Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (6 page)

I didn’t say anything. I used to have that attitude too, when I belonged in Beverly Hills and was so golden, I couldn’t do anything wrong. Back when I was going to be head cheerleader of the team I was watching as they practiced just off the competition floor. They would be up soon. I couldn’t quite bring myself to hope they’d lose. But I couldn’t hope they’d win, either. Everything felt different, wrong—me in the stands, them on the floor about to compete for their fourth win in a row.

“They’re really good. Which one’s the boyfriend-stealer again?” Her voice had a malicious edge that I’d heard too many times growing up in the kewl girl clique.

Uh-oh. I really shouldn’t have told the other girls so much about Maddie. But it had been my sweet sixteen sleepover, and we’d been loosened up by a rousing game of Truth or Dare.

I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Maddie. Sure, she had been my BFF, even after I moved—or so I’d thought, until I found out that she’d poached the guy I was interested in. Still, she hadn’t meant to hurt me. Maybe.

“That one.” I pointed Maddie out. She stood holding the foot of Chezzie, the head cheerleader who’d taken my place. Chezzie looked like a statue, poised and balance. She didn’t shake, not even a little.

Tara looked at Maddie, squinting, since we were halfway up in the stands. “Funny, she doesn’t look like a backstabber.”

“They never do.” From the way she was holding Chezzie’s foot steady, you’d never know that Maddie had once spiked Chezzie’s diet soda with purple food dye so that Chezzie had a very berry smile for a solid week. She’d gone through six cases of tooth bleach to get rid of it. Not that anyone ever knew it was Maddie who’d done it, except me. As far as I know, Chezzie still thought the soda-dyer was an old boyfriend she’d just broken up with. A rumor started by me to throw people off Maddie’s scent.

“No, they never do, do they? Maybe there’s a spell we could cast so that backstabbers would show their true colors before we made the mistake of trusting them.” She looked at me so innocently, I knew she was thinking that would be a useful spell for her to have right now. Looking back at her faux innocent smile, I had to agree.

“Shhh, they’re starting. Pay attention.”

From high up in the stands, among the family and friends of those competing, I watched intently, following my old squad’s every move with a sense of déjà vu that made me lightheaded and giddy. I knew that routine like the back of my hand. I’d created that routine. All I wanted was to be there, on the floor with them. But that wasn’t going to happen.

“They’re good. But these seats aren’t very comfortable.” Tara was restless as the team competed.

“Here.” I reached into the black backpack I’d brought with me and materialized a seat cushion for her.

“Thanks.” She sat on it. “Much better.” She turned her attention back to the competition at last.

I thought about explaining what my old team was doing that was so good, but decided against it. If she couldn’t see it for herself, then I was wasting time trying to make her my ally.

I must have held my breath the entire time I watched, because when the final routine was over, I gasped in a breath and fought back tears.

“Do you think they nailed it?”

“Oh, yeah. None of the other teams even touched them.”

I sat there, watching my old team take their bows, huge smiles on their faces. I’d been there, done that. Man, I wanted to do it again.

Tara had a little bit more bravado than usual in her voice when she said, “We can do that at Nationals.”

Yeah. The Salem Witches could do that. With about two hundred synchronicity and grace spells and . . . “With a little magic, maybe.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I looked around nervously, realizing that I’d become careless in my few months at Agatha’s. We were surrounded by mortals, after all. I’d never have been so loose-lipped when I lived among mortals every day.

“Chill, pill,” Tara said, recognizing my reaction for what it was: the mortal-startle alert. Then she witch-whispered to me, “It’s not like mortals don’t use the word ‘magic’—they just don’t get that it’s real.”

It was like her voice was right next to my ear, even though her head was turned to watch the judges shake hands with my old squad. Here, in the stands, surrounded by mortals, it freaked me out, for some reason. But I hid my reaction this time. Her words were true enough. When I’d lived in the mortal world, I hadn’t worried so much about letting my witchy roots show. But I hadn’t had such starkly visible roots back then either. I hadn’t been allowed to do magic, for the most part. It was rude to do magic, my mother said. Another instance of when in Rome—an all-mortal-all-the-time Rome.

“We
can
do that,” I repeated, wanting to get back to my point.

