“What have you been smoking?” Kyle said. “Lay off the incense and wake up, hippie! You heard the president. The Clann isn't a bunch of peace-loving vegans dancing around a bonfire singing ‘Kumbayah’. They blew up our freaking president! Who knows what they’ll do next? And did you notice how nobody can explain what the bombs were made of or how the terrorists got the bombs past security onto both a plane and right outside the White House gates? How do we know these Clann members really don't have some freaky abilities the government can’t explain, like that Simon Phillips guy claimed on TV, and all those other outcasts on YouTube? Abilities that probably came from…where?”
Several students murmured “from demons” and nodded.
No matter how much I yearned to, I would not jump out of my chair and try to smack some sense into them or Kyle. That would just be giving them what they wanted.
So I gripped the edges of my desk, took a deep breath, and did my best to stay calm. “How do we know our own government’s not actually behind the explosions? Simon Phillips could have been wrong about his boys’ causing them. He wasn’t there. At the very least, the government could be making up the terrorist story to cover up the fact that they haven’t got a clue what really happened.” I sat back in my seat and tried not to notice how the plastic chair bumped against a certain someone's desk behind me. “I think the government’s just using misinformation and scare tactics so they can eventually push through laws that will allow them to censor our books and internet and who knows what else. And obviously the scare tactics are already working if you’re ready to start burning books now.”
“I'm not scared.” The muscles in Kyle's jaw knotted. “I just think everyone has the right to know who could use dangerous and weird new abilities on them at any second, especially when no metal detector or bomb squad dog can say who the threats are. We have a right to be able to protect and defend ourselves.”
Murmurs of agreement hummed throughout the room, making his scowl turn into a smirk of victory.
Spurred on by the sounds of agreement around him, Kyle added, “Think about it. Anyone around us could secretly be one of these freaks, capable of blowing us up or who knows what else at any second. Why would anyone in their right minds want to have to deal with the possibility of being around someone literally going nuclear just because they missed the latest shoe sale, or some chick's PMSing, or they walk in on their husband cheating on them with some other woman? I say we get rid of the problem instead. We should do whatever it takes to make everyone else safe again. Let’s go a step further. Instead of burning the magic books, let’s leave them out there as bait then throw anyone who reads them into prison. Or hey, better still, let’s study these Clann members, figure out a way to stop their abilities and develop a blood test or something that we can give to everyone to find out who has these abilities in the first place. Then we wouldn’t even need to bait them into coming out of hiding because we could just test their blood!”
A groan escaped me, despite my best efforts to hold it in. I twisted in my seat so I could look directly at Kyle without getting a crick in my neck. “This is so ridiculous. You're saying everyone should ignore the possibilities for human evolution, even purposefully stop that evolution, just because humans can't be trusted to learn how to control themselves? That's like saying all guns should be destroyed because some idiots out there use them for bad instead of good.”
Rumbles of murmurs around the room as that particular argument hit a nerve, just as I'd expected. Not too many southerners wanted to hear about gun control. They needed to understand that locking up descendants and outcasts from the Clann who might or might not be dangerous was the exact same thing.
I shook my head. “History’s full of people who were afraid of new technologies or abilities they couldn’t understand, so they called it dark magic and started burning people at the stake. But we should be smarter as a species by now. Why not give these outcasts the chance to learn how to develop control over their abilities and use them to improve all our lives instead?”
“Or—” Mr. Sherman began.
“Or we could just do exactly like we're already doing,” Kyle said. “Get rid of the problem.”
“By banning books about magic and throwing anyone who's different into prison?” I said, beyond all hope of keeping my voice calm at this point as the blood rushed to my head and made my eardrums feel like they were going to explode. He was talking about our fellow students, our neighbors and friends, people like Aimee.
How in the world could Hayden be friends with idiots like this? Kyle was beyond narrow minded, beyond anything I'd ever seen. And I'd thought my mother was inflexible. At least she wanted to help the 'delusional' Clann members and outcasts with psychotherapy, not kill them!
Mr. Sherman raised his hands palms out. “Okay, guys, let's take this down a notch. Of course we're going to be a little nervous now with all this terrorist talk. But what about the positives? I think Tarah’s on to something here. What if these Clann people did have magical abilities that could be used for good, such as healing cancer, or controlling the rain to help areas hit by drought or flooding, or even the ability to freeze bank robbers in their tracks without anyone getting hurt?”
Kyle snorted. “This ain't a comic book we're talking about here. They’re demon worshippers, not Superman.”
Breathe, Tarah, I told myself yet again. Just do like Mom taught you and breathe slowly and deeply.
