Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (17 page)

“I will expel anyone still in this lunchroom when the second bell sounds.” She lifted her left fist into the air, pointing toward the double doors that led out to our hall lockers.

The bell sounded. I’m sure some people disappeared, but so few that I couldn’t tell who might have been afraid of Agatha’s true wrath.

I remembered getting caught in the time bubble with
Daniel, and the screeching monkeys that came after us to expel us from school. Would Agatha unleash those monkeys on a lunchroom full of students?

But Agatha had a threat bigger than expelling us up her long white sleeve. Of course.

When no one moved as the bell rang, she narrowed her eyes and swiveled her head around, to make sure she made eye contact with every single one of us. “Very well,” she said, much too quietly for my liking. I’d expected her to be breathing fire by now.

But she didn’t breathe fire. She just lifted both hands in the air, closed her eyes, and summoned our parents. All of them. And she silenced with a lift of her finger all the questions and complaints that naturally arose from witches disturbed in the middle of their daily routines.

Agatha was a powerful witch, but I’d never really understood how powerful until that moment. There is something quite terrifying about a single, white-clad, wrinkled woman who can shut up a room full of angry adult witches with one twitch of her finger. So why, all of a sudden, did I think, I want to be like her someday?

I quickly squashed the thought, but it was the kind that had a life of its own. No doubt I’d dream of it—and have nightmares, too—until I was as powerful as Agatha. Of course, I’d avoid the white—and the wrinkles, too.

“Your children have defied the school rules to protest my
ban on fraternizing with mortals. Are you going to do something about this, or should I?” She wagged her finger, and the parents were once again able to speak.

“The mortal realm is not a playground for the bored witch.” One apoplectic dad shook his finger in the air as he roared at us.

Okay, that was just a lie. Grandmama showed me that when I was just a kid. She loved the mortal gadgets—she even had a car that she enjoyed driving around every now and then. Not that I could say that to parents. For some reason, kids—this applies to witches and to mortal kids alike— are not supposed to make the same mistakes, have the same urges, or do the same things that our parents did.

What’s even sillier is that
our
parents already went through this with
their
parents and they
still
don’t get it. Sigh. But that’s not my battle today.

I floated into the air and created a light glow around the edges of my hair. A very kewl effect for cheerleading, but versatile enough for getting the attention of a maddened crowd, too. “We just want you to listen to us,” I said, speaking softly so as not to offend those parents who consider anything beyond a polite whisper to be youthful belligerence. I did make sure my whisper carried equally to every part of the room. A message isn’t effective if it can’t be heard.

I didn’t wait for the room to get completely quiet. I don’t
think a room full of angry parents is ever completely quiet. “All we’re asking for is a chance to show how good we are at competition. If we had our own competitions, we wouldn’t need to compete with mortals. But we don’t. And so we have to follow mortal rules and risk a few bumps and bruises. Is that really so bad?”

An anxious mother—one of those Water Talent types who is all floaty and teary—shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. There are so many temptations in the mortal realm: You could get addicted to cheating at mortal competitions and find yourselves on the wrong side of the witches’ council’s laws for fair contact. Do you know the penalty for breaking those laws?”

Agatha’s eyes practically glowed at the opportunity to point out my ignorance. “Miss Stewart has, unfortunately, been raised in the mortal world for most of her life. She is not aware of most of the laws and their consequences, except for the ones she has already broken.”

The parents all got looks that ranged between horrified and nauseated at the idea that their children may have been exposed to my mortal cooties.

I knew I had to do some major mercy-of-the-court work ASAP. “I’m a little behind on the witches’ council’s laws,” I admitted. “But I know competition and I know cheering. Not to mention what we’ve gotten from setting a goal to compete in mortal competition: better routines, better skills, better
timing, and a way to push ourselves to be the best we can be. I thought witch parents wanted that for their children too?”

One of the more reasonable parents shouted, “Maybe we should begin a witch cheerleading competition!”

“Maybe.” It was time to play hardball. “And maybe we should start a witch-only football competition.”

“That’s a bit drastic, don’t you think?” That, from the father of our best linebacker.

Umm, yeah, that’s the point. Not that I was going to say so out loud. I just asked innocently, “Why? If we can’t compete against mortals, why can the football team? Or the baseball team? Or the swimming team?”

“Or track?” someone called out from the jock crowd.

I smiled, ready to go on forever, until I got down to the chess club and the bowling league and the debate team. “Or—”

“Enough!” Agatha raised herself to my level and totally stole my light-outlining idea. Only she didn’t stop at the hair, but outlined all of herself so she glowed like a radioactive snow witch. “We are not here to discuss any current school programs or policies. We are here to discuss student misbehavior.”

Tara floated up beside me, pom-poms in her hand. She was wearing her uniform. “We aren’t misbehaving. We’re just trying to get your attention so we can be like every other team in the school and get a chance to compete fairly.”

“Do you know how many rules you are breaking?” Agatha demanded.

“Five,” Denise answered as she floated up beside me. “One, casting unauthorized spells in school. Two, failure to go to class. Three, wasting the headmistress’s time. Four, refusing to obey a direct order by a teacher or headmistress. And five, disrupting the school day.” She smiled. “I don’t think I missed any, did I?”

Agatha gaped for a second before she exploded. “Insolence!” Way to go, Denise!

Maria looked positively angelic when she floated up, her short, curly hair haloing around her face like a . . . well, like a halo. “I don’t think insolence is explicitly against the rules, though I believe it is implied in both the rule against disobeying a teacher and the rule against cutting class.”

