Great little story. The telegraphing was heavy-handed, I agree, but the current trend in YA stories (at least the ones I read) is that parts of them are heavily telegraphed, but there's a twist at the end you didn't expect. In this case, it was that Hunt stood up for Rider and forced the group to keep her at her current standing.
I did expect the story to go in a "magical high school" direction once Aunt Simone went off to the pointy hats section, but it didn't. I don't remember Hunt making a face or otherwise reacting to Simone's little joke, especially since Simone DID turn her into an emu the previous summer, but that would've been cool too.
I laughed a lot at parts of this story as well.
Good reading, although the sound quality seemed to shift in places, getting more or less hollow, as if certain lines were re-recorded (which is entirely possible).