Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 02 Competition's A Witch (6 page)

Dinner with the ’rents was never number one on my list of top ten favorite things to do. But this no-mortal-ways-allowed twist gave it a whole new spin—one that sometimes gave me heartburn before I’d taken two bites out of whatever my mother had popped onto the table for us.

Sure, when I was mad at my dad, I didn’t even mind that he got hyper-focused on his peas and carrots when the Dorklock and I casually floated the salt and pepper shakers over. And I was the first to appreciate that there’s something to be said for having your dad know you could dangle his dinner over his head if you felt like it. Not that I ever would. But it was nice to think about when I was getting the obligatory third degree.

That night it began the exact same way it always did—no variation, no escape: “How was school today, Pru?” Before, when we lived in Beverly Hills, there would be a smile on Dad’s face. He knew it was going to be good news and nothing but. Now? All bad news, all the time. Worse, for him, he had no suggestions for how I might learn to create a potion that didn’t set off the class explosion alert charm. And my dad didn’t like not having suggestions for how I could turn failure into success faster than he could whip out an ad to make old people vitamins sound sexy.

“I had fun at lunch.” Which was code for “Can we drop this?”

Dad, ignoring the code, stayed in interrogation mode. “Have you brought your math grade up?”

Good. He was focusing on mortal classes. “No worries, I’m back on track there.” Perfectly true, if “back on track” equals “going to pass the quarter.”

“And”—he could barely bring himself to say it—“the other stuff?”

“Mr. Phogg says I’m making real progress.” Again, true. If you didn’t count that he said it right after I materialized a rabbit out of a hat that immediately burst into flame. I got the kudos because I materialized a bucket of water and dumped it on the burning hat on my own initiative.

So, okay, I didn’t tell my dad the worst stuff. And I padded the good stuff the way women had to pad their bras
before breast implants. But, really, how many ways are there to say “horrible” without sounding like you’re waving the little white flag of surrender? Especially when I could tell Dad secretly wanted me to whip out the flag so life could get back to normal?

Before Dad could think of another question I didn’t want to answer, Mom changed the subject. “Angelo is a nice boy.”

“Angelo?” Dad looked at me with the “What don’t I know?” look he’d been using a lot since we moved to Salem.

I shrugged in nonchalant combo with my best imitation Botox innocence.

Fortunately, my dad was not subtle. His next question was a megawatt spotlight to his biggest worry. “So Samuel’s out of the picture for you, after all that tutoring?”

Whew. Of all the questions he could’ve asked, that one was easy. “Dad! Relax. I don’t have a boyfriend. Samuel is just a friend, and Angelo is mortal.”

Mom raised an eyebrow at me for snarking at the table. “Angelo is the neighbor boy. I told you about him and his mother, Myrna Kenton.”

Dad nodded. “Oh. Our Salem version of Adalee Darbley. But Pru, do you think you should be involved with this boy now, when you have to study magic so much?” Dad winced when he said the “m” word, but just a little.

“I’m not
involved
with him, Dad. I just met him.” I so didn’t want to have this conversation. It was never fun to have the “Do you like him like that?” talk with your parents, no matter how much fun it was with your friends.

Apparently Mom had noticed that I had crushed on Angelo like a Mack truck landing on a rice cake. “More than nice. That young man is a true charmer.” Her frown lines got a little deeper as she looked at me, as if my response mattered a lot to her.

“So? He’s a mortal? He’s off-limits.” I probably should have stopped there, but I added, “If I ever want to get out of remedial classes, I need to smack every last bit of mortal out of me, right?”

Mom nodded, but her frown lines got even deeper. “Right.”

Dad, oblivious to how upset Mom was about something as trivial as the fact that Angelo was the hottest thing since the sun had formed in our solar system, focused like a laser on that bit of 4-1-1. It was breaking news for him, and he wasn’t too happy about that. “You have to smack out every last bit of
mortal
? What does that mean?”

Crappiola. If I was good at witchcraft, I’d cast a thirty-second rewind spell and we’d be good to go. But I wasn’t. And Mom thought it was disloyal to cast a spell on Dad.

