Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (4 page)

Tara, the head cheerleader, didn’t look my way when I finally sat down at our lunch table. I was so tired from trying to keep up in class, that I just sat and ate and let everyone talk around me. I knew I’d have to think of a way to appease her by practice time, but I didn’t have the energy for it without a nice, satisfying peanut butter and guava jelly sandwich.

Unfortunately, no brilliant ideas light-bulbed their way into my brain while I was busy in my new precognition class. I thought I’d followed the teacher—a rather rotund, Santa Claus-like figure with a bushy white beard—pretty well. Until he assigned our homework: use the family scrying crystal to check our final grade at the end of the class.

The good news was that we would then be able to adjust our work to improve our grades, or so he said. The bad news, which I didn’t need a scrying crystal to foresee: My grade was not going to be very high. After all, I hadn’t even realized my family had a scrying crystal. Sigh. Why does my mother forget to tell me these things?

I thought about going to the library and asking her. But the idea of anyone else finding out my mom was school librarian cooled my annoyance off quickly. I could wait until I got home. After all, I’d have to ask her where the crystal was. I’d certainly never seen it in the potions cupboard—the one she also forgot to tell me about—all the times I’d been in there.

Instead, I stumbled into practice feeling like the letter L was glowing on my forehead like a scar worthy of Harry Potter. Not the best mind-set for getting a head start on my early New Year’s resolutions. But, a witch has got to do what a witch has got to do.

My second early New Year’s resolution is to make friends—or at least firm allies—with Tara. Head cheerleaders, whether witch or mortal, are the gatekeepers to every cheerleader’s reputation. If the head cheerleader says you’re golden, you glow. If she says you’re mud, you ooze as far away as possible. So far, Tara had only been willing to grant me gold-plate status—in exchange for several favors in return, of course. Unfortunately, in her eyes, my friendship with the fringies kept tarnishing my shine.

Girl drama. Even I don’t understand it all the time. But Tara hadn’t talked to me at lunch, and it wasn’t an oversight.

I sneaked a peek at her in the locker room as she went over her plans for practice with her second-in-command, Charity. I couldn’t help remembering that position had been mine on my old mortal team back in Beverly Hills. Not only had I been second-in-command my sophomore year, but I would have been head cheerleader this year if we hadn’t moved to Salem. I’m getting used to the fact that my life has changed permanently. There are even a lot of pluses to being able to do magic. But sometimes it stings like a BOTOX needle stuck in too deep and twisted too hard.

I took a few deep breaths to get the oxygen going. I had a goal, I couldn’t waste time. I had to get on Tara’s good side again. The question was, where to start? Tara hadn’t liked me when I first came to Agatha’s Day School for Witches (first understatement—she’d thought I had mortal cooties). She hadn’t thought I should be on the team (second understatement—she’d thought I couldn’t possibly know anything useful for cheerleading witches).

I’ve managed to get our relationship to one of mutually assured scowling, but it needed to go up a few notches to outright kiss-kiss-on-the-cheek-cheek before I could be sure the cold shoulder I got at lunch today wouldn’t turn into a frozen shove off the team.

After two months, though, I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to recognize how much improvement I’d brought to the team. Some of the other cheerleaders got it, I think. At least, they listened to me when Coach Gertie told them to do what I said. The Salem Witches had been super sloppy before I came along. Sure, they could fly and dip and twirl in the air. But their V’s looked like U’s, and their coordination was . . . uncoordinated, to say the least.

I’d almost gained some of the respect I’d lost moving from one school to another when I showed them how to compete at the regional competition (for mortals, but still . . .). Losing had put a dent in my progress, despite the
fact that I’d opened the eyes of the whole team to the fact that I actually knew what I was talking about when it came to what was necessary for winning. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. That’s what I mean. That’s what I need. Oh, and to manifest that frappilicious Talent that everyone else, even timid little Celestina, had already manifested.