Mr. Sherman frowned. “All I'm saying is, even if there are many others out there with the same type of special abilities as Simon Phillips demonstrated and described, there's no reason to assume the worst would happen. We should try to see the positive potential in the situation too. Like Tarah said, just because two Clann outcasts might have caused harm doesn't mean all of them will, any more than everyone who owns a gun will use it to rob and murder. Now, I've heard that instead of being imprisoned, these descendants and outcasts are actually being sent to internment camps created specifically for this situation—”
“Yeah, that's the rumor,” Kyle said. “But I think that's dumb, even dumber than sending them to a regular prison would be. Why bother locking them up at all? Then the taxpayers, the ones who followed the law in the first place, are stuck with the bill of feeding and housing the freaks. Better just to shoot them all and let God sort them out.”
Shoot them all and let God sort them out?
I gripped my desk with both hands, afraid if I let go that I might do something stupid, as my entire body vibrated with a level of fury I'd never felt before.
Hayden
I didn’t know what to flip out about first…the fact that the entire country had just gone on a witchhunt for the Clann, or that Tarah was obviously one of them.
All those years we were best friends, playing Medieval Times with Damon in the woods behind our houses and at school during recess, she'd never once given any hint that she was different. But obviously Tarah must have developed her ability to do magic of some kind. Otherwise why get so worked up about it now?
Her being a descendant or outcast would certainly explain a lot of other things too.
Was that the reason she'd stopped hanging out with Damon and me, because she'd started to develop weird abilities that made her feel like a freak and she couldn't hide them from us anymore? If so, then I clearly never knew her as well as I’d believed.
From what little I did know, it seemed like these Clann people tended to specialize in working with only one or two of the elements...fire, water, earth, wind. What elements could Tarah work with? And how had she managed to hide what she could do while at school?
“Let's stay with the possibility of those internment camps,” Mr. Sherman said. “I've heard enough rumors about them in the news to think it's probable they're actually being built. Which leads us to this week's assignment. A thousand word essay, due on Friday, comparing today's Clann internment camps to the Japanese-American internment camps that were used after Japan's attack on Pea
rl Harbor as well as the concentration camps where the Nazis sent the Jews during World War II.”
A chorus of groans rang out as Mr. Sherman listed all the subtopics to be covered in our papers. The subpar conditions in the Jewish and Japanese-American camps, and ways that the modern internment camps might be better or worse due to the United States’ Patriot Act and the unique powers Clann descendants and outcasts might have. The financial loss as a result of being imprisoned. The moral and ethical considerations of our current government's segregation of Clann people. The possible physical and psychological consequences.
But it was hard to focus on the details of the assignment. While he spoke, Mr. Sherman flipped through pictures of the Jewish and Japanese-American camps on the computerized projector. And I kept thinking about the people I knew who might already be labeled by the government as Clann terrorists. People like Aimee, who must have been sent to one of the new internment camps along with her family.
And people who were still free, but might not be for long. Like Tarah.
The bell rang, and I had to fight the urge to run to my AP English class, eager to get my mind on something else for awhile. Something that wouldn't make my stomach roll and my gut knot up.
But then Ms. Brown announced our newest assignment, the movie Schindler's List, and I realized just how long a week it was going to be.
Because the movie was too graphic to be shown at school, Ms. Brown had us watch it at home that night on the school's On Demand website, then write a five hundred word essay summarizing how Oskar Schindler grew from a selfish, opportunistic entrepreneur into a selfless savior of a thousand persecuted Jews.
Mom tried to make me come down for dinner halfway through the movie. But no way could I eat. Every Jew hiding under a bed or inside a piano from the Nazis, every prisoner forced to work in their labor camps, every woman who was shoved into the gas chambers to be turned into dust and ashes, could have been Tarah being sent to her death.
Why hadn't she told Damon and me about her growing abilities? We were her best friends for years. Did she think we couldn't keep a secret, or that we'd be too afraid of her to want to still be friends? Was that why she stopped hanging out with us and started hanging out with her new friends instead, because they knew what she could do and helped her hide it?
If so, she wasn't nearly as smart as I thought. How many times had Damon and I pretended to be knights saving our Queen Tarah’s life? She had to have known that wasn't only kids' games, that we really would have done anything to help her if she had only asked us to.
Instead, she had entrusted her secrets to people like that hotheaded Gary and Aimee, people who thought it was cool to make videos of themselves standing up to the government and showing off on the internet. They couldn't even keep their own secrets, much less someone else's. As soon as some FBI agent brought them in for questioning, they'd throw Tarah under the bus in a heartbeat just to save themselves.
Damon and I would have died to save her if necessary.
Now Damon was gone, and Tarah hadn't said more than a hundred words to me in years, and she could be thrown into one of those internment camps at any moment...
I took a deep breath, then realized I'd been too lost in thought and missed half an hour of the movie. Time for a break to refocus. Now more than ever I had to stay calm and keep it together.
I paused the video, grabbed the basketball off my bedside table, then flopped back on my bed and set the ball to spinning on my fingertips, one finger at a time. After a couple of minutes, watching the brownish orange blur helped clear my head.
