Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (23 page)

“They’re still better than us,” Sunita said.

“Bite your tongue!” Tara ordered, back to being head cheerleader bossy now that we’d pulled off our sneak compete without a sign of Agatha. She smiled at Coach Gertie, and I realized that even Tara had believed Coach Gertie’s lame lie.

I wondered if I should clue her in, but just then they announced they’d be naming the top five. We were one of the five. I don’t know why I wasn’t more surprised, but it just felt right as we marched out to sit on the floor like the team we were.

That was enough for me, just being in the top five. We’d come so far in only a few months, I wanted to cry.

I glanced over and saw Tara and Chezzie eyeing each other. I smiled, happy to leave the posturing to the head cheerleaders. I looked for Maddie. She was looking right at me. I hesitated a second, but then I gave her a sign we had used when we didn’t want anyone else to know what we
were saying. I tugged on my ear. Luck. She tugged on her ear. Luck.

I looked away and noticed that Chezzie was watching us with a puzzled frown. I couldn’t help being glad that Maddie hadn’t yet shared that special signal with her.

We’d wished each other luck. And I think we’d both meant it. Because when we took the championship with a routine so perfect, it shone, I could hear Maddie shouting, through the roar of the crowd, “Way to go, Pru.”

Unfortunately, we had no time to enjoy our win. We looked out to the crowd, held up our trophy, and saw Agatha. She wasn’t dressed all in white, so for a moment I thought I was mistaken. But then Coach Gertie saw her. She turned pale and began to sputter.

Agatha stood up, time-freezing the gym full of mortals with a single lift of her hand. She thundered, “Are you happy with your act of insubordination?”

No one said a word, not even Coach Gertie.

Were we happy? Well, yeah, I was. But was I going to say so?

“What have you got to say for yourselves?”

I looked at Agatha, standing there in jeans and a yellow sweatshirt that I think she must have borrowed from one of the “fashion don’t” columns in
People
magazine.

I knew I should keep my mouth shut. I knew that the competition high made it dangerous for me to say anything.
I knew it. But, hey, a girl’s got to live dangerously sometimes, and today seemed the day for it.

“I like the vacation from all white. But really, Agatha, yellow’s not your color. You’re definitely a winter, not a spring.”

I wasn’t terribly shocked to be suspended pending
Agatha’s ruling on our insubordination. I’d expected to be expelled immediately, but apparently Agatha wanted to prolong the torture. Until she decided to bring her gavel down directly on my head, I had a lot of free time, so I devoted it to helping Angelo get up to speed.

Angelo and Samuel and Maria and Denise and I were hanging out, trying to teach Angelo how to summon more than five objects at a time.

“Too bad you can’t fulfill Agatha’s biggest dream and make Daniel a star student. Then maybe she’d get off your case,” Denise said.

“Maybe I can.” I said it, but I knew I didn’t mean it.
Daniel wasn’t ready to come back. And I wasn’t going to make him. Not everyone was cut out for the rat race that was Agatha’s.

Fortunately, no one knew that I was seriously able to find Daniel—if he hadn’t terminated his permissions for me to seek him out, I guess. Even Angelo laughed, and he’d only been at the school for a few weeks.

I was really getting tired of the lack of respect I was still getting. “Seriously. Samuel taught me this kewl tracking spell. What if I could use it to find Daniel?”

Denise pointed out the obvious. “The entire investigative branch of the witches’ council can’t find him, and you think you can?”

Well, yeah, I knew I could. Not that I was going to share that 411. “I know him better than they do.”

Samuel shook his head and sighed as if I were disappointing him in a critical debate team match. “Pru, you only knew him for a few weeks before he disappeared again.”

I hadn’t mentioned the anonymous notes he’d been sending me, never mind the coffee we’d shared in L.A. Something told me to keep it quiet still. “I know. But he’s not far from the angry child stars who can’t hack high school. I think I might have an idea or two about his whereabouts that those fuddy-duddy types would never dream up.”