“Just that Pru really needs to concentrate on using her magic. You know, dear,” Mom said as she popped another
of his favorite rolls on his plate, “like when you had that marketing conference in France and we spoke French for six weeks, just so you could become fluent?”

“Oh. Of course. I see.” Dad nodded and dropped the subject. There was still a puzzled crease in his forehead, but we were no longer headed into forbidden territory.

Dad still had one lingering question, I guess. Because, after he took a sip of wine, he asked, “So Angelo is hotter than Samuel, is he?”

Right. As if hot and Samuel had any place in the same sentence. “Samuel’s just a friend.” Sometimes I thought Dad liked Samuel because he was a witch who didn’t need to show off in front of the witch-aware mortal like Grandmama did. Or it could be they both belonged to some kind of psychic geek brotherhood that was stronger than the witch-mortal divide.

Apparently, we were back in interrogation mode because Mom looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Does he know that?”

“Mooom!” I so did not want to try to explain the whole kewl kid versus fringie kid social system that existed at Agatha’s. It was hard enough to stay kewl if you dared to be friends with a fringie, never mind macking on one. And even if, somehow, Samuel had become my best friend in Salem, I was definitely not interested in hooking up with him. Except in the sense that I wished I could hook his
brain to mine and download all the magic smarts into it. Come to think of it, I’d have to see if there was a spell for that. It would be just like Samuel to “forget” to tell me that there was.

Mom held up her hands, surrendering the argument. “Okay, okay. He’s just such a sweet boy, I don’t want to see you break his heart.”

“I’m not going to break his heart. He’s just a
friend
.” A friend with a crush on me. But not the kind of crush that wouldn’t go away if he found a girlfriend of his own. I wondered if I should make that a priority. I did owe him for all the help he’d given me in catching up on sixteen years of magic education. “And Angelo is off-limits as long as he’s mortal,” I added, “Just call me dateless-in-Salem.” I’d hoped for a little sympathy, but they both looked pleased. Parents. Go figure.

“Understood.” Mom couldn’t quite leave it alone. “Even so, you should probably restrict your ‘interests’ to the boys at school for now.”

“
Not
boys like that Daniel, either. Or your mother will have to put a boy repelling charm on you.” It was Dad’s turn to frown at me. I couldn’t believe he’d threatened me with my mother’s magic. He’d never done that before. And, really, he’d been even more unhappy than Mom to find out I’d actually been caught in a time bubble with a boy. I think that the protective charms Mom cast over us were the first
and only magic that Dad wholeheartedly approved of. Which made me glad he was a mortal. I bet if he were a witch, he’d have created a magical bubble wrap that the Dorklock and I would never escape. My dad may be a mortal, but he’s a very creative mortal, which is why his advertising agency let him move to their offices across the country on very short notice.

I ignored the threat. What did it matter? I was already as good as boy proof at Agatha’s. “My ‘interests’?” Sometimes I could really tell that Mom had been born four hundred years ago. “Like I’m much of a catch—I’m in remedial magic classes.” I had to stop saying that aloud. It might accidentally become my slogan. And it was definitely not a slogan I wanted to adopt—or to have adopt me, either. “My interests are studying hard enough to get into regular classes as soon as Agatha lets me, and getting my team to competition level before Regionals. Until then, I have a big glowing L on my forehead and there’s no one in school who doesn’t know it.”

Oops. I’d let the L word slip. My dad hated that word. He’d always hated it, even back in Beverly Hills. But here in Salem … I really wished I hadn’t said it, because now I was in for a huge Pru-is-great fest.

“You’re not a loser, Pru.” He smiled weakly at me, but his voice was strong and confident. “Your coach put you in charge of getting the team ready for Regionals, didn’t she?”

“True.” Okay. So I shouldn’t have whined. But since I’d decided that Maddie was dead to me, I had had no one to complain to. And apparently, damming up your complaints about the suckitude of your life can lead to volcanic eruptions of self-pity. “But I can’t even cheer in magic games, only in mortal games. I’m probably never going to get out of remedial classes and I bet I never manifest a Talent. By twenty-five, I’ll probably die a bitter old cat-lady-witch-reject!”

