Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 02 Competition's A Witch (11 page)

“What? A capital W?” Tara was really feeling threatened by me today. I couldn’t quite figure out why, because the only one smiling at me was Coach Gertie.

“No. Team Spirit with a capital S. You can be a little sloppy cheering at a game as long as you keep the crowd stoked. But in competition?” I wasn’t going to let her get
me down. Or so I chanted repeatedly inside my mind. “When we’re on the floor, we need to move like we have one mind, one body, and one spirit!”

“Like your old team of mortal dirt shufflers?” she challenged me.

“Yes. Like my old team.” I was really beginning to hate the nickname “dirt shufflers.” “Of championship cheerleaders.”

Elektra wanted to share some of Tara’s snark. “What makes them so special?”

“Besides the fact that they’ve won the national championship three years running?” I asked the question innocently enough, although I’d seen Coach Gertie listening closely to our exchange. “If you spent a day with them, you’d know why ‘dirt shuffling’ is important.”

“Excellent suggestion, Prudence!” Coach Gertie came into our midst with a beaming smile and not a clue that no one—including me—knew what suggestion she’d thought I’d just made.

But we found out fast enough when she turned to the girls staring at her dumbly and asked, “Should we take a field trip?”

It took me a few seconds to get up to speed, but I was still faster than the other girls. Coach Gertie wanted us to take a trip to Beverly Hills to observe the winning team in action.

Now, I’d already learned what a history field trip back to the sixteenth century involved, so I didn’t immediately
jump to say yes. But Tara did. “Sure, why don’t we go see Pru’s old team?”

“I’m glad you agree.” Coach Gertie popped a datebook into her hand and jotted something down in it. “Next practice we’ll take a little trip to see what a championship team can show us about winning a competition.”

Oh, goody. While I thought the girls could learn a lot from such a field trip, it meant nothing but heartache for me. Not only would I have to see the team I had planned to lead as head cheerleader this year, I’d also have to see Maddie, my ex-best friend and big-time lying almost-boyfriend stealer. I couldn’t wait.

Between Agatha’s remarks about my magical abilities (or lack thereof), Mom lying to me, and my team calling my skills “dirt shuffling,” I was feeling about as low as a former TV star doing a guest shot on someone else’s show. So when Samuel came over for our regular tutoring session, I resorted to digging for reassurance. I needed it bad.

“Do you think I could pass the test now if Skin and Bones (the nickname I’d adopted for Mr. Phogg, my remedial summoning and spells teacher)—and Agatha, of course—would let me take it?”

He thought about it a little while, flipping the colored lenses of his glasses up and down until I wondered if I should dial up the quest for reassurance a notch so he’d get it.
Finally
, he said, “You’re getting really good at flying.”

“Cheering practice helps there.” Even though I was leading the “dirt shuffling” work, I still had at least half of practice to work on my own flying, tumbling, and stunt skills.

“And the games, too.” He nodded. I remembered that he had been coming to all the games, except the ones that conflicted with his chess team matches. “And your spells are … interesting, but they do the job.”

“Thanks.” I couldn’t think of more underwhelming praise. But I forgave him, because he was Samuel—a geek to the nth degree who thought being brutally honest was a good thing. Which it was, but cheerleaders know how to do it with a little more kindness—when they want to be kind, of course.

“You can summon more than one object now. Are you up to ten at a time?”

Eight. But who was counting? The other good thing about cheerleaders is that we know to stop when the whole honesty thing starts to hurt.

Not so Samuel. “Your potion work, though … we’ve hardly worked on any of it. Has your mom’s cousin tutored you in that?”

“A little.” I shrugged. “He had to go somewhere for a little while, but we’ll dedicate time to potions when he gets back.” Which could be ten years from now, according to Mom. Cousin Seamus was brilliant, but apparently shared
the family mad streak that Agatha had complained to my mother about.