“Confident, aren’t you?”

“Hey, who got the cheering team an invitation to Nationals, huh?” Not to mention a win. But I was playing modest today.

“You definitely deserve the title of cheer-whisperer, Pru.” Denise, as always, thought little of the sport of cheering, preferring messages negative, or at the least, subversive.

“Thanks. I’m going to take that as a compliment.” And I intended to too, because I knew that was guaranteed to drive Denise up the wall.

Maria, of course, always thought of others. “What if Daniel doesn’t want to be found? I wouldn’t, if I had Agatha in my family tree.”

“He has to come back and face the music sometime,” Samuel said, with more satisfaction than was seemly.

“Really? Is that always a good thing?” I was thinking of his mom, and his visits. I hoped he never faced the music for those. I hoped no one ever caught him either.

Denise argued, so I didn’t have to, “Agatha isn’t going to get the monkeys out for him.”

Samuel wasn’t going to give up so easily. “She might.”

“No way. The love of a mother for her son—or a grandmother for her great-grandson—is just too strong.” I looked at Samuel while I said it, so he knew I was talking to him.

He got it. “Yeah. There are some bonds that shouldn’t be broken, no matter what. Never mind, I give up. Daniel and Agatha—I hope they figure it out someday.”

“What are the monkeys?” Angelo hadn’t seen much yet. He didn’t even know about detention in witch school. I probably shouldn’t have taken so much glee in telling him, but, hey, I had to serve detention once, and if I could keep him from the same fate, consider me Public Service Pru.

“Wow.” Angelo shook his head. “Who’d have thought
The Wizard of Oz
would have got it right.”

Samuel and Maria just smiled. Denise, as usual, didn’t waste time being polite. “They didn’t. The monkeys have only been monkeys since the movie went blockbuster.” “What were they before?” I asked.

“Oh, they were dragons, in my mother’s time. And Puritans once, with rocks and hanging ropes.”

“Yeah. They go in for scary. Like the dementors in
Harry Potter.
You know, what we fear most. Having the life sucked out of us, being picked up by flying monkeys and swooped up into the air.”

“So even at Agatha’s, things change,” I reflected.

“I guess you could say that. But not a lot. I mean, your mom was librarian once long ago, and now she is again.”

“Some things were not meant for déjà vu moments, if you know what I mean.” She’d fined me for one overdue book already. You’d think there’d be an advantage in having your mother be a librarian, but there isn’t. And since witches don’t use money, a library fine is an hour of dusting off the old
books of magic, myth, and the spell books of families that no longer practice magic.

Agatha made us sweat it out until our third class of the day on Monday, when she summoned the whole team into her office, whipping us out of class without a second’s worth of warning.

“I have decided on the punishment for your going to the competition against my express orders.”

“We won!” Tara was front and center on this protest, and I was happy to let her take the lead.

“And what would give you the impression that winning some mortal competition would make me overlook your flagrant disobedience?” Agatha asked frostily.

Tara shrugged. “Maybe that you’d be proud of us for doing so well?”

Agatha sighed and then shook her head. “You all have detention, except for Prudence Stewart, your ringleader.”

“What?” everyone chimed in, with a mingled horror and relief. We’d really thought we’d get expelled at the very least.

Agatha ignored the question and stared at me. “You, Miss Stewart, will be tried by the council on the charge of corrupting the magic of underage witches.” She couldn’t help smiling, she was so pleased. “I trust, despite your woeful ignorance of our witch laws and customs, you realize that
this is a grave charge and one you should take seriously?”

Elektra was outraged at the injustice. “We won the competition, you know. We were the best. She taught us how.”

Agatha had lost the last of her small store of patience. “Did you use magic?”

“Of course not.”

“Meaningless.”

We looked at one another. Not meaningless. Not at all. But that was all we got to register before we were out of Agatha’s office and I was home, still suspended, waiting for a trial by council.