I stopped hesitating. There was really no way to be sure Tara wouldn’t suddenly sabotage my efforts to get fifteen cheerleading witches to work together as a team and forget about grandstanding during competition.

Sigh. Resolutions always look so much more doable when they’re neatly bullet-pointed.

I didn’t have time to waste. It was only going to take one step. Just one huge squeeze of my heart. Call it a blood sacrifice. Tara was interested in my mortal neighbor, Angelo. So was I, even though I’d sworn off everything mortal (except talking to my dad . . . and cheering, of course). I’d tried other ways to make the cheer bond tight with Tara. Tried to show her I was solid gold, not gold-plate. Maybe even second-in-command-worthy. But I was still dangling on the edge of being rubber-stamped “tarnished” and put on the sidelines.

I’d tried everything else I could think of. It was time for the blood sacrifice. I’d have to be true to the Dorklock’s favorite movie star, Yoda. No more “try” and “maybe.” I knew the one way to get Tara on my side: become her
pipeline to time with Angelo. In other words, stand back and give her permission to poach my crush.

“Hey, Tara.” I kept it casual, pretending not to notice that she hadn’t looked my way when I called her name. “Angelo’s coming over on Saturday. He was hoping you might drop by, and I said I’d ask to see if you were free.” This, of course, was an out-and-out lie. Angelo
was
coming over Saturday—to put wooden tents over our bushes to protect them from the winter snow that was due any day. He just hadn’t asked about Tara.

She struggled, and Charity tried to help by putting her hand on her arm and physically encouraging her to resist the temptation. But Angelo, though mortal, was not someone Tara wanted to write off her list just because she was mad at me.

She shook off Charity’s hand and turned, equally casual, as if everyone in the locker room didn’t know she’d been freezing me out a nanosecond ago. “I thought you swore off mortal things for a while? You know, to make Agatha happy?”

Sure, bring up Agatha. “Whatever. Angelo’s coming over because I can’t be totally impolite and shake my neighbors. I’m not into him or anything.” Lie. Not that she’ll pick up on it. She’s too busy thinking about Angelo for herself. “But if you have more important plans . . .” Yes. Not only can I stick the knife in, I can twist it real good.

“I don’t have more important plans, but shouldn’t you?” Tara could twist the knife too.

“What do you mean?” I’d expected a little more enthusiasm from her. I was beginning to think even Angelo wasn’t enough to turn Tara to the Pru side.

“You know, manifesting your Talent, studying so you can learn enough magic to pass your classes? That’s going to be hard with Angelo around, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Ouch. Clearly, I hadn’t phrased the invite in a way that put me in her debt. Tara didn’t want to owe me one? Okay. That was easy to fix. “So? You caught me. I’m really hoping you can keep him occupied while I’m busy studying. He’s totally cramping my magic-cramming-session style.”

Bingo. Now that
she
was doing
me
a favor, she had a big smile. “I wouldn’t want you to fail your classes and get suspended from the team.” Tara earned a frown from Charity for this little pink lie. “After all, we have Regionals coming up in two weeks. And we all”—she casually waved toward the girls crowding around to enjoy the drama—“know how much it means to you to get an invite to Nationals and get the chance to beat your old team.” Her whole attitude said, “Snap! Got you good, you mortal-hugger.”

“Good to know you’ve got my back,” I said, not letting myself wonder how many ways I’d hate it if she and Angelo hit it off. Of course, it was not against Yoda’s teaching for me to hope that Angelo and Tara made the world’s most
awful couple. “You’ll keep Angelo distracted, and I’ll be able to sneak some study time in while he’s over.”

“Perfect.” Tara looked happy. Charity did not.

I figured I should go for what I really wanted most from Tara while the whole deal with Angelo was still smoking hot. “I had an idea about practices, to get us ready for the finals.”

“It’s not your job to have ideas.” Charity frowned at me. “It’s Tara’s. She has the Inspiration Air Talent, after all.” I couldn’t blame her for sticking up for Tara—it was her job. In fact, I’d kind of counted on it.

