Last time on the Summoning, scary ghosts in the basement.

I BOLTED UP IN BED, one hand clutching my pendant, the other wrapped in my sheets. I struggled to recapture wisps of the dream already fluttering away. Something about a basement… a little girl . . . me? I couldn’t remember ever having a basement—we’d always lived in condo apartments.

Hello most annoying plot device to ever exist.

People do not forget their dreams the instant they wake up. Dreams just happen to not write well into your memory, so you forget them very rapidly after waking up. This isn’t even the way they fade – you’ll remember the strongest part of the dream without the connections between them. a little girl . . . me? is particularly bad. I will sometimes talk about my dreams saying I was sort of the person and sort of not, but dreams aren’t real, and I’m never trying to work out if I was actually the person or not, I’m just saying that my perspective on the dream was flipping between watching it happen to someone and being the person.

Not remembering the real basement is more understandable. Or, it may be more understandable. How far back you remember does vary a great deal. Personally, I can remember a couple bits from when I was around two, but that was a place we stayed until I was about six, which helps. I do know that I was absolutely terrified of the basement when I was at the younger end of the range, and that’s definitely seared into my memory. I’m not sure how much my brother remembers, but I know we spent quite a few years with him discovering snow exists when we got to winter, and he can’t remember any cats from before the last move (which would be age 7), while I can remember every pet we’ve had. (Granted, it takes me a while, but that’s more the fact it’s a long list by this point. See, first we got this kitten who was an orange tabby who I named Oliver, and then the landlady said no pets, so we gave him away, and then we got four mice who I had to keep a secret and then we had…)

That said, it’s also just lazy, for the same reason saying she doesn’t remember her dream is lazy. In both cases I think it’s better to stay on the better memory side of the scale.

So in short, age two, likely no memory, anything older, pushing it a bit for something that major. Chloe is fifteen, putting baby Chloe just within the acceptable edge for me at age 3. I don’t expect anything clear, but not even knowing they lived in a house at one point is a pretty major thing to forget.

Also, her fixating on if she’d living in a basement or not is silly because she knows what basements are and she’s obviously seen horror movies with monsters in basements. It’s like me having a nightmare about being on a sinking cruse ship full of zombies and thinking it was weird because I’d never been on a sinking cruse ship. Also, all those nightmares about living in a haunted house when my family has never bought giant mansions with dubious histories and an odd malevolence to them.

Oh, and look, she’s got a pendant. I can’t really mock too much, because I admit pendants are really cool, but come on, how about a bracelet or something holding whatever mystical important whatever? They seem studier. Actually, you know what would be a great option? An anklet. Even more securely attached and the least likely to get stolen. Anyway, I’m going to guess here that the pendant has been suppressing her ghost powers and menstruation is messing that up.

“Chloe!” Annette shrieked. “Why hasn’t your alarm gone off? I’m the housekeeper, not your nanny. If you’re late again, I’m calling your father.”

…okay, so shrieked is just not a very good word to use. If you’ve going to pull it out, you generally want to get a reasonable point into the story.

We are doing relatively well with female characters – the mother was by far the bigger presence in the prologue. But that won’t count for much if she ends up being treated as the exception and not the rule.

Apparently, Chloe’s dad is off in Berlin, and it sounds like her mom is dead by how she’s not referenced at all.

Aunt Lauren swore I’d shoot up—and out—when I finally got my period.

This is actually pretty nonsensical. I mean, maybe it’s a matter of the adult just saying whatever to comfort her (though apparently Aunt Lauren is a doctor), but getting your period isn’t really connected to puberty growth spurts, and if anything it’s the other way around. By age fifteen, she should have already done most of her growing, and if anything, getting her period at that point would probably indicate she isn’t going to grow further.

Also, looks like her wait is about to be over.

Most of my friends had gotten theirs at twelve, eleven even.

As one of the lucky eleven year olds, no, most kids don’t have them by twelve. She is definitely late and all, but this is pretty exaggerated. If anything, it seems like this is designed to increase kids’ feelings they’re inadequate.

“Chloe!” The door shuddered under Annette’s meaty fist.

So she’s a fat shrieking harpy. That makes it so much better, book.

Chloe is considering streaking her hair. She’s a strawberry blonde with fine straight hair, and because this is a book for impressionable girls, she’s insecure about those things because NOTHING IS GOOD ENOUGH YOU MIGHT AS WELL KILL YOURSELF LITTLE GIRLS. She settles on putting the hair dye in her backpack.

Apparently, Mom died midway through first grade. Chloe doesn’t elaborate.

She then gets in the taxi with her usual driver. Chloe is apparently pretty damn rich.

“An action-adventure. You know, lots of guns, things blowing up. A real shoot-’em-down movie.”
I hated correcting Milos’s English, but he insisted on it. “You mean, a shoot-’em-up movie.”
He cocked one dark brow . “When you shoot a man, which way does he fall? Up?”

I can’t honestly say no one acts like this, but I’ve really never encountered the ESL speaker with his witty reinterpretations of English. Especially when common American phrases are so common even outside America. Also, Chloe, most people have dark brows. I am wondering why you needed to bring that up right now.

Chloe suddenly sees a kid jump into traffic and yells at Milos to stop. Naturally, there is no kid because Chloe obviously saw a ghost. There’s an extra clue in that he’s carrying an “old-fashioned” lunch box, and everyone knows that old-fashioned means ghost in a story like this.

“Th-th-th—” I clenched my fists, as if that could somehow force the word out. If you get jammed, take another route, my speech therapist always said. “I thought I saw some-wha-wha—”

While stuttering is a very varied problem, rerouting is more a dysnomia issue to my understanding. Here, she’s obviously having trouble making sounds in general.

Also, in terms of things that will make teenage life hell, I would rank stuttering a few miles above not having your period.

She manages to calm down a bit and then say the sentence properly, which does fit a bit better with my understanding of stuttering.

Thing is, if her stuttering is a significant enough disorder for a speech therapist, why hasn’t it shown up when she’s yelling at the housekeeper and everything? If it only kicks in when she thinks she saw a kid run over by a car, that’s not a disorder.

Anyway, Milos says that yeah, sometimes he sees someone out of the corner of his eye too. This is a very good point, Milos. In fact, I would suggest that it would have been a better idea to not have her staring intently at the kid because of his nifty lunch box, but just to see a flash of a kid heading into the traffic, so that answer would at least seem plausible to her. Also, for real red herring goodness, say the kid’s dressed quite modernly. After all, people die all the time.

These are some pretty short chapters. I may start doubling up on them, because there’s like fifty of them and I want to be done eventually.

We’re still in weird product placement land. Her dad has a BlackBerry, and she had a Sailor Moon backpack when she was in kindergarten. This is why it’s not such a great idea, I’m just stuck trying to figure out at what time period both of those were at peak popularity.