Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (10 page)

Angelo gave an answer that made Tara smile. “I didn’t ask anyone because I’m not going to be able to go. I have to work.” This wasn’t true. Angelo did yard work. Not much call for it after dark, and it got dark here at, like, three o’clock in the winter. But when he’d asked Tara, we’d realized there was no way to cover up enough to make sure her parents didn’t find out.

Angelo had been cool about the whole freaked-out-parent thing, probably because his mother was head of the parental freak-out club. Tara and I were still trying to brainstorm a way for her to go, though. If not to the winter dance, then to the prom. She really wanted to go to a mortal prom. But it wouldn’t be easy because the parents, and the school, had placed alarm charms in every mortal school way back when a few witch kids decided to expand the rather narrow dating pool into the mortal realm. The charms were not triggered by games and competitions, only
by individual students being where they didn’t belong. Like Tara, with Angelo, at a dance.

“Oh, too bad you can’t call in sick.” The Nadia girl waited a beat, to see if he’d ditch his nonexistent job and invite her. He didn’t, so she shrugged. “I guess I win, then. I said you didn’t ask anyone.”

The most bizarre thing of all was that this girl acted like it was not at all unusual for random girls to dash their hopes up against the Angelo rock without losing hope for the next time. She turned to me and said, “That double-step double-flip thing you guys do is the bomb.”

I was glad she’d taken her eyes off Angelo long enough to notice. “Thanks.”

Clearly, she wasn’t just being polite and standing there for a minute so her teammates wouldn’t think she’d gotten the Angelo brush-off too quickly. “Do you have your own choreographer?”

I was probably a little teensy bit full of myself, since we were still on our regional invitation win high. “Just me.” Then I looked over to see if Tara was going to get her hair in a ruffle over the truth. But, no. She was way too busy looking at Angelo.

“Wow.” She probably would have asked more, but the buzzer sounded and she had to go back to her side of the field.

As we did our new kick-kick-backflip routine, I wondered
how long it would be before the other team would be imitating it. In cheerleading, imitation is definitely the best flattery—as long as we had moved on to the next routine before the less imaginative teams decided to steal our old routines.

When our team finally creamed their team, we leaped and cheered and roused the crowd into a roar.

Angelo was still there, on the enemy side of the field. I couldn’t help teasing him. There was just something about the way he looked that made me want to see his dimple appear and a little shy flush sneak into his cheeks. I couldn’t do a full-on flirt with him, like I really wanted to do, but this was second best. “How does it feel to be a traitor to your school?”

“Hey, only one more year and I’ll be done. Then it won’t be my school anymore.” He added, “I guess I never felt like I belonged. Mom says most high school kids say that. But she did ask me if I wanted to go to your school when you guys moved in. I think she likes you.” He gave me a smile, which was way too dangerous. Especially since I knew exactly what he meant about not fitting in at school.

Fortunately, before I could do something stupid, Tara walked over to us, eyeing me in a way that asked if I was chasing her guy.

I looked back, with a gaze that said, “I’m no guy poacher.” At least, not if I can help it.

Angelo ignored the subtext between us. Or maybe he was
so used to it, he didn’t notice. I was beginning to notice, now that it wasn’t just him and me bonding over a glass of water and some leaf raking, that he was not comfortable with how strongly other females came on to him. He tended to say something to deflect the situation, like now, when he said, “Ready to get our burgers?”

“After this routine? I’m starved.” Tara looked at me, and I looked at her. She so did not want me to join them.

Some of my concern about getting on her bad side had lessened once she had a personal diss-debt to settle with Chezzie. Still, why push my luck?

Then I made the mistake of looking at Angelo. Somehow, when he was smiling at me like that, I really didn’t want to say no. So I didn’t.

Besides, I was starving too, and a burger with Tara and Angelo was better than a snack at my house, with Mom quizzing me about how the game went and how school was going. Or worse, now that she was interim librarian, she had taken to asking me questions about random kids she’d met in the library. Like I was going to dish on another kid to my mom. As if.

In the burger joint, girls—and the waitress who had jowls on her jowls and must have been seventy—were staring at Angelo again.

“You sure are popular,” I teased him. It may have been a warning to Tara not to get too comfortable thinking of
Angelo as hers, too. But not a big zappy warning. More of a tiny buzz kind of warning.

“Right.” He laughed, not looking at the girls who were staring at him. “For a popular guy, I always feel different from everyone else.” He didn’t look at me, just concentrated on munching on fries. I don’t think he talked about this much with other people. Which gave me a nice warm feeling inside that had nothing to do with my hot apple cider.

“Me too,” said Tara.

I took a bite of my jalapeño burger and just nodded. Different. He had no idea what it felt like to be different in two different worlds. I mean, I was different in the mortal world because I’m a witch, and in the witch world because I lived like a mortal for sixteen years.

I don’t think he could top that one, just because he had a little extra zap of Hottie Factor #9.

When I went to the ladies’ room, Tara followed me. “You need to get lost, Pru.”

“I know, I know. Make my excuses, okay?” I pretended I was going to pop out and then I stopped like I’d just thought of something. “Wait. That’s not going to work. We were all going to go to my house after. Remember?”

“Plans can change.”

Read: Plans better change if I wanted to stay on Tara’s good side.

“Fine.” I sighed heavily as we went back to the table, but I
was ready to roll with the sideline punch. I couldn’t help jabbing back at Tara, though. She had to see him on the down low from her parents. Which until tonight had meant at my house. A studying with friends kind of date, if you will.

“I have to go.” I started getting my stuff together. “You guys coming to my house as usual?”

“Sure.” Angelo started to get his stuff together.

“Maybe.” Tara picked up a cold fry and nibbled on it daintily. “But why don’t you go on ahead and we’ll catch up. I’m not done with my fries yet.”