“Okay. So we can.” Tara looked at her arm, where a big purple bruise from practice still showed. “Why?”

“What?” I didn’t understand that question at all. Wasn’t it obvious? Winning was for . . . winners.

She looked at me like I was the one who was failing the competitive spirit test. “Who cares?”

Ummm. I did. And I wasn’t going to let her sneak out of our agreement on the technicality that winning against mortals didn’t matter. “I thought we agreed: You get some
face-time with Angelo, and I get your support to make the team National-worthy.”

“Cooperation is one thing, but it sounds like you want me to care.”

“Of course I want you to care. Winners care.”

Tara shrugged. “Competition is so . . . normal.” She grinned. I knew she had drawn out the delay before “normal” just to make me worry that she was going to say “mortal.” Weeyotch.

“I know you want this, and so does Coach Gertie, but I don’t have to get it for real to fake it at practice, do I?”

“You’re head cheerleader.” I thought that said it all, but when she stared at me blankly, I added, “The other girls will know.”

“They’ll do what I tell them. And I’ll tell them to do what you say. You’ll have my support. Isn’t that good enough?”

It should have been. Except that everyone on a winning team has to want it. Has to be able to taste the win and spit out the doubt. If Tara wasn’t feeling it, maybe I should just give up—spend my time studying so I didn’t flunk my way back into remedial classes.

“Man poacher alert.” Tara gave me just enough warning that I put a smile on my face a micro-mini-second before Maddie suddenly showed up next to me in the stands. “Pru?”

“Hi, Maddie. Congratulations on the perfect routine. I
bet you have the win in the bag.” I really have to hand it to myself, I sounded sincere, even when I turned and saw that Maddie was holding hands with Brent.

“Liar,” Tara witch-whispered in my ear.

I ignored her and kept my focus on Maddie and Brent. “Hey, I heard through the grapevine that you two got together. I’m happy for you.” I wasn’t, of course. But I wasn’t exactly upset, either. I looked at Brent and wondered why I’d had a crush on him. He was a bit of a follower, by the way he was trailing after Maddie like a little puppy dog.

“I’ve been meaning to call, but I’ve been
so
busy.” Maddie squeezed Brent’s hand and gave him a quick, adoring look. But her attention was for me—and it was unnerving that she was not showing one ounce of shame. Maddie had always been the kind of girl to blush when she hadn’t done anything wrong at all. “How did you get here, Pru?”

I couldn’t answer. I was still stuck on that blatant lie— she’d been “meaning to call,” my Jimmy Choo-clad foot. My voice was stuck in my throat as my brain searched for something that would be kewl, cutting, and that would shred that smile right off her face—without Brent having a clue he was witnessing a verbal catfight, of course. I’d prefer he never even knew I’d planned on making him my next boyfriend if I hadn’t had to move to Salem.

Tara was not so speechless. “We just popped in to check out our competition for Nationals.”

Technically, true.

Maddie looked her over, assessing her correctly as the head cheerleader. There’s something about the position that announces itself, even when the head cheerleader is in jeans and a cute top. “Scare you away?”

For the first time the whole day, Tara seemed focused. It took me a minute to get why. Just long enough for her to say, sweetly, “Scared? Of you? Oh, no. The Salem Witches have the secret weapon at our school now.” She looked at me. Amazingly, even I would have thought she respected me if I didn’t know better.

“No disrespect, but we rock.” Maddie looked back to me, dismissing Tara. “Chezzie’s a great head cheerleader.” She put on a fake frown. “I know that was supposed to be your gig. Hope it doesn’t bother you that we’re doing great without you?”

“Not at all,” I lied. It bothered me, all right, but not nearly as much as the change I was seeing in Maddie. What had turned her into a full-fledged beeyotch in the few months I’d been gone? “Tara’s our HC. She’s great, too.” I didn’t really think so, but I’d rather have had a Brazilian wax done one square inch at a time than admit that. Especially to this new, diamond-edged Maddie.

She didn’t believe me, anyway. She flicked a glance at Tara, smiling so fake, she meant for us to know it. “Great. So I guess we’ll see who’s all that at Nationals, then?”

Tara smiled back, her eyes narrowing. “Well,
you
will, anyway.
We
already know.”