Mom joined in the “rally Pru” effort. “Despite your magical shortcomings, Coach Gertie has faith in you. Shouldn’t you have faith in yourself?” Sometimes I wondered if she would have been a cheerleader if she hadn’t been born in Puritan Salem back when a good cheer would have landed her in the stocks.

“Right. Everybody wants to listen to the witch who was raised in the mortal world. It’s probably only a matter of weeks before I become Notorious Pru, the girl everyone else avoids so as not to catch her loser cooties.”

That was a little much for Mom. “Pru, you’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

Yes. That was the point. To tell the truth, I was surprised she had hung in there so long. My mom always wanted to soothe things that couldn’t be soothed. I wasn’t going to pretend she could. But I couldn’t say so out loud. So I just stared at her without answering.

“I know it’s been hard for you.”

“You think?”

“Pru.” The warning was clear, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay attention to it. “I’m trying to help you figure this out. I know this move sometimes seems like it’s placed you in an impossible position“.” Even Mom was at a loss for an acceptable but.

And then, she smiled, very pleased with herself. She asked, oh so casually, “What about if we threw you that sweet sixteen party we had to cancel when we decided to move?”

“Too late. I turned sixteen somewhere in Idaho, driving here. Remember the chocolate cupcake with one of Tobias’s gummy bears posing as a flameless candle?”

“I know. The timing of that trip was awful. But that’s a perfect excuse to have a belated sweet sixteen for you. You could invite some of the kids you want to get to know, the squad, Samuel. It would be a great way to break the ice.”

“Sure. Great. If anyone decided to come to the new girl’s party.” I tried not to think about having a real sweet sixteen party. I’d been planning one since I turned ten and found out such things existed. Having it cancelled was a disaster second only to having to move without warning. “It’s too late.”

Dad chimed in, happy that Mom had found a workable solution that even he could understand. “Nonsense. Your birthday is barely over.”

That was quite a lie. “Birthdays only last a day, Dad. Not months.”

Team Rally-Pru was not prepared to accept defeat. Dad came up with a suggestion from his bag of marketing tricks. “That’s why we’d call it a belated sweet sixteen. And we could invite Maddie, too. I’d pay for her to fly here if that would make you happy.”

Maddie? The mortal backstabber? No way! Not that I could explain that to Dad. He didn’t get girl drama. “Forget it. You aren’t going to fix my loser status with a party.” It would just be another opportunity for me to risk showing everyone that I couldn’t do magic like the others. Sure, Samuel hung out with me enough to know it, but he was a fringie, not one of the kewl kids. He wasn’t the type to hold it against me. Which, I guess, is why he had become my best friend without my realizing it.

“Won’t it help you meet some kids? Maybe let some kids see you’re just like they are, even if you aren’t as familiar with magic as they are?” Dad suggested.

“Great. Take away my mystery and what do they find out? That I’m a loser when it comes to summoning and spells? That I throw sweet sixteen parties like
mortals
do? No thank you very much.”

Mom bit her lip at the word “mortal.” Hah. Point for Pru. Not that I felt good that I’d stopped the party pressure at the source. To be honest, I may have been a teensy weensy
bit prepared to let myself be reluctantly persuaded once I’d plucked every guilt string I could find.

But no, I played the mortal card and it was a winner. Mom just sighed and said, “Whatever you choose, Prudence. I won’t force you.” She gave me a hug. A hug! Like that would make up for ruining my life. “Honey, you deserve a sweet sixteen party, even if you are being extra sour right now. Think about it and let me know if you decide you want one. I’m sure we could find a way to use magic to start a trend among all the students at Agatha’s.”

And then she popped out of the dining room before I could reply. Or pop myself to my room without saying anything, which was what I had intended to do to emphasize how unhappy I was. Apparently my mother wasn’t content to destroy my life, she had to hijack my dramatic exit too.