Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (18 page)

Dragon Ball is an interesting game, played by witches for as long as history records. Some even say the game used to be played with dragons. These days it was played on paper dragons, animated only by the power of the witch mounted upon it.

I haven’t quite figured out the rules, but basically it involves flying paper dragons, balls of flame, buckets of water, and ten poles covered with pitch on either team’s side that must be burned to the ground before the game ends.

Cheering for Dragon Ball is surprisingly easy: Our team on fire, bad; their team on fire, good. Also, get out of the way of both flameballs and waterbuckets, because either can leave you with a bad-hair day.

So we knew we were going to have to put on a really spectacular show if we were competing with the fast-action and dramatic plays of Dragon Ball. Fortunately, we were prepared. We’d already decided that we were going to unveil our new wowalicious routine at this game, but the pressure of knowing how high the stakes were made the adrenaline flow like we were at a competition.

Celestina asked, a little hesitantly—her instincts as a cheerleader were good, but she just couldn’t trust herself, or
the team, enough to be as positive as she needed to be— “What if we blow it?”

I was really going to have to work on this whole spreading-the-negative-vibe thing. Team members should prop one another up before a game or a competition—and there should never be negative talk during the game. Sigh.

Oh well, time for a little Pru-attitude-altitude. “We’re not going to blow it. We’re going to wow our parents like we’ve never wowed them before.”

Charity said, a bit uncharitably, “I don’t want to serve double detention.”

“Great!” I refused to let my smile drop one megawatt as I faced the crowd. “I don’t even want to serve a single detention. I bet no one here does. Am I right?”

We all raised our pom-poms and gave a shout in agreement on that one. No-brainer, on my part. Detention at Agatha’s involves being immobilized in a quicksand-like substance. Not fun at all. I had to do it once and that was definitely more than enough.

Sunita had a panicked look on her face. “I’m going to forget that third step-step bit, I know it. And then everything will be off and someone’s going to get hurt.”

It doesn’t take long for panic to become contagious. I had to do something, and I had to do it fast. I witch-whispered in everyone’s ear, “Relax, I’ll make sure everyone is on task. Your cheer-whisperer is on the job.”

I wasn’t sure I could do that and keep on task myself with these mega-new routines, but by the look on everyone’s face, I realized I had succeeded. Wipe another item off the To-Do list. Soon I wouldn’t need the Troll doll, and I wouldn’t have to suffer the pinches he liked to give me to keep me on task, either.

Tara smiled. “Good idea, Pru.”

And just in time, because our mega-opening started at the moment our Dragon Ball team all got on the field. We had cast spells to cause our hair to rise and move around our faces like flames as we rose into the air and began to cheer for our team to win.

The crowd noticed that we moved together. We noticed we moved together. All I’d had to whisper was, “Up.” And then, “Down.”

The next wowalicious move was more difficult: a sequence that was carefully timed to the music. I just said, “Back left. Back middle. Back right.” It was tricky because I had to time the whisper so they could hear and respond exactly at the right moment in the music. We were amazing, if I do say so myself. And I didn’t let myself worry that although the crowd applauded, no one got to their feet and there were no fan bursts of magic confetti.

The most coordinated, and rather impressive, routine we had I’d named the fountain. It was a flying take on the pyramid, with a waterfall twist.

We started on the floor, in a circle, our arms in the air, and smoke flowing like water from our fingertips to our toes. We looked like a ring of water flowing from an unseen source. Not bad for a start, but then we made it better.

As the water illusion took hold, every other member of the circle did a lazy somersault upward, letting the smoke water flow upward, at first, and then, as we formed a second, smaller ring atop the larger circle, back down, like a water fountain. We stayed there a moment, listening to the crowd’s hushed murmurs. Come on, people, I silently urged the faces in the stands,
feel
the magic.

And then, once more, half of the second tier of our water fountain divided again and formed a tighter circle above. A three-tiered fountain effect.

This time, the clapping was thunderous. Even though we couldn’t see the crowd through the water illusion, we could hear their reaction. The stunt looked way kewl, and I hoped it would be the routine that finally got the parents to see that we had become great cheerleaders by learning a few things from the mortal cheerleaders. Things like discipline, coordination, timing, and the truth in that old adage “no pain, no gain.”

Surely now our parents would understand why competition would be good for us, despite a few bumps and bruises. Mortal competition, where it doesn’t pay to be sloppy because it hurts. Where you have to act as a team because bad things happen when you don’t.

My hopes didn’t seem so far-fetched when the crowd went wild. Even the angrier parents had grudgingly begun to clap and stomp when we got the crowd on its feet to cheer the team to another point.

Our Dragon Ball team won, but our cheerleading team won bigger. We could read it on the awed faces of our parents. I was sure we had made everyone understand how important it was to let us cheer.

But I should have known that such a massive insurrection wasn’t going to pass unremarked—or unpunished—by Agatha, no matter what she promised the parents.

She vanished from the game the instant the game torch, lit by dragonfire, flickered out. She hadn’t given us a ruling. Mom came up to me and hugged me. “Great job, honey. I think you’ve proven your point.” I heard other parents saying similar things to their children. I let myself hope as we all gathered in the lunchroom at Agatha’s again.

Unfortunately, Agatha didn’t quite see it the same way we did. Sure, she lifted her moratorium on all things mortal. Her gracious decision was the first thing she announced when she appeared. “I am happy to announce that there is no longer a complete ban on competition with mortals.”

Umm, yeah. While everyone else was cheering, I was in an eye lock with Agatha. I had understood the careful wording of “complete ban.” When things had quieted down, I
asked, “What about the cheerleading squad? Are we allowed to compete?”