Maddie laughed, and let go of Brent’s hand to put her arm around his waist and curl her thumb in one of his belt loops. “It’ll be interesting, Pru. You on one team, and me on the other.”

“Yeah.” I finally managed to speak. Nothing kewl or cutting. But intelligible, at least.

“See you then.” Maddie walked off with Brent at her side.

For a minute I wanted to call her back, to see if the Pod People had taken her over. But then Tara distracted me by saying, “Wow. I totally get why you want the Witches to win Nationals. Are you sure you were ever BFF with that beeyotch?”

I looked at her, shocked and pleased at the sisterhood in her voice. My world was turning upside down. Tara was on my side, and Maddie was . . . the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

But we were going to take her down. Tara, me, and the rest of the team. Go, Witches!

“So. Should we have a little fun and mess up their triumph?”

“No!” Not that it wouldn’t be satisfying if. . . but, no. What would Yoda say?

“I thought you put a zit spell on her not that long ago. So what’s wrong with having a little fun now?” Tara’s eyes were
sparkly with the idea of giving my old team a little banana-peel action to mess with their competition mind-set.

I, not being clueless, knew that look should have been my signal to run. Or, technically, to fly, since we
are
witches. But that was problematic.

Problem one? We were in the bleachers, surrounded by mortals. Problem two? I half hoped Tara might convince me that it was okay to do more than psych out the team I’d hoped to lead, who were about to perform a kick-pompom competition routine if I didn’t do something major to stop them.

It was problem three that made me say, “If we’re going to beat them, we’re going to do it fair and with flair.” Problem three? I’m a good cheerleader, and a good cheerleader never lets jealousy, PMS, or a bad breakup cause a premature competition quake under another team’s feet.

Tara looked around at the crowd of parents and friends, all focused on the championship Beverly Hills team getting ready to sweep Regionals and take it on to Nationals again. “You’re such a wimp, Pru-the-mortal-lover.”

I couldn’t really argue with Tara. She was right. When she’d heard about Maddie, she’d been totally on my side about the zit spell. She didn’t think I’d gone far enough. When I saw Maddie, the crush-poacher, macking on the guy I’d put dibs on—well, let’s just say she’s lucky that I’m channeling my ex-BFF rage into the performance of a lifetime at
Nationals. Oh, and also that I’m not going to let Tara go after her. Nope. It’s great to have Tara on my side, but Maddie is
all
mine. I can’t wait until we win. I refuse to say if. We
have
to win. I
have
to make it happen.

“Come on,” Tara urged, refusing to give up. “We aren’t going to hurt them. Just shake their pom-poms up a little. What’s the harm in that? It’s not like we’re going to do anything to permanently kill their cheer mojo. Cheer mojo that comes from your notebook of routines, right?”

“True, but ...” I stopped and looked at her and remembered her line about the backstabber-finding spell. It finally occurred to me that Tara had enough of the scoop about Maddie and me to know I’d be easy to turn to the dark side.
Too
easy. And now that I was out of remedial classes and had become Coach’s Gertie’s great hope to lead us to a championship, what could be more tattle-worthy than me playing unfair with mortals? Competing mortals, at that.

Definitely expel-from-school-worthy dirt, of the most exclusive nature.

But she had a point I couldn’t deny: The Beverly Hills team was nothing if not great—thanks in part to me, not that they remembered that. They were lined up, smiling, completely on for the crowd and ready for the music to start.

Cheer competitions are fifty-fifty: fifty percent skill and fifty percent attitude. I knew they had the skill, and everyone could see they had the attitude. They were going to nail
this routine unless the ceiling fell in, or—if Tara had her way—magic happened.

So, really, what would be the harm in creating a little spell to make them forget my routines like they’d forgotten me? No. I shook my head, refusing the temptation with every last ounce of cheer training I had. “We’ll know we deserve it when we beat them at Nationals.”

The music started, so loud that it beat into our bones. Tara and I watched, just like everyone else in the bleachers, as the team performed with a synchronicity and energy that made me want to be down there with them.

“They are good. Or, should I say, your routines are good,” Tara commented.

“Chezzie’s made some changes, but mostly they’re using my routines.” And they were, too. All the routines I’d created and saved up in my notebook for the time when I would be head cheerleader. My old team was performing them almost as I’d envisioned when I was writing the cheer choreography.