Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 02 Competition's A Witch (9 page)

“Yeah, bummer.” Denise shook her head. “You’d think she’d be impressed that you were working so hard.”

“I’m not giving up completely,” I assured them. “But”—I couldn’t help an involuntary glance over at the cheerleaders’ table—“my time is getting way scarce these days, what with practice and games and all. Coach wants me to show the team everything I know about competitive cheering.”

“That’s great, Pru!” Maria laughed. “I remember the first pep rally, when you said you wanted to join the team. And now you’re going to transform it.”

Denise frowned. “Tara down with that, is she?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I lied.

Samuel hadn’t said much after I refused his curry. But now he must have decided to forgive me, because he popped something on the table in front of me. It looked like a thick green jade bracelet. But knowing Samuel, I knew
it wasn’t just a piece of jewelry. I mean, the glasses he wears aren’t just freaky-looking tri-lenses of different colors—they also let him see into different dimensions.

“So what does this do?” I didn’t pick up the bracelet right away. I confess, I was a little worried. Samuel is my best friend in Salem, but he’s also the geekiest geek I ever met. Not to mention an excellent witch who’d manifested an Earth Talent that gave him an insight into the workings of the physical world that could be scary to a unTalented halfling like me.

“It will warn you when someone is lying to you.” He glanced over at the cheerleaders’ table. “You need it if you want to eat lunch with them every day.”

True. But did I want to admit it in front of these three? I picked up the bracelet. “How does it work?”

“Put it on.” Samuel smiled, almost as if he was enjoying the fact that I was nervous about his gift. Dork.

I put it on. It felt lighter than it looked. The stone was smooth and curved and cool against my wrist.

Samuel sat back and flipped his glasses a bit as he focused on me. “Okay. Denise, tell her a lie.”

Denise shook her head and crossed her arms. “You tell her a lie.”

Samuel scowled at Denise for a second, but then he shrugged. He turned to Maria. “Maria?”

Maria looked at me and sighed. She said, a little more
loudly than she usually spoke, “Pru, you have the ugliest hair I’ve ever seen.”

Whoa. “That was harsh.”

“I’m sorry. Your hair is really beautiful. I was lying to you.” She looked like she might cry. “Samuel told me to lie and I thought you understood—”

I took pity on her. “I understood. We’re all part of this big, mysterious experiment of Samuel’s.” I looked at him. “So? What were you trying to do besides make Maria miserable and get me to put on a hoodie for life?”

He flipped his glasses a little more. “Didn’t you feel the bracelet react to Maria’s lie?”

Well. No. “I didn’t notice anything. I was too busy wondering what was wrong with my hair.”

“Nothing’s wrong with your hair,” Maria said again, just in case I hadn’t believed her the first time. “I love that straight, blond look on you. It’s so … Pru.”

It was Samuel’s turn to sigh. “Girls.”

Denise snorted in amusement. “What did you expect, Samuel? You gave her a bracelet and you asked Maria to lie to her.”

“I asked you first.”

“Fine.” Denise looked at me. “I want to sit at the cheerleaders’ table with you.”

This time I was prepared, so even though Denise’s lie surprised me, I noticed right away that the bracelet made my
arm tingle and the cool stone got very warm, very fast.

“Neat.” I smiled at Samuel, wishing for a minute that I did think of him as more than a friend. It would make life a whole lot easier. Not that Tara and the rest of the cheer-leaders would accept a geek in their midst. But maybe I could have cleaned him up a little. He was really cute when he took his glasses off, and a kewlicious-style makeover would go a long way with him.

“Like it?” He smiled at me, a smile that was so genuine and geekily innocent that I knew there was no way I’d ever clean him up just to feed him to a bunch of cheerleaders.

“Love it. Thank you.” Maybe he and Maria would make a cute couple if I could get them to notice each other that way? I’d have to think about it.

