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be pointless to push this issue with her again. If we tried, it would only lead to a lot of yelling and Dad sleeping on the couch and all of us going through yet another long round of family therapy sessions with one of her peers. And I’d already had more than enough therapy to last a lifetime.
    I gave Dad a sad smile then made my escape.
    In my room with my door safely shut and locked behind me, I walked over to my closet then hesitated, my hands resting on the bifold doors' plastic knobs.
    There is no such thing as magic, Tarah, my mother’s often repeated argument echoed through my thoughts. That’s just your father’s crazy love for fantasy books stirring up your imagination.
    I slid the doors open then used both my arms to shove back the clothing that hung inside, parting them to reveal my own "research lab" of sorts... two black framed bulletin boards I’d secretly had Jeremy screw into the closet’s back wall for me before he left home. Mom never saw them since I'd been doing my own laundry for years now. Which was a very good thing, because if she'd seen these, she really would have insisted on more family therapy sessions.
    The boards were covered with news articles printed off from the internet, each one held in place by clear plastic push pins. Around each push pin, a red string looped and stretched, connecting causes with their events throughout history. Taken at a glance, anyone else might see only a crazy, tangled up mess of a spider web. Unless they took the time to see the dates I'd circled in red ink on each news article.
    But what alway drew my focus and made my heart hammer like crazy was the length of time that stretched between each historical cause and effect event.
    It was getting progressively shorter.
    Tonight wasn't the first time I'd heard about the Clann. East Texas was full of rumors about it. In fact, just a half hour's drive from Tyler was a mid sized town called Jacksonville, which was rumored to be the Clann's headquarters and full of all kinds of strange people and even stranger things going on. A few years ago, Jacksonville had even been nearly destroyed by what locals claimed to be some sort of Clann civil war, though the news had blamed it on gang violence instead.
    Until tonight, I'd always thought it was the Clann who should be blamed for the rising disastrous pattern of cause and effect tragedies. I'd never considered the possibility that the Clann might have outcast members who could be behind it all.
    Simon's theory made sense, though. In fact, it was the only thing that made sense. I'd never been able to find a good motive for the Clann to cause all those disasters. Why create so much chaos and pain and death and loss and risk bringing attention to themselves in the process?
    But u ntrained outcasts could easily be making things happen worldwide accidentally without even realizing the power they were wielding against their fellow humans. Especially if certain events in the news managed to stir them up collectively and lead them to feeling a kind of group negativity in the same direction at around the same time.
    The question was...if the outcasts learned what they could do, would this stop the cause and effect pattern?
    Or would it only make things worse?
    Monday, November 23rd
    Hayden
    Kyle slammed his tray down beside me on the table the next day in the cafeteria. Everyone at our table looked up.
    “ What's up with you today?” I asked around a mouthful of pizza while Kyle flopped into the plastic chair beside me.
    He looked at me like I was some kind of alien. “Seriously? You don't watch the news, do you?”
    I shrugged. “Sometimes. Why, did I miss something new?”
    Kyle's girlfriend Becky, captain of the Raiderettes Varsity Cheer Squad, laughed at me and shook her head. Her short, curly red ponytail with its extra shellacking of hair products never budged beneath its crisp red and black bow. “Uh, yeah. The father of those D.C. terrorists is claiming he's some kind