“I promised your mom I’d trim the dead branch off the tree by the side of the house,” Angelo said, with a cute little “forgive me” smile to Tara. Round and match to Angelo. And me.

I smiled at them and slid out of the booth. “Right, then, see you later. I’ve got homework to do.”

I always had homework to do. Hanging with Angelo was always kewl, even if Tara was there. But I didn’t have a lot of downtime to hang out with anything but the family spell book and a whole bunch of icky ingredients that combine to make potions, forecast the future, and scry the globe.

Which was something Tara counted on—me out of the room sneaking in some study time while she had Angelo to herself. So she wasn’t even all that mad at me when she came in. She caught me floating in midair upside down
trying to figure out exactly how an upside-down floating pyramid would work for a witch game. “No mortal alert needed,” she said cheerfully. “Angelo’s outside, to trim that tree for your mom.” She looked at the routine I had outlined on the wall above the fireplace. “Neat. Do you think that one will take long to learn?”

“Nope. It’s pretty simple, but it looks spectacular.” Or at least it had the potential to—I wouldn’t know until I actually saw it executed in practice.

Tara wandered over to the window to spy on Angelo. “Mortals are strangely attractive, don’t you think? How did you ever manage to get any work done at school when there were so many all around you?”

“Most of them aren’t like Angelo.” Which was completely true. Angelo had this strange ability to make you look at him as if he glowed. Don’t get me wrong—he’s eye candy of the first order. But when he looks right at you, everything dials up a notch. I was kind of glad it wasn’t just me, but Tara and lots of other girls who were affected as well.

Mom came in and pretended to check through the mail. Like mortal mail was that important. Dad did all the important bill stuff online and he had since before we moved here. She just wanted an excuse to listen to our conversation, but she didn’t want to feel guilty for using magic to eavesdrop. Subtle, Mom. The going-back-to-work exhaustion had left her, which meant she was
no longer too tired to burrow into my business—and Dorklock’s, too—like she’d done before the whole work-at-Agatha’s-and-ruin-my-rep thing.

I wished she didn’t always listen in. To be honest, though, the couple of weeks when she hadn’t had felt weird. She’s always up in my business, ever since I was born. Says it’s part of the job.

“Would you girls like some cider and pumpkin bread?”

“No thanks, Mom. We just ate.”

“I’m stuffed. I had way too many fries.” Tara hadn’t quite gotten used to the way my mother hovered in a very mortal and very nonwitch mom way. “Thank you for asking, Mrs. S.”

Angelo came in from trimming the tree with a pine cone for each of us, and I forgot about Mom. As long as she didn’t try to give us advice about Angelo like she was a girlfriend, I could live with her hearing more than I thought she should hear about my life and my friends.

Tara went all girlie girl about the pine cone. I did too, even though I knew deep down that it was an overreaction.

The weird thing was, he brought one to Mom and she blushed.

“Are you blushing, Mom?” I witch-whispered to her in horror. “He’s a kid and you’re . . . old!”

She smiled as if she hadn’t heard me. I doubt Tara or Angelo noticed anything when she asked, “Can I get you
three some cider or some banana bread? I just made it.” But I could see how she looked very hard at Angelo when he happily agreed to banana bread. And then at us, when Tara and I parroted that we’d love some too.

At practice, we were short one girl. Charity. I
shouldn’t have been uneasy, but I was. Sure, she could be sick, or busy. But even Tara didn’t look happy. We needed every girl at every practice from now until Nationals if we wanted a chance to win.

Coach Gertie blew her whistle to stop us from standing there and gossiping about it. “I’m afraid Charity may not have permission to cheer with us any longer. She and her parents are discussing the situation with Agatha right now.”

“What will we do if she can’t?” There was a general buzz full of this question, so Coach Gertie raised her hands to put a silencing spell on us.

“Girls, please let me speak. And then you may ask your
questions.” She looked at Tara. “I know this isn’t ideal, but we do have some alternates on the list. We can call them in if needed.”

Then she faced us all and said very gravely, “I have a question for all of you. I’m going to ask it, and then I’m going to raise the silence spell. When I do, please answer one by one in the order in which you are standing. Understood?”

We nodded.

“Excellent.” She sighed heavily and then asked, “Have any of your parents noticed your bruises and asked about how you got them? Or have you shared with them that we are practicing like mortals?”

She lifted the bubble and, shocked by the question and all of its implications, we answered her briefly, just as she asked. Most of the team hadn’t mentioned a word, or been asked by their parents. Sunita’s parents had asked her how she’d gotten her bruise and she’d just said practicing a great new cheering routine.

Tara witch-whispered to me, “Charity complained to her parents about the binding spell Coach Gertie casts during practice. I know she did. I was there.”

Great. This was trouble. Big trouble. Not that we could do anything about it.

Coach Gertie blew her whistle. “Okay, girls. Go ahead and practice. I’ll take Charity’s place if you need an extra body.”

We were all completely dumbstruck at that one. But what do you say to your coach?—“Gee thanks, Coach, but have you done a backflip in the last century?”

Fortunately, our silence made Coach laugh. “Don’t worry girls, I’ll be using magic. I’m just a stand-in.”

I was nervous, but there was no reason. With our powers bound, but Coach Gertie using her magic, the routine went even more smoothly than it had with Charity. We nailed the whole routine. A first for us, for practice. Usually you don’t hit perfect until you’re on the field, or the competition floor. Something about having an audience, I guess.

One of the lessons I’ve had to learn over and over again: Just when you think you’ll never get it, you do. You’d think, “I have that down,” but you never do until the moment you know you’ve got it. And then, for about thirty seconds, you do.

Like when our practice turned into perfection. Okay, Sunita almost fell once, but perfect is a relative term when it comes to the Salem Witches.