Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (22 page)

I have to say, he was smart and caught on quick—maybe even quicker than I had. Maybe.

We gathered at his house after practice. Mrs. Kenton was a little in awe of the number of girls who wiped their dainty feet on her big welcome mat. I think she wasn’t completely sure that sending Angelo to Agatha’s was such a great idea anymore. Too bad, though. He was a witch and there was nothing she could do about it, even if she didn’t know it.

Despite the secret location of the meeting, we maintained levels of security that usually only happened for those on the council. We passed notes around to one another, written in invisible ink on self-destructing paper. We’d have written in the air, like we did in school, but we didn’t want to have to mind-wipe Mrs. Kenton. We felt safer just misdirecting her and blocking what she saw and heard.

We also used privacy spells. Many of them. Individual and group. I had scoured my family’s spell book for two good ones myself. Paranoid? Maybe. But we were planning a fait accompli that required utter secrecy to pull off, and that was enough to make us not want to be overheard by anyone. Witch, human, or-especially-parent.

Our first hurdle was convincing Charity. Tara and I had decided that she had to be onboard, if we could get her. If not, we had a charm ready to make her forget everything she heard in practice until after the national competition.

Tara began with what was the most compelling argument for most of us. “Agatha’s treating us like babies, and our parents are letting her get away with it.”

I backed her up. “They really don’t get how important competing is to us, you know.” I used a little of the wisdom I’d gleaned from the mortal world. “Even mortal parents don’t always get why cheerleading is so important to us. But we can’t let them get in our way.”

Tara tag-teamed me. “Right. If they don’t get it, it’s our job to show them.”

The rest of the girls were starting to get over their fear of Agatha the frozen witch of the Northeast. They were thinking. Celestina even dared a question. “How can we show them if they won’t even give us a chance to compete? I mean, we were fabulous at the magic game. My dad even said so-he said fabulous!”

“Our best chance is to come home with the trophy.” Tara stood up and conjured an image of a trophy into her hands. She held it up. “What parent can argue with a trophy won fair and square?”

“That’s going to get us in trouble with Agatha.” Charity was looking at Tara, but I know her words were aimed at me-after all, I had been in trouble with Agatha from the moment I first met her.

“Exactly. Maybe it’s time to challenge that old witch. She has our parents cowering, even though they know we should be competing. We can win, and she’s holding us back,” Tara declared.

“We are pretty good, now that we have Pru’s new routines. I really liked the fountain.” Elektra, bless her, had something positive to offer. Still—

“Pretty good?” It wasn’t time for faint praise. I stood up next to Tara. “We’re great. We aren’t just going to impress our parents, we’re going to impress every last judge on the judging panel-and our rival teams. So what if they’re mortal? They’ll still be jealous of our style, our sass, and our synchronicity. And the other cheerleaders are going to want to know how we do it.”

“They’ll watch us.” Celestina looked worried. “What if they get better than us?”

Elektra waved her hand to dismiss the worry. “Don’t be silly. First, we’re light-years ahead of them, and we’re
great. Second, no one else has our secret weapon: Pru.”

Sunita still wanted to do things the “right” way. Which meant with Agatha’s permission. “What if we still can’t convince Agatha?”

I made our objective clear to them all, at last. “Then it’s time to show her we’re not babies.”

Charity looked a little worried. I got the charm ready, just in case. “What does that mean?”

Tara took over. “It means we go to Nationals, no matter what.”

“Disobey our parents?” Jakeera didn’t sound totally opposed to the idea.

Tara grinned. “Yep.”

Charity frowned. “Risk Agatha expelling us?”

Tara frowned back. “Yep. Isn’t it worth it?”

I held the charm in my left hand while Charity chewed her lip. “I don’t know.”

Tara stood up to indicate the time for discussion was over. “We all have to make the decision for ourselves. Are you in, or are you out?”

We all said, together, “I’m in.” Even Charity. Eerie how our voices blended into one. I couldn’t help but hope we were that on point when the time came to make it all happen.

Failure is not an option, but it’s always a possibility.

We joined hands and I asked, “Agreed, then? We’ll all meet at Nationals?”

“What do I tell my mom?” It was meek little Sunita who asked the question. But I don’t think she was the only one wondering.

Fortunately, I had an answer, one that had proven effective for me in the past. “You tell her nothing.”

“That should work.”

Some of the girls looked happier than others, but no one said another word about getting around parents. That was not a new skill to witches in high school, apparently.

“What about Coach Gertie?”

“We can’t get her involved,” I said. “Her job is on the line. Agatha would never let her coach again. She might even fire her from teaching.” Coach Gertie was also our assistant scrying teacher.

“Not that that would be a big loss. She’s not the best at scrying,” Charity said.

“Got that right.” Elektra had almost failed the class, and was convinced it was because Coach Gertie had mistakenly told the entire class to clean their scrying crystals with Windex.

“She is a good coach, though,” I pointed out.

“Okay. No Coach Gertie,” Tara said. The rest of the girls nodded in agreement.

We were going to do it.

There’s something about sneaking that makes everything
more exciting—even a cheerleading competition. I wouldn’t have believed it, but it’s true.

We showed up in the hall at the prearranged time, only to find Coach Gertie there. Busted.

For a minute, as my heart beat against my rib cage and my toes curled in shock, I wanted to pretend we were only there to watch, but Coach Gertie wasn’t having any of that. “Nonsense, girls. I’m delighted to see you here. I just finished a meeting with Agatha. We have permission to compete. Is everyone here?”

The other girls got all excited at the news. I’m not sure why. Coach Gertie was a terrible liar, and I didn’t believe for a second Agatha had given us permission.

I almost said something, but then Coach Gertie gave me a look that said, “Don’t bust me.” So I didn’t.

