Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (5 page)

My new kitten/familiar Sassy jumped from the table, where she’d been nosing the egg-sized crystal, to his shoulder and began licking his hair. Traitor. Shouldn’t my familiar stick with me, even if I’m not the best witch in the room?

“How’s it scrying, homey?” he asked, grinning widely and holding his hands behind his back. Instead of lifting her
from his shoulder, he was trying to fend Sassy’s ticklish tongue off by shaking his head. Clue #1 that he has some new invention for me.

Clue #2 came when he tossed something furry in my lap. Sassy rowred, leaping from his shoulder to my lap with lightning speed, and pounced on it.

“Cut it out, Sassy!” I commanded, lifting her tiny body off the furry thing. She stalked off.

“What’s this?” I smoothed back the neon blue fur, which turned out to be a swath of plastic hair crowning a lumpy plastic figure. It looked like a Troll doll, which had been hot in the 70s. Samuel was certainly capable of giving me a non-hot gift. But a Troll doll? Was it some kind of secret message that only another fringie would understand?

He flipped his glasses at me, obviously disappointed that I wasn’t more enthralled by his gift—and definitely shocked that I didn’t instantly know what it was that he’d created for me.
“It
is To-Do the Troll.”

Cute. It had a name only a mother could love. “To-Do?” Of course: I’d said I needed a witch version of a PDA, so naturally Samuel instantly thought Troll doll. Geeks. Sigh.

He blinked at me, apparently thrown by my lack of enthusiasm for all things Troll. “To keep track of all your tests, dates, papers, practices—you know,” he explained. “Like a to-do list, only bossier.”

“Bossier?” I looked at the Troll doll again. Sure, it looked
grumpy and mean. But bossy? Was it going to whip me with its long blue hair?

Samuel grinned and crossed his arms, watching me for a minute, as if he thought I’d figure it out. Finally, he sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Tap it.”

“Tap it?” It seemed like a harmless request—to someone who didn’t know that Samuel invented things like incredible tingling bracelets and rings that buzzed when you acted like a mortal. Of course, those things had come in handy in my first few months at Agatha’s, when I wasn’t sure I could cut it as a student—or a witch.

He sighed again, a long, gusty, fringie-frustration sigh. “Tap it, Pru.” Samuel was generally patient. But much less so when he had a new invention to show off.

I tapped the Troll doll gingerly and hastily withdrew my finger in case it began to smoke or spark.

The doll, balanced on my thigh, bent over at the waist and then straightened up sharply, flipping its long blue hair to the back. It smoothed down the hair with pudgy Troll fingers as it looked at me. “Hello, Prudence. What may I add to the list for you today?” The voice was cultured, a deep baritone that couldn’t have been more wrong for the grumpy-looking doll.

I looked at Samuel. “You decided to give a Troll doll the voice of an English butler?”

“Makes a nice contrast, doesn’t it?” He smiled and didn’t
offer to change the voice for me. Very un-Samuel of him.

“So tell him your list.”

The doll—To-Do—waited patiently, blinking his big eyes at me and running his hands down his hair as if to tame the thready blue mess. Waste of time, but what else did he have to do?

You know what they say about doing Roman stuff when you’re in Rome? When it comes to fringie geeks, it’s exactly the same. I stopped fighting the inevitable. Samuel’s gizmos usually came with a twist, but they worked for me. “My list? How about ‘win Nationals’?”

Samuel said, “Say, ‘Win National Cheerleading Championship.’”

I repeated dutifully, “Win National Cheerleading Championship.”

To-Do blinked and repeated, “Item #1: Win National Cheerleading Championship. Priority level?”

Priority level? “Critical.”

To-Do growled and blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Samuel whispered, “It will be high, medium, or low.”

I looked at him, still not totally getting this new invention he’d given me. “That’s unimaginative of you.” Okay, so I was being unfair to someone who had made me a talking butler to keep track of my to-do list. But he’d made him look like a Troll doll!

“May I have the priority level of Item #1 again, please?”

“Pretty darn high, I’d say.” I thought about how hard it had been to sacrifice Angelo to Tara. I wouldn’t do that for any medium-level priority, I was sure of that.

“I beg your pardon?”

Samuel sighed. “Just say high. Nothing else. Okay? I didn’t have time to make him understand generalizations.”

“Well, okay then.” I rolled my eyes at the doll standing there waiting for me to speak. “High.”

“Thank you. Item #1. Win National Cheerleading Championship. High priority. Action Step #1, please?”

I looked at Samuel. He said, “What’s the first step toward winning Nationals?”

Duh. The Troll was really throwing me off my game. “Practice like mortals.”

After I’d outlined seven action steps to winning Nationals (practice like mortals, write a killer routine, fund-raise the application fee, get Coach Gertie to send in the forms, create team unity, get entire team focused on winning, perform a killerly perfect routine to wow the judges), I really got into the swing of the ugliest talking to-do list ever.

Then we moved on to Item #2: maintain passing grades so I could be on the cheering team. The action steps for this one were fewer: study, tutoring sessions with Samuel, scrounge for as much extra credit and bonus points for class participation as I could.

I’d debated the extra-credit and class participation action step, but I couldn’t see any way around it. Being the kind of kid who raises her hand first and goes to the teacher to get more work was going to cost me kewl points, for sure. But everything hinged on passing all my classes, because otherwise, I’d be off the team. And then my to-do list would be an I’m-screwed list.

Compared to the first two items, the rest of my list looked easy-peasy: figure out how to manifest my Talent, clean my room, set the table for dinner every night, don’t fight with Dorklock. Keeping on my mom and dad’s good sides suddenly seemed very important. I needed them to think I was Wonder-Daughter, just in case I suddenly required a major parental intervention to save my school career.

