Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl

Okay. It may only be the end of November,
but I, Prudence Stewart, am making my New Year’s resolutions early. It’s crunch time, and I don’t have any more squirm room.

First resolution: Stop wishing I wasn’t a witch. Cold turkey on that one.

I know I’m a witch. I may not have manifested that darned Talent that all the other witches have manifested by my age. But I will. I know it just the same way I knew I would get boobs eventually. And I did (the real kind too, not silicone like some of my more impatient former classmates).

But I’m having trouble doing the “just say no” thing to practically everything I’ve ever known and done my whole mortal life. Solution? A new, uber-self-disciplined Pru.

I had to study 24/7 to pass my classes before? Fine. I’ll make it 48/14 for my new schedule of regular magic classes. No problem.

Agatha, the headmistress of the school, hates me because my mortal ways are disruptive? And maybe a little because her great-great-great-great-grandson Daniel ran away right after kissing me? Okay. I’ll show her I’m the best little witch in the world.

My cheerleading team doesn’t get what it takes to win a national competition? Fine. I’ll make them listen if I have to use a hair straightener as a weapon . . . or an incentive.

Boys? My luck is bound to change on that score. . . .

Also by Kelly McClymer

The Salem Witch Tryouts

Competition’s a Witch

Getting to Third Date

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2007 by Kelly McClymer
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or
in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Berthold Garamond.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Simon Pulse edition August 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Control Number 2007923035
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-4902-2
ISBN-10: 1-4169-4902-X
eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-3013-6

To Jim, who taught me that competition can

occasionally be enjoyable and rewarding.

Thanks to Nadia, Michelle, Beth, and all the amazing

behind-the-scenes crew at Simon & Schuster. Without all of your

help, this book wouldn’t have been as easy or fun for me to write.

Maybe it isn’t wise to combine witches and mortals
at the holiday dinner table, but my family has been a mix-and-match family for as long as I can remember and everyone still seems happy to be invited. Even the half that doesn’t believe in magic or think witches really exist. At least everybody—even my grandfather the master warlock-shows up, eats, and says the same lame things families say on holidays. Things like, “You look great.” Or, “We shouldn’t wait so long to get together.” Some things never change.

But some things do. I used to hope my bratty little brother Tobias, aka the Dorklock, would try casting a spell in front of our mortal relatives. That way, I’d get to see what happened and he’d get in trouble. He never paid attention
to the “no magic” rule we used to have, even when we lived like mortals back in Beverly Hills.

Everything except the relatives around the table is different this year. We live in Salem, Massachusetts, now. We can do magic. And Dorklock turned out to be gifted and talented at magic. Now he’s the golden child and I’m the one on gold-plate probation, fresh from the humiliation of remedial magic classes.

For the three months Dorklock had been learning to charm his way to the top of his class for the first time ever, I’d only managed to scrape my way out of remedial classes. Technically, I hadn’t even yet had a regular magic class-that would have to wait until after the Thanksgiving break. Thankfully, no one could congratulate me on my success, since it was a secret from the mortal half of the family and Mom had made sure to cast a superstrong magic damping spell over the entire house. Not that Grandmama and Grandfather couldn’t get around one of my mom’s spells. But chances were good they would behave themselves this year. They thought they had won mega-points over my mortal grandparents when the whole family made the move to Salem and started doing magic full time. Except my dad, of course, who is mortal and couldn’t so much as summon a feather from half an inch away.

“I’ll do the dishes for you for a week if there’s no big blowout this year,” the Dorklock had offered as we sat
neatly groomed waiting for the grandmothers to arrive and pinch our cheeks and tell us how sweet we were. Gag me.

Being a big sister meant knowing when it was important to ask, “What do you want from me if there is?”

“You do the dishes and the garbage.” He grinned, like the brat he was, daring me to take the bet.

I noticed right away that advantage was to him. Doing the dishes was a magic task, but taking out the trash involved carting the trashcan to the street the mortal way, just in case the neighbors noticed. Still, I said, “You’re on.” He’d always been sneaky, but even though our situation had changed, Mom and Dad were probably going to keep the magic slippage under control. They’ve had lots of experience keeping mortals in the dark about the fact that three-quarters of our family can do magic.

Sure, we’ve had a few unexpected but very necessary mind-wipes when my mom’s witch relatives had a little too much of the holiday cheer to drink and my dad’s mortal family saw something that gave them the equivalent of brain-freeze. But my parents juggled tricky incidents like a pair of Cirque du Soleil pros.

Take, for example, the rules they’ve worked out. First, we only host mixed gatherings on holidays. Second, we serve hors d’oeuvres at two, dinner at three, and hand out doggie bags promptly at eight. Apparently, at their wedding reception, my parents discovered that any longer than six hours
and the likelihood of a magic-mortal disaster shot up. The “unfortunate occurrence,” as my parents obliquely refer to the incident, must have been a good story, because they told us their rules but they never told us what happened to prompt the six-hour limit. Even Grandmama won’t talk about it. One day I hope to worm the story out of Dad. If he sticks around, that is, instead of taking off like my ex-best friend Maddie’s dad back in Beverly Hills.

When we first moved here, I thought Mom and Dad might be heading for splitsville. I was having so much trouble adjusting to my new school, Dad even threatened to move back to Beverly Hills and take me with him. We’d lived on Dad’s side of the mortal-witch divide for, well, ever. His adjustment to the new anything-magic-goes policy had been almost as bumpy as my starting at the bottom of the social ladder at Agatha’s Day School for Witches.

In the end, we stayed. I got better at figuring out the witch stuff—not a lot better, but my success-graph does have a slight upward trend right now, and I guess Dad’s did too.