Even Mom didn’t have a lot of encouragement to offer. She and Dad were proud of me for standing up for what I believed in, but they weren’t exactly thrilled about my deceiving them. It was chore duty to the max until the council hearing.

This time my trip to the witches’ council
was
about me. All about me.

I had hoped never to see the witches’ council again. But here I was, back again, about to be expelled for being a bad witch. I didn’t know that was even possible until I found out it had happened to Samuel’s mom. I would have been more scared, but since I’d visited her, I wasn’t.

She lived okay, even if she didn’t know her own son anymore. She was old, but that was just because she’d lived for
almost two hundred years before she was expelled by the witches’ council. She was a smart lady, she loved her gardens, even the fake winter garden. She loved her tea and chats. She was happy.

I would have said so when the council spotlight hit me and I was asked to defend myself, but that would have gotten Samuel in deep doo-doo. So instead I said, “Look, I know I’m supposed to be all knock-kneed and willy-whispering about the idea of living out my life in the mortal world. But, hey. I’ve already done it. I can do it again. It doesn’t scare me.”

They did not look like my argument had suddenly changed their thoughts from gloom and doom to sweetness and light. In fact, I think I would have gotten a better result if I’d mooned them all. I braced myself for the flying monkeys, or whatever thing they’d think would scare the mortal-raised me the most. Maybe cut-rate plastic surgeons with dull scalpels. Yikes. I shut down that thought quick.

The old lady in red looked at my mother and shook her head slowly. “We knew no good would come of allowing you to marry a mortal.”

“Pru was a little behind when she arrived at Agatha’s—” Mom stopped while Agatha snorted in disbelief several times. “But in less than six months she has caught up in her lessons, created what we all admit is an excellent cheerleading squad, and been a serious witch in every way possible.”

Agatha leaned forward. “Except one: She has corrupted
our youth and introduced them to an element they are far too young to understand.”

Mom wasn’t having any of that. “The mortal world is not like it is on TV. You know that as well as I.”

“Of course I know that,” she thundered. “Mortals are even more dangerous than they seem on that infernal television—blast Edison and his incessant inventing. I told him it would come to no good, for mortals or witches, but did he heed me? Of course not.”

“TV has its good points,” I said. “We all get to see things from other people’s point of view.”

Kilt Guy harrumphed. “Who needs to do that?”

“It helps to know why some girl might not think a manicure is a must-have—I mean, if she’s into playing football or climbing trees, I totally get that the nails just aren’t going to stay nice and smooth and polished.”

Old Lady in Red looked like she was going to make her face and eyes match her outfit. But she looked at my mother. “Do you not see the outrage in this? She takes our children among mortals to have their nails trimmed and polished, to have oils rubbed in to soften their hands.”

“And pedicures for our feet, too, don’t forget.” I knew it wasn’t wise, but this was a trial and I wanted to be accurate. If I got off for manicures, I didn’t want to be hauled back here because of pedicures. “And a little waxing, a few massage sessions. No big deal.”

“For mortals.” Old Lady in Red looked at me sternly. “But we are not mortals.” She sent her voice, only a whisper, to echo and bounce off the walls. “We are all witches.”

Agatha said. “Are we all?”

The room began to buzz.

One of the judges who hadn’t said much before, the one I thought of as Stud in Black, leaned forward. “I think we’ve established that fact, given—”

Agatha interrupted him with a grand accusation, accompanied by a pointing finger: “She hasn’t manifested a Talent yet, and she is well into her sixteenth year.”

More buzz. Louder. Old Lady in Red raised her hands and sent a cloud of silencing steam toward the gallery of onlookers. Their buzz died at once.

She looked at me. “Is this true?”

“It is.” I said. “But Mom says—”

Mom interrupted. “I think Prudence may be mistaken. I believe she has manifested her Talent, but she hasn’t realized it yet.”