There wasn’t a lot of time left for our regular tutoring session, but Samuel did manage to show me how to get the cloudy blue glow of my scrying crystal to reveal a dim scene from the future. At least, I thought it was a view of my future. Not that I could tell what the blob I thought was me was doing.

As I got ready for practice the next day, To-Do very helpfully reminded me of Action Step #1 to winning Nationals: practice like mortals. I thought about waiting until after Saturday, but there was so little time—two weeks—before our
next regional competition that I decided to push my luck with Tara all the way to the brink.

I tried approaching her before practice, out of earshot of the other girls, so I could have her on my side before I brought the subject up to Coach Gertie and the other girls. “If we really want to win this, I need you to help me convince Coach Gertie to bind our powers during practice.”

Unfortunately, Tara was not quiet about her reply. She practically shouted, “Bind our powers? Are you crazy? Pru, I think you’re going way too far with this whole ‘it’s fun to practice like mortals’ kick.”

I raised my voice to a more normal level when I saw the other girls suddenly start paying attention to the conversation— witches can listen from a distance, if they know there’s something juicy to listen to. “It isn’t just that I think we can have fun cheering the mortal way, it’s also the best way to get into the winning mind-set. We’ve only got two weeks.”

Tara shook her head like she couldn’t believe how dumb I was. “If we fall on our heads we’re going to be in the
ouch
mind-set. What good is that?”

I didn’t have a lot of ammunition to gun that one down. So I went for the lame but true motto of sportsmen and women everywhere. “No pain, no gain.”

She gave me a look that said she thought I was not only Talentless, but plain crazy, too. “Only someone who thinks like a mortal could say that.”

I could feel the other girls siding with her, and desperation made me fight back with all I had. “Only someone who thinks like a mortal can win a mortal cheering competition.” Take that, Ms. Tara Tart-Witch.

Coach Gertie blew her whistle for us to begin practice.

“Look,” I said. “How about we practice like mortals until you and I catch the competition. Then, if you still don’t understand why I think it’s necessary, I promise never to bring it up again and we can go back to full-magic practice. Okay?”

“You’re that sure of yourself?” Tara was torn. She chewed her bottom lip and looked at the other girls, who had stopped and were staring at her, knowing that right now she was all that stood between them and the possibility of pain and more pain, all in the name of winning. I could see she wanted something, but I’m not even sure if she knew what it was yet.

“I want to win. I thought you did too.” It was my last shot. Sure, it was low. But I was desperate.

She sighed, looked at the unhappy members of our team, and nodded. “For the win, it’s worth it.” She flashed me a smile. “But you really have to drop the mortal rah-rah or I’m not going to be able to keep you from social suicide much longer.”

I wasn’t happy to be threatened, and I guess it showed, because she smiled and said, “Guess what? I looked up the schedule and the Witches’ football team will be playing
Angelo’s school next. We should invite him to keep us company while we cheer.”

Right. Angelo. My mortal neighbor with the hottie factor of 10 squared. My blood sacrifice. I smiled like it didn’t hurt. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to defect. He doesn’t think his team is doing that well this year, anyway.” I wondered if my competition hopes were wasted. How well can a team do if the head cheerleader doesn’t care if she wins?

I summoned To-Do while everyone else headed in for practice. It took three tries before he understood that the action step “Throw Tara and Angelo together once a week” belonged under “Win National Competition.” Oh, well.

As I entered the gym, I heard Coach Gertie cast a binding spell. The girls were groaning, but Tara gave me a smile. She was really enjoying making the others miserable.

I knew she was also enjoying the thought that she wouldn’t have to try to fool her parents about seeing Angelo. Sneaking to see a boy is a very exciting thing to do. But sneaking when you have an accomplice is easier on the nerves.

I didn’t like to think of myself as an accomplice, but as I watched the girls getting the routines down so cold, they were practically iced—fear of pain is a powerful motivator for getting things right—I wished I could scry into the future well enough to make sure that this would get us to Nationals.

I told Mom that Tara and I had a school project
to work on, and she didn’t even raise an eyebrow. I guess her Mom-dar was on the blink. Either that or I’ve just gotten very good at being plausible. So far, her work as a librarian in the school was invisible to me, except that when we got back from school, we both seemed a little tired. I went right to studying, and Mom went right to making dinner and tidying up. Neither of us seemed to have much pep in our step, though.

The best thing about her new job was that Mom didn’t ask nearly as many questions about how my day had been. She didn’t ask Dorklock, either. Not even when he started bringing a new friend along to the house to play video
games. In the past, she’d have been all over him making a new friend. Now? She just zapped them some cookies and milk and said, “Have fun, guys.”

When Tara got to our house, I brought her up to my room and then we popped right to Beverly Hills. Her magic, not mine, because I was still a little bit shaky on getting places where I hadn’t been before. All Tara needed was to check out a map, figure out the coordinates, and zap, there we were.

As soon as we arrived in the gym and I heard the all-too-familiar sounds of competition, I wanted to go home again. It’s not like me to be a quitter, but we hadn’t improved as much as I’d hoped during our week of practicing like mortals. Here, watching fantastic teams, with the team I’d known forever before the move to Salem, I wished I’d stalled Tara.

My stomach did a perfect dive roll to my toes. Every team we watched today was going to be better than we were. “Don’t let the skill in this room get to you. We
can
be this good, with practice.” I didn’t actually think my words would change what Tara was going to experience as we sat in the stands and watched the performances. But I had to say it, like stage actors are compelled to say, “Break a leg.” Maybe if Tara understood that we had a long way to go to reach competition level, she’d realize why practicing like a mortal was so important.

“Oh, please. You make it sound so hard. As if we haven’t been cheering for forever. You have to stop thinking like a
mortal. The Witches are going to clean up. Trust me.” Typical kewl girl attitude.