“No problem.” As I turned away to head toward the cheerleaders’ table, he added, “If you’re going to be kewl, you need something to help you watch your back.”

Fringie friends. They should come with an operating manual.

Not that kewl friends were much better. I knew I should have stuck with my drive-by-hi plan. Then Samuel could have given me the bracelet at our tutoring session with no one to notice but my family. Instead, as soon as I sat down at the cheerleaders’ lunch table, Tara said, “Why were you talking to
them
?” She looked at the bracelet, but didn’t say anything.

I shrugged. If she wasn’t going to ask about the bracelet,
I wasn’t going to explain. “I always talk to people I like.” I said it very casually, though. I didn’t want to get into a challenge-fest about people I chose to talk to, but I didn’t want to get cold-shouldered by the team because I wasn’t playing by the kewl kid rules either. I would have liked witch high school better if it didn’t have exactly the same social rules as mortal high school. There are so many “us versus them” groups to sort out, it gives a new girl a migraine.

Tara didn’t look happy. I think she was trying to figure out a way to ask about the bracelet without looking like she was asking, but one of the other cheerleaders saved her from having to finesse the info out of me.

“What did he give you?” Yvette was across the table from me, but she reached over and touched the bracelet in curiosity when I blocked her attempt to summon it from my wrist. I would have spent a second congratulating myself on a successful blocking spell, but I was too distracted wondering how to explain the bracelet. The truth was not an option, of course.

“It’s just a bracelet.” A bracelet that stung me for telling that lie. Ouch.

“He likes you? Yuck.” Thanks to Samuel’s skill at bending school rules, Tara had gone for a ride in my car during school hours, but she hadn’t softened her attitude toward my friendship with him. She wanted me to act like he didn’t exist.

“Geeks can be useful. Remember?” I tried to remind her how Samuel could be useful without revealing any specifics in front of the rest of the squad.

“I suppose.” She dropped the subject of Samuel and bent over to examine the bracelet. “That is really hideous. I can’t believe you agreed to wear it. Do you
like him
like him?”

“No, I don’t
like him
like him.” I said it quickly and I meant it, but it didn’t escape my notice that the bracelet tingled at Tara’s lie about finding it hideous. “But I do like the bracelet he made for me.”

I shouldn’t have rubbed in the fact that Tara liked it too. But her superior attitude about Samuel really irritated me.

“Really?” I could see the smackdown coming. From the way the other girls at the table held their breath, I’m sure they did too. “I think it’s hideous. You couldn’t
make
me wear it. Sometimes I wonder if you really belong on the team, Pru. First you give us those four stupid rules. And now you’re actually going to wear
that
.”

The burn was way worse than I expected. She might have been more understanding if I’d explained how much extra help I needed if I ever wanted to get out of remedial classes. Maybe. But I was keeping that truth to myself. There was as much chance she’d understand that fact as there was that she’d use it to make sure no one ever talked to me again.

I was already in danger of that happening as I considered what to say. “Liar liar, pants on fire” would have been accurate,
according to my bracelet. But we weren’t in third grade. And she was the captain of the cheerleading squad.

Fortunately, Isabella joined the table with a great-gossip grin. “Guess what I just heard from Achilles?”

Everyone at our table—few who weren’t—turned to her to hear the news. Achilles was our star basketball player, and Isabella had been flirting with him in the hopes he would ask her to the fall formal.

I tuned down the gossip, just glad that I—and my ugly
(not)
, bracelet—was no longer under the kewlscope. It was tiring to be the focus of attention here at Agatha’s. The risk of a deep fall to the lowest scud status possible couldn’t be pep-rallied away until I could handle magic with at least the skill of a ten-year-old.

As I sat watching them shred the rep of the basketball player’s girlfriend (she was a cheerleader, too, but from another school, so it was allowed), it occurred to me that my mom’s too little, too late idea for a sweet sixteen birthday party, all risks of permanent humiliation aside, just might be the only way for me to get the girls—and Tara—back to thinking of me as an asset to the team, rather than an enormous blemish on the face of the Witches.