Samuel had finally caught on to the fact that I needed a few warm fuzzies. He said sympathetically, “Well, maybe we could work on potions tonight.”

Great. Another vastly unexplored subject that sounded like a big load of trial and error. With error having consequences running from indigestion to death. Still, it had to be done. “Like what would be a potion I should already know?”

“Ummm.” Even brilliant Samuel had to stop and think back to his early school days. “Any potion that heals the common cold, zits, gets rid of excess body hair. You know, the cosmetic stuff your people in Beverly Hills had to pay big bucks to a doctor or a pharmacy to get fixed.”

Big whoop. As potions go, I knew at least five over-the-counter and six prescription drugs that would take care of any and all of those problems. Of course, those were mortal inventions, so they were of no use to me now.

I sighed. “Well, let’s try the zit potion. A girl can always use one of those.”

“Okay.” He waited a beat, like I was supposed to do something, and then he asked, “Where’s your potions cupboard?”

Our potions cupboard? This wasn’t a question I knew how to answer. But I bet I knew who did.

I popped down to the living room, where Mom was playing Tobias’s video game with him—and losing badly because she simply could not get the hang of a six-button controller. Not that I had any sympathy at all for her. She’d had the Dorklock, after all. It was up to her to raise him. “Mom. Where is our potions cupboard?”

Mom looked up guiltily. “Potions cupboard? For your lessons?”

I nodded.

Tobias crowed as he took advantage of her inattention to kill her off on the video game.

“You’re dead, Mom. I won.” He looked a little glazed over, but happy. As if he’d won world peace. Or knew where the potions cupboard was. Or maybe just knew we had one.

Turns out our potions cupboard is down in the kitchen, right off the butler’s pantry. It was very well stocked. I had a feeling that potion shopping was one of the things my mom had gotten used to doing when no one was looking, back when we all lived in the mortal world and weren’t supposed to practice magic. But since I wasn’t feeling friendly, I didn’t ask.

I was not in the mood to hide my crankiness. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? Do you want me to fail?”

“Of course not.” Mom actually looked shocked that I would think such a thing. She glanced at Samuel before she replied, “I didn’t expect—”

So she didn’t want to look like a neglectful mother in front of my friend? Tough biscotti. “Mom. This has to stop. You have to tell me what I need to know—what I was supposed to learn from you long ago—or you may as well just send me back to live in the mortal realm.”

Samuel didn’t say anything in the silence that followed my mini-meltdown. He didn’t move, not even to flip his glasses a few times. He did swallow, loudly, which made us all jump.

Mom smiled at him. “I’m sorry we got out of sorts in front of you, Samuel.” To me, she said softly, “I think I’ve become so used to staying under the radar with my magic that I sometimes forget what you don’t know. But”—she waved at the potions lined up in the cupboard and pointed to the family spell book, which apparently also sat in the cupboard when one of us hadn’t summoned it to study or make an entry—“you know everything now.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

Too bad my lie detector bracelet told a different story. I sighed.

Despite my meltdown, Mom let Samuel stay to help me with potions. We didn’t even get to the zit potion recipe, though, because I had to learn where each item in the potions cupboard was. And
what
it was, too. By the time we were done, I didn’t need Samuel to tell me I wasn’t ready
for the test to get me out of remedial magic. Bummer.

But I didn’t hold my lack of progress against Samuel. It was my mom’s fault, and I was really clear about that. I knew she felt guilty, and that’s why I was getting this belated sweet sixteen party. But I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily.

Samuel, however, deserved a lot of thanks for being a good friend, even if he wasn’t very good at sugarcoating bad news.

“Okay. Now I need your help on something fun,” I told him.

“Really?” He seemed surprised.

“Really.” I was so excited, I could barely contain myself. Back home, I had been planning a sweet sixteen to put all the others to shame. Mom had been nixing every great idea I had, of course, but that’s only to be expected—she never got into the whole over-the-top Beverly Hills scene, anyway. But now that she was trying to make up for throwing me into the shark pool of magic education without the right weapons, I had a feeling I could slip some of the fabulously kewl stuff past her without so much as a peep of negativity from her.