“I know. It’s just that I have been on a winning team. I know what it takes. I just thought I’d throw out some ideas. Tara will decide which ones will work with our team, of course.” I smiled at her, but her frown turned into a scowl. Maybe she read my thoughts: I can be obsequious to the max when the national championship is on the line.

Tara wasn’t buying the obsequious bit either. Her frown was much daintier than Charity’s. She even threw in a sigh that demonstrated her uber-patience with the slow girl. “I hope you’re not going to suggest we practice like mortals again.”

“Why not? We don’t have a lot of time. It’ll be fun!” I tried to put some cheer-enthusiasm into “fun” in the hopes I could carry them with me. They all stared at me as if I’d tried to convince them that cleaning the locker room with their tongues would be a blast.

Sometimes I wished I could have snapped my fingers and reconstructed my rep from my old school. There, it had been gospel according to Pru when it came to cheering. And fashion. And boys. Sigh.

Everyone looked at Tara. She tapped her fingers together for a bit while she thought it over. For exactly six seconds— I counted. “Maybe. But first we should go spy on your old team—just you and me—and see what they’re up to.”

Charity didn’t like the “just you and me” bit. “We’ve already seen them. They’re not going to be doing anything we didn’t see on our field trip.”

I agreed with Charity. Besides, checking out my ex-best-friend and crush-poacher Maddie and the other cheerleaders at Beverly Hills High was not on my list of new resolutions. We’d taken a school-sanctioned field trip—invisibility bubble and all—with the whole squad a few weeks ago. I didn’t see any point to reliving that torture.

Except, of course, that Tara already knew that. She was standing there, waiting for me to refuse. Weeyotch.

If she thought I was going to waste my blood sacrifice by refusing to squirm a little at the sight of Maddie with my old crush Brent, she didn’t have a clue about how committed Prudence Stewart was to taking the Salem Witches to the top of the national championship. “If that will convince you, we can go.”

“Great.” Tara’s expression almost matched her voice—she
was head cheerleader, after all. “That will help me decide whether we should follow your suggestion and practice like mortals.” She looked at me. “Or if we should even bother with mortal competition.”

I didn’t let myself react. She was trying to get to me, and I wasn’t going to let her. Besides, two could play that “pass the hot potato” game. “Fine. But why waste time watching them practice? Better to watch them compete.” She needed to understand the difference between great cheering and merely good cheering if I expected her help in getting the girls in shape for the next regional competition. We needed to place in a regional to get an invite to Nationals.

“Even better.” She didn’t see the trap coming. She thought she’d trumped me good, and still gotten face-time with Angelo.

“Great. See you Saturday.”

Her eyes narrowed as she realized the trap. She couldn’t spend Saturday with Angelo if she was watching my old team compete. “But—”

“Angelo will wait. The team comes first, right?” I couldn’t help it if my smile was just a little too happy.

With the team watching her, Tara was stuck. “Fine.”

Of course, so was I. Stuck going to see my old best friend with my old crush. Stuck watching my old team—the one I would have been head cheerleader of. The one I would be leading to the national championship if I hadn’t moved to
Salem. Was it petty of me to hope they didn’t win while I was in the stands watching? Probably. But it is what it is.

“Maybe you can reschedule Angelo for Sunday?” Tara asked. Well, really, ordered, though it did sound like a question. “Saturday at the competition and Sunday with Angelo work for me. That way, we won’t have to counter any protective spells from Agatha’s. It’ll be a snap to get around our parents’ spells on the weekend.”

She had a good point. The headmistress of my new school hated me enough already. I so didn’t need her to catch me breaking school rules. Again.

Samuel came over after practice for our regularly
scheduled tutoring session. He caught me slumped over the newly discovered family scrying crystal. I’d been trying to find out what the future held for my old team at the regional competition this weekend, but all I’d managed to do was get a teensy blue glow that revealed . . . absolutely nothing.