Right after practice was over—yet another torture session where Coach had me explain, again, about precision movement being important in competitive cheering—I popped back home, determined to tell Mom I wanted a sweet sixteen party after all.

To be exact, I wanted the best sweet sixteen anyone at Agatha’s had ever seen. I didn’t have a clue how to make that happen. I just knew that was what I wanted more than anything right now. I’d taken my bracelet off for practice—by unclasping it the mortal way, which I don’t think anyone noticed—but that didn’t stop Tara and the others from looking at me with suspicion.

The risks of my slipping up and revealing myself as a scud
were high. So the more wowapalooza the party, the greater the chance that no one would notice my lack of magical skills.

Mom was in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea and reading a book. She looked up and smiled when I came in, and then popped up a plate of crackers, cheese, and grapes for me. “How did school and practice go?”

I pop-swapped the cheese and crackers for carrots and the grapes for apple slices. “Train wreck.” I wanted to soften her up so she wouldn’t do the motherhood gloat thing when she found out I’d finally seen she was right about the party. Not that I was lying about my day.

She popped a low-fat oatmeal-raisin cookie next to my apple slices. “I’m sorry. Can I do anything to help?”

I picked a raisin out of the cookie and ate it, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “Tell me how to throw a sweet sixteen party that will wow even the kewlest of the kewl high school witches.”

I guess my intensity was dialed up a notch too high, because she looked astonished. She drew breath to speak and then stopped three times before she finally said, “That’s a tall order, Pru.”

Great. She was already making sure this party idea would fail. Big-time. “You said you’d give me a party to help me get to know the other kids at Agatha’s.” And to impress them, which was way more important. Not that I’d say so to Mom. She didn’t approve of trying to impress people deliberately.

“A party, yes.” She nodded and popped herself an oatmeal-raisin cookie just like the one she’d given me. “But you don’t need the biggest party in the school.”

“I do. I want to invite a lot of people. And I want them to have fun. Sweet sixteen parties are supposed to be grand.”

“Grand?” She bit into her cookie as if to give herself an excuse to think while she chewed and swallowed. “We’re not in Beverly Hills anymore. Salem is—”

“Living in Salem is like living on the moon, Mom. If I want any chance to stay on the kewl kid list, I’ve got to have the best party. Even better than the one I wanted in Beverly Hills.”

She turned a little pale. I knew she’d thought what I wanted then was way over the top. And I hadn’t even asked for the biggest things other kids in my school had gotten—like sculpted ice slides and mini-three ring circuses.

Not that I thought anything that would have been kewl back in the mortal realm would do for the witches. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask for anything I wanted at the old party at this new party. I have a feeling that some famous band or a chocolate waterfall just isn’t going to cut it for the kids at Agatha’s.”

“I don’t see the need for a famous band—I didn’t before, and I certainly don’t now.” Mom wasn’t against music, I knew that. She was against excessive show. “Any teenager who wants to go to a band concert can go on their own.”

“Right. Pop in. Pop out. No tickets, no metal detectors.”
I agreed with her to soften her up. I needed this party to be spectacular. Without Mom’s permission—and help—that just wasn’t going to happen. “Besides, I don’t even know what kind of music or bands are popular.” Some of the music I overheard in the hallway I recognized. Most of it I’d never heard before I’d set foot in Agatha’s.

Mom was still trying to wiggle away from a big wow-fest of a party. “We have the pool and the bowling lane. Won’t that be special?”

“I want a sleepover, too.” I headed off the no boys overnight lecture I could see coming. “Just for the girls on the squad. We need some heavy-duty bonding time.”

“O-kay.” Fortunately, Mom wasn’t against the idea of sixteen girls sleeping—or not—in her house for my party. Score one for me. “I guess I could see how that would be fun. You used to enjoy sleepovers so much in Beverly Hills.”