So I threw myself on Samuel’s rather twisted mercy. “I’m having a birthday party and I need the kewlest invitations you’ve ever seen.”

“Oh. That does sound like fun.” He was acting weird, and I couldn’t quite read why. All of a sudden I had a tremendous
fear. “Witches do celebrate their birthdays, don’t they?”

“Of course we do.” He grinned. “We save the big stuff for the decade, and the really big stuff for the centuries, but we celebrate every year with a little something too.”

I guess he thought this was good news to me. But he couldn’t have been more wrong. “So sixteen isn’t anything special?”

Again with the brutal honesty, he answered, “No. Why would it be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Sixteen’s a biggie in the mortal world. For girls, at least. I guess it probably has some sexist reason about girls turning into women or something. But I don’t care. I’m going to throw the kewlest sweet sixteen Agatha’s has ever seen. If I do a fantastic job, I bet I could even start a hot new trend among the kewl young witches.”

“How are you planning to do that?”

“With lots of planning.” And a big helping of luck, too, but I didn’t need to tell him that. “Which is where you come in.”

“I’m not a party planner.” He really looked worried, as if he thought I’d make him social director for the Good Ship Pru’s sweet sixteen. As if.

“Well, because a kewl party starts with a hot, can’t-miss invitation, I need your genius help to design the best invitations the school has ever seen.”

He thought about that for a moment, with some flipping
of his lenses, which made
me
want to flip out a little, I was so on edge from the whole potions cupboard revelation and the party planning madness. “So if it burst into flame, that would be good?”

“Uh. No.” Sometimes Samuel’s sense of humor is more miss than hit. But I had to forgive him. He was a boy, after all. I realized I had better talk fast unless I wanted to end up with an invitation only a headless horseman could love. “I know what I want, but I don’t know how to do it.”

“Okay.” He sighed, apparently resigned to having to shelve his more high-geek invitation ideas. “So tell me what you want and I’ll see what I can do about it.”

I could picture it perfectly in my mind, but could I explain it to him? “I want a bubble—clear, but a little bit sparkly pink, too.”

“Bubble, check.” He made a checkmark in the air, and a tiny pink bubble floated free from the bend of the check.

“Bigger than that, of course,” I amended. “And I want it to float at eye level, know who it’s for, and then sing an invitation that only the person it’s meant for can hear when she pops it.”

“Wow.” He looked half stunned and half impressed—which left
me
half stunned and half impressed. I guess I had a little Talent in the invitation design department. “You really meant it when you said you wanted a one-of-a-kind invitation, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” His reaction made me pretty sure I was on the right track for a kewler than kewl party.

“Okay.” He closed his eyes to think.

“Do you think that will be kewl enough?” I asked anxiously. “Or should it have some fireworks, too? Or maybe a shower of glittery micro-mini bubbles could be released when it pops?”

He opened his eyes and stared at me for a few seconds. “Sometimes simple is better.”

Boys. What do they know? “Sure. But not when you’re talking about the sweet sixteenth!”

“Okay, okay.” He held up his hands in surrender to my ideas. “We can do it. No problem. But we’ll need to use some things from your potions cupboard.”

“No problem.” And really, it wasn’t, now that I knew we had a potions cupboard.

It took some figuring—and Samuel did most of the work, I admit. But I learned a lot and got some really kewl invitations out of the tutoring session too.

It was funny. Back in Beverly Hills there was so much competition about who was going to throw the sweet sixteen party of the year. I’d seen invitations made in chocolate, silk, and carefully fanned gold foil. And the parties got wilder from there. But the kewl kids back at Beverly Hills would be sooooo jealous to see my invitations. If they could ever know about this magic stuff. Which they couldn’t. Bummer.