me how happy she was that no one was rushing to take up the Pru Pepitude challenge. Sigh. Nothing was easy in witchworld. Not even getting the head cheerleader to see why the whole squad should be in sync and ready to get each other’s back during practice and games—no matter how they felt off the floor.

I had to say something. So I did. “It may be hard, but mortals do it all the time—and they can’t even cast a don’t hit the floor spell like we can. Imagine what we could do if we only tried?”

Tara narrowed her eyes, not a good sign. Then she said, “We’re not your old team, Pru. We’re not mortals. We’re not dirt shufflers. We’re witches. We’re flyers.”

“No. We’re not just witches, not when it comes to competition,” I answered her back, much to her annoyance. “We’re
the Witches
. There’s a difference.”