I was probably worrying for nothing. Tarah had been smart enough to keep her Clann side a secret this long. If not for the openly rebellious crowd she hung out with and her slinging clearly anarchist views in World History class, I never would have guessed her for the Clann type. Maybe I could talk to her in between classes, get her to see that hanging out with her current group of friends was too dangerous for her. Unlike my dad, Tarah's parents must have never warned her that our friends in high school were like team mates in a four year long game of basketball. We didn't have to like our friends, but we did have to choose them carefully and make sure they didn't bring us down or trip us up.
Right now, Tarah's choice of friends was an added danger she couldn't afford. It was only a matter of time before her opinions and their loose lips got all of them into trouble.
Tarah had always been stubborn and opinionated, but surely she'd listen to a former friend and change up her game plan.
Especially if it meant keeping her butt out of an internment camp. Or worse.
CHAPTER 4
Saturday, December 12th
6:14 am
The nightmare that night hit me hard and fast. It was nothing I hadn’t dreamed about or seen in person before...full of the smoke of burning leaves and trees and human flesh and screams, and Damon shouting my name.
But what happened when I woke up was definitely not the norm.
It took a few minutes to separate myself from the dream, to resist the urge to lash out at no one. I peeled the sweaty sheets away from me and let the air conditioner dry me off.
Then I realized I was levitating three feet above my bed’s mattress.
I hissed out a curse. This could not be happening! Not now. If my parents saw this...
Calm down, Shepherd, I told myself over and over, forcing my breathing to slow down.
Slowly my body lowered back down to the mattress. But even then I couldn’t fully relax. This was getting out of control again. I had to find a way to rein it in. But how? My only guide had been Damon.
Damon. He might be gone, but surely he’d left behind something that might help...a journal or notes or a spellbook maybe?
Walking as quietly as I could on bare feet, I eased down the second floor hallway, its unyielding hardwood surface cold against my clammy soles, until I reached the door that no one, not even the housekeeper, dared touch.
I hesitated there for a minute, trying to gather my courage. I hadn’t been in my brother’s room in months. And yet when I finally made my hand turn the doorknob and open the door, the room was exactly the same as I’d remembered it. The desk, computer monitor, nightstand and shelves full of sports trophies were all dust free too. Mom must have been in here to clean it.
Would she have thrown out any magic books Damon might have had lying around?
No. This place was like a shrine to my brother’s memory. Even embarassing or potentially soon-to-be-banned books would never be thrown away. She might have hidden them somewhere out of sight, though.
I opened the window’s curtains so the sunlight could come in and give me something to see better by. Then I started checking drawers and under the bed and mattress, finding a couple of dirty magazines that would have made Mom gasp, but nothing that would have tarnished Dad’s ultra conservative political rep.
The closet. It was the last place left to check.
I ignored the floor’s pile of cleats, muddy sneakers, baseball mitts and footballs, and went straight for the shelf that ran above the hanging rod of clothes. The shelf was full of shoeboxes with weird stuff in them...dried plants, rocks, some velvet pouches I wasn’t stupid or brave enough to open.
No books or journals, though.
Then my hand dropped down to the clothes hanging below the shelf, and as if drawn like metal to a magnet, my fingertips found fabric I would never forget the feeling of till the day I died.
The robes were made out of something coarse and nubby, like some kind of old fashioned, hand woven wool. I’d never asked Damon where he and his buddies had gotten them, or what had possessed them to choose a fabric that must have been hotter than Hell itself in the East Texas summers. Not that I’d had to personally deal with that problem, considering Damon hadn’t let me wear the robes because he'd claimed I was still too much of a newbie.
“You’ve got to earn them, jerkface,” Damon had said with a laugh, taking my punch to his arm with nothing mor
e than a cocky grin.
I’d vowed to buy my own robes if necessary. But I’d never gotten the chance.
"I thought your mother threw that out." Dad's voice inside the bedroom doorway made me nearly jump out of my skin.
It took a few seconds to catch my breath and think of a reply. "I guess not."
"She always was overly sentimental." He stayed in the doorway, as if something about the room disgusted him. "What are you doing in here?"
I shrugged, my heart racing. "Had bad dreams and was thinking about him."
Dad nodded. "I come in here too sometimes when I'm missing him more than usual. He was a great kid."
"A great brother too." My throat tightened to the point of pain.
"Too bad he had to act so stupid sometimes."
"You mean…the party?" I'd lied to my parents about it too, never once even hinting that the real reason Damon had taken me to that secret gathering was so I could learn how to control the magic growing like a cancer inside me, waiting to lash out if I didn’t put a leash on it. The training sessons had been a secret Damon had tried to pass down to me. A secret he’d ultimately died for.
"He never should have been there. Never should have gotten involved with that crowd. I warned him about having friends like that. Damon died because of them." Dad's voice was harsh, grating with barely controlled fury. "He wouldn’t listen to me. He was always too good hearted, always looking to make friends with anyone at all. Always looking for the good in others, even when there wasn’t any good to find. I couldn’t make him see how important it was to fit in. He thought being nice made it okay to be different, that he didn't have to worry about trying to fit in. And he paid for it with his life."
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