What difference did it make, anyway? We had been about to break the rules. Now Coach Gertie was stepping between us and the big speeding bus of wrath that was Agatha. It probably wouldn’t slow her punishment down much, but you never know. Plus, we were all together, Coach and team. What could be better than that?

The phrase “got your back” is great. I love it, especially on competition day. We, as a team, had one anothers’ backs. We were set to win, and we were feeling good about our skills. There’s something about going through a big fight together that bonds a team tight.

I looked at the stands, knowing that my parents wouldn’t be there because they didn’t know what we were doing. I’d only told one person. Samuel. Another Saturday’s worth of time he’d missed with his mom. I looked at Maria and Denise beside him. What didn’t I know yet about them?

That made me think of Angelo, who was struggling like me. And that’s when I noticed he was there too! Sitting right next to Maria. I shot Samuel a big smile. He’d come through for me again. We were all trying to win the competition—the one that went on in our lives every day—in our own ways.

I watched them all sitting in the stands, waving at me. They were wearing our colors, smiling and waving wildly—
well, except Denise, who was not wearing any of our colors but black and who was definitely not smiling. Still, they had our backs, and it felt great.

I waved, but didn’t go over. It was team-unity time. This was our challenge, and we needed to face it together.

Celestina was pale, but her grip on my arm was strong. “Pru, I’m going to do it. I know I can. Don’t cut it out of the routine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I gestured to Tara, who leaned in. “Celestina says she wants to do it.”

“Okay. Leave it in, then.” She held up a big white number thirteen. “We’re lucky number thirteen.”

We grinned at one another, as wide as we could. Thirteen. A lucky number for a team of witches.

“Wonder what number they are?” Sunita asked. Tara had managed to turn the whole team to the common goal of beating my old team. It felt good to have us all on the same page.

“Who cares what number the losers have?” We laughed. It felt great to act like we were invincible.

It turned out they were last. There were twenty-five teams competing. We were thirteen, and then we’d have to wait through twelve more routines before we knew how we’d stacked up. If we were lucky, we’d then go head-to-head
with my old team. I pitied the other teams that would end up in the final five. They didn’t have a chance.

“I’m going to pop out for some pizza,” Sunita said. She was a stress eater, big-time.

“No.” I shook my head. “We have to watch the other teams. We have to practice, and we have to be mortal, just for today.”

“Sounds like overkill to me.” Charity. Of course.

“Trust me.” I looked at them all. We’d come so far, but I was really just another member of the team, not head cheerleader, so they didn’t have to listen. Everything could fall apart in a nanosecond if we started to break apart. “For today, we’re a team, and we do everything as a team. Okay?”

It was a tense five seconds for me while everyone blinked and looked at Tara. But then they all shrugged—together, like a team—and said in unison, “Okay, Pru, whatever the cheer-whisperer wants.”

“Great! Because what I want is“—I pumped my fist in the air—“to win!”

The first twelve teams were good, but only two were really good and none were great. I didn’t see anything at all like the new signature move I’d designed for the team, which made me hope it would be enough to take our routine from very good to great—if no one choked, of course. But I wasn’t going to let that negative thought into my head on competition day.

When they called us, I witch-whispered to everyone, “We’re the Witches, watch us bewitch the world!” We ran onto the competition floor with smiles that were not only wide, but genuine.

“Hit your mark,” I whispered, and we did. “Signature witch,” I reminded them, and we all twisted sideways and crouched low. “Back left,” I said, and Sunita started coiling upward, hands in the air, with each girl following her in a one-second delay that made a sinuous ripple through our ranks, like a moving snake. The crowd showed their approval with a murmur.

“Let’s wow them! Center out.” From the center this time, we pulled away to leave our three best stunters to do triple blackflips while the rest of us continued to undulate in a motion slower than the normal cheer move, but timed to perfection to go with our music—which was a cheesy, but appropriate “We Belong,” by Pat Benatar.

From my years on a championship team, I knew the judges didn’t like disjointed routines, so I’d tweaked the signature move so we could do it five times during our routine: opening, first stunt, third stunt, last stunt, closing. The song only lasts so long, there’s no time for errors. We hit every time, but the best—even better than I’d imagined, never mind than we’d done in practice—was when we did the signature move as we threw four flyers into the air and they did forward diving flips in the air. It was a kewl effect, and the crowd roared.

I went with my instincts and said, “Let’s give that to them again.” We did, and the crowd roared louder. We didn’t even have to cut anything from the routine, we just did our final bow quickly rather than with a drawn-out flourish as we’d planned.

“We were perfect! We have to win!” Sunita said as we ran off the floor, past a stunned-looking team number fourteen.

Tara, more realistic, asked, “So do you think we have a shot? Really?”

“I think we do.” I didn’t want anyone losing the team spirit, though. “But while we watch the rest of the teams compete, we should think about what we can do better next time, in case we make it to the top five.”

Charity frowned at me. “Like what? We were perfect.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to come off like a shrew. I just wanted to lift the bar a little higher. “Like flyers higher in the air so they can do two front diving flips instead of one.”

“That’s impossible.” Elektra was our strongest base, and gave most of our height when tossing flyers.

Tara was having none of that. “Nothing’s impossible. We’re here, aren’t we? We competed, didn’t we?”

We watched, and learned a few places where we could push the cheer envelope. But our attention sharpened when my old team came up to take the floor.

Chezzie had tried harder to tweak my routines for
Nationals, but I think she’d made a few mistakes. She crammed in extra coordinated backflips, which would give her points for difficulty but lose her for overall sychronicity—girls can coordinate backflips well, unless there are too many and the different recovery time for each girl throws off the timing. Which is what happened to them. Not that the crowd noticed, but I saw the judges making notes.