I wondered if Agatha could hate me more, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. “Look.” I made my head glow blue, just to stand out in the now-glowing group floating around me. “All we want is a chance to cheer as much as we can—and also to get better by competing against other great teams in the regional and national competitions. What’s so wrong with that?”

The Water Talent mom had stopped crying, but still had some worries. “Why can’t you just enjoy cheering like witches? Why take the risk of cheering like mortals?”

It was a fair question—not to mention a great sign that
some of the parents were listening. “It’s hard to explain. But, if Agatha will let us cheer at the Dragon Ball game on Friday night, we can show you what practicing and competing has done for us so far. I think you’d be impressed. That’s all we’re asking. Then, if we haven’t done a great job, we’ll stop competing. If we have, you’ll let us compete.”

They still didn’t look happy, so I added, “And we’ll start trying to organize a witches-only cheerleading competition for next year. Okay?”

“I think that’s fair,” the football father said. Other parents were nodding and murmuring, probably eager to get this over with and get back to whatever it was they had been doing when Agatha summoned them.

Agatha wasn’t happy to have the tide turned from her wrath. But she didn’t argue. “We’ll see what happens at the Dragon Ball game, then.” She wasn’t finished. “And detentions for all of you.”

I made a counteroffer. “Wouldn’t it be better if we earn detentions only if we aren’t right to fight for our competition?”

She took a deep breath and stared at me for a long time. “Fine, Miss Stewart. It will make the stakes more interesting. Double the detention if you don’t convince us that mortal competition improves your performance at witches-only games.”

Great. I always like to say I love a challenge. But did it have to be
double
detention?

On the sunny side, I had managed to convince the parents to let us show them why this mortal training was good for us. How it had helped us to be better cheerleaders, better athletes. I searched through the crowd to see if I could spot Mom, but she was hidden somewhere in the mass of witch parents. Too bad. I would have liked to have known whether she was smiling or frowning. It would have given me a clue as to how unhappy my home life was going to be for the next few weeks.

I didn’t really know how I was going to use the magic game routines to underscore that it was practicing like mortals that had given us the edge, but never mind that teensy little detail. I’d come up with something. I was Prutastic, after all.

Not one to like going without a backup plan, I also thought I’d track Daniel, since he might be the only thing standing between Agatha, me, and total meltdown. What a peace offering it would be if I could convince Daniel to come back to school—if I could find him. I’d had success with tracking Samuel. How hard could it be to track down one rebel without an escape clause—just because no one else had been able to do it? Piece of cake. Or maybe tritium.

The stands were jammed for our Dragon Ball game.
It was going to be a night of full-on magic for the Dragon Ball players, the cheerleaders, and the fans in the stands. I still wasn’t quite adjusted to the oomph factor that magic brought to the games. Not that it mattered. We were on, and we had to shine. Success meant the difference between our competition hopes and two days of detention. It also meant the chance to show off our stuff in a way we never had before.

Sure, magic cheerleading is pretty amazing, and it was the first time I saw it. But we’d taken it to a new level—cleaned up the sloppy edges and introduced the concept of synchronicity and teamwork that had been missing before.

One thing I’d had to learn the hard way in my early
months at Agatha’s: Witches are just a bit independent, and cheerleading witches all like to be center stage. It had taken a bit of getting used to, but I’d managed. And I’d also managed to strike a balance between acting like a team and getting a shot at the center-stage spotlight.

With the nature of witches in mind, not to mention the ability to use magic in our routines, I’d created a routine that had a big start, a huge middle, and a blockbuster ending. If we pulled it off from start to finish, the parents
had
to let us compete. There’d be no way they could say no.

If we didn’t pull it off, then we didn’t deserve to compete. I’m not sure we’d deserve the detentions, but we’d serve them. Agatha wouldn’t have it any other way.

I knew the crowd would go wild when they saw us. Which didn’t make me a bit less nervous when we started. No matter how good you know you can be, there’s nothing more dangerous than overconfidence the first time you try out a new routine. Or the tenth time you do it, for that matter.

I was definitely not over the confidence line inside, although I was upbeat and positive on the outside. But Tara was on the verge. She’d already decided our new routines were going to be our ticket to running the school.

“Ready?” she asked as she got into place beside me.

“More than ready,” I answered.

She saw Angelo giving us the thumbs-up and frowned. “We are so over, but he isn’t getting the clue.”

“I think he’s just being friendly and supportive, Tara. Besides, you know the council cast spells on him up the wazoo so that he doesn’t have girls crawling all over him while he’s learning to control his magic. It’s not that easy to make friends with all that going on. He needs his old friends.”

“Whatever. I just wish he’d stop—” She didn’t have a word for what she wanted. I think it was probably “living,” but I wasn’t going to supply it. Tara had been way into the forbidden-fruit angle of Angelo, but I wasn’t going to let her abandon him as a friend. To make it at Agatha’s, he needed every friend he could get.

I smiled and waved at Angelo, even if the hottie factor had cooled to minus ten. I knew it was only temporary, and I counted on Samuel—with a little help from me—to get him up to speed on the magic so that he could be back to normal by next year. It would be one great senior year if we made it happen.

I liked Angelo. Sure, it was weird that I’d worried about him being a mortal when it turned out he wasn’t, but hey, I’d learned to deal with being yanked out of the mortal world into the witch world. I felt for the guy.

Not so Tara. She really didn’t like the fact that Angelo had turned out to be a witch. I don’t think I needed to worry about being jealous of her any longer. Even if Angelo got his Talent unbound tomorrow, Tara had moved on. In
one way, that was good for me since I’d be free to ask him out next year, when the witches’ council lifted the binding spells. If I was still interested, of course. But I couldn’t worry about that now. The game was about to begin.