Read Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 01 The Salem Witch Tryouts for Free Online

visualize a hat. I tried hard, because one thing I’ve learned is that if you aren’t completely clued in to the subject, sometimes attitude and a confident air can get you extra points. And, clearly, I needed all theextra points I could get. After about ten seconds, a Red Sox baseball cap appeared and hovered in the air in front of me.
    “Are you a Sox fan?” She actually sounded friendly for a moment.
    “My dad is. He’s from Boston originally.”
    “Mortal fools.” Okay. Not so friendly. “Pull a rabbit out of the hat, then, child.”
    I reached into the hat and tried not to look surprised when I felt something squirming under my fingertips. I pulled out the rabbit. Or what was meant to be a rabbit. It turned out to be a hamster. Not my fault, I swear. I had more experience with my brother’s hamsters. The last rabbit I’d seen was the one who went to bed in
Goodnight Moon
.
    Agatha didn’t seem happy with my explanation, even though I’d smiled my best head-cheerleader smile—the one I’d been practicing all summer and was never going to get to use. Another mark on the scroll, and I was already getting tired of the testing. It’s never a good sign when you get tired of testing at the beginning.
    She looked at me with cold blue eyes. “Do you need extra help?”
    “No. I’m fine.” I would have said no if she’d sent two hungry lions at me. She had that effect on everyone, I suspected.
    “Good.” And we were off again.
    All I can say is that the test was exhausting. When things weren’t flying at my face, orders were flying out of Agatha’s mouth. She wasn’t just the oldest, meanest witch I’d ever met, she was also the headmistress of a school that wanted students who could fly, materialize huge objects with the lift of a finger, and play an orchestra of instruments with just a few lifts of the eyebrows and a twitch of nose. I, needless to say, was definitely not one of those students. Although I’m proud to say that my smile did not slip once, not even when the violin bow squeaked across the strings and tangled in my hair.
    Somewhere during the hell that was my entrance exam to Agatha’s Day School for Witches, she let it slip she had been born during the days of Genghis Khan. And she was the one in charge of running a school for young witches. Not a surprise at all—if you were looking to turn out heartless dictators and megalomaniacs.
    Somewhere in between not flying and drawing ungodly sounds from a clarinet and a flute without touching them, I realized witch school was going to be even less fun that I’d thought it would be. Agatha assured me, with a sadistic smile, that the only way to remain on the cheerleading squad—if I made it—would be to maintain passing grades in all my classes.
    For the first time since I’d joined my preschool class witha lunch box and a drive to be the first to be potty trained, I would have tried to fail a test—if I knew what I was being tested on. As it was, I just hoped I’d last long enough to see the end of Agatha and her frozen wasteland of a testing room.

Chapter 4

    Too bad Agatha didn’t see fit to reject me. Although I know she wanted to, since the letter about whether or not I’d passed the test didn’t arrive until the night before school was supposed to begin. The spidery handwriting on the official Agatha’s letterhead had had to be translated by a reading spell my mom cast.
    I thought Dad was going to have a heart attack when the letter just appeared with a little puff of smoke in the middle of dinner—right next to the dish of green beans. But he settled down quickly—he was trying so hard to take this move and all the changes well. “It looks like we have mail.” It’s amazing that he can come up with ads that make people want to buy things, because I sure wasn’t buying his casual attitude.
    But that was nothing compared to what happened next: Mom took a quick sip of her wine and summoned the letter to her with a little