“The cheerleaders will be allowed to cheer at mortal games, of course.” Agatha went into full-on headmistress mode, and my expectations crumbled to dust as she spoke. “However, I’m sure your parents will agree with me that mortal competition is a risk that you do not have to take. It should be enough for you to cheer at games. Don’t you parents agree?”

Of course, they did.

“But the whole point—” Tara tried to argue.

Agatha silenced her. “The whole point was to prove that you could cheer even more effectively. Which you proved. From what I saw, I don’t think you need the small improvements a competition might give you.” She killed our hopes with the worst kind of compliment. “You were wonderful. The teams you support are all lucky to have you rooting for them.”

Right. Tell me she didn’t know that wasn’t what we’d been going for. Just in case she had any other kind of treachery on her mind, I spoke up again. “No detentions, though, right? We proved ourselves and our methods?”

She narrowed her eyes at me, making me glad I’d spoken up while the parents were still here to witness what she said. “Of course. No detentions will be issued for your passionate protest.” She smiled. “However, I would like to let you
students, and your parents, know that there is a new rule at Agatha’s. In the future, any student caught participating in a—what was it you called it? a sit-in?—any similar action will result in that student being immediately expelled.”

“Loophole closed but good,” her expression said. As angry as I was, I knew we’d still been lucky. Our headmistress did not like to be outmaneuvered. I’m sure she would have managed to find a way to give us detentions, too, if I hadn’t spoken up.

I hoped Agatha thought her end-run around fairness had worked and we were resigned to our fate. Not that we were, of course. We met at the pizza joint down the road to discuss what to do. Naturally, Tara and I were appointed to go talk to Agatha. As if that were even possible. But it was our duty, so we did it.

On Monday morning, Tara and I went to Agatha’s office to plead our case. We went in uniform. We went prepared to beg, plead, bribe, cajole, and even threaten.

Agatha greeted us with her usually frosty manner. And then she shook her head. “Maybe we should never have allowed a cheerleading team at Agatha’s. It was done against my better judgment in the first place.”

That sounded like blasphemy to me. But, wisely, I didn’t say so. We’d determined that Tara would do all the talking, since Agatha hated me. The only reason I was there at all
was that both Tara and I felt that Agatha would notice my absence and that cowardice would count against us.

“Cheering teaches everything a good witch needs to know: independence, strength, perseverance, and teamwork.” Tara was convincing—to me, at least.

It didn’t matter what we said. Agatha had her mind made up. “You’ve already disrupted your schoolwork twice for competitions, and you haven’t won either of them. May I suggest that your time would be better spent in analyzing how you can do what you suggested, and start a witch competition for cheerleaders. Then you can come back to me and I’ll consider your proposal on its merits.”

Right. The Witches would definitely win against the four other schools we could recruit from. They didn’t even know the rules. But that wouldn’t be the same thing.

“Out of my office, girls. We all have more important work to do than spend another moment on this silliness.”

She waved us out. And that was that.

Or was it? I saw a gleam in Tara’s eye just before Agatha banished us from her office. And I remembered why it was sometimes good to have a weeyotch in your corner.

Samuel was not happy when he showed up to
tutor me and found Angelo waiting by my side. He didn’t even bother to smile when he witch-whispered, “No way.”

“Not in front of the new kid,” I witch-whispered back, and then added, so that Angelo could hear me too, “Let’s get what we need from the potions cupboard before we start, Samuel.”

I looked at Angelo and said, “You can start by opening your family spell book and finding a spell that will turn a rabbit into a goat.”

“Okay.” Angelo was very quiet and cooperative. I had a feeling he was screaming on the inside, but he’d been so badly bound by spells to keep his uncontrolled powers safely
damped that he couldn’t even manage to look miserable. He opened his family spell book, which was smaller and less dusty than ours (Mom had been given custody of his by the witches’ council because of the no-contact-with-his-mother order).

We had barely popped into the potions cupboard when Samuel said, again, “No way.”

I understood the natural aversion. After all, Samuel “liked” me, and I “liked” Angelo—or I had. And maybe I would again. But Angelo wasn’t able to “like”—or be liked by—anyone right now. He was so beaten down that even dogs didn’t like him much. He couldn’t get much more harmless unless the witches’ council decided to neuter him. Shudder. “Come on, you helped me.”

He laughed, like I was comparing apples and oranges. “That’s different. Your mom’s a witch.”

“So are Angelo’s parents.”

“The council’s still out on that one.” Apparently, he’d been listening to the school gossip machine, which was capable of mangling facts in a half-second flat. By the end of his first day, the top rumors were that Angelo had been found on another planet; that he was a plant by the mortals who suspected witches weren’t just mythical; or—my personal favorite—that his mother had hidden him with mortals so she could go out and play with the other witches 24/7 and not be tied down to raising a kid. Ummm, I don’t know who made these up, but boy are there some twisted minds in witchworld.

“Agatha’s done the DNA.” This was getting old. I mean, I understand the whole shock-and-denial thing—I’d had a little of it myself. But the facts were in. And Angelo was at Agatha’s whether Samuel liked it or not. “He’s a witch who was accidentally switched at birth and raised by mortals. Cut him a break already.”

Stubborn could be part of Samuel’s DNA too. “Maybe the testing was wrong.”

“Wrong?” This was coming from the scientist? The genius who could make anything, including a Troll doll that talked like a butler and kept me on track for making all of my goals? Hah! “I didn’t think you science types liked to clutch at straws.”

He gave up his hold on the hollow hope that Angelo was not really a witch and was left only with the truth. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

Finally, something I could handle. Science was not my strong point—I could get an A on tests, of course, but I didn’t retain much because it was so boring. “Samuel, do you want me to have my mom explain it to you? She was there at the hearing, just like I was.”