Last time on the Summoning, Chloe continues to ignore the supernatural, then Liz reappears only for Chloe’s hand to pass right through her.

Chloe is understandably a bit shocked. She recoils and falls off Liz’s bed, and then Liz is gone.

I’d been dreaming.
No, not dreaming. Not imagining things. Hallucinating.
Dr. Gill was right. I had schizophrenia.

So: seeing a girl when you’re still barely conscious because you stupidly took a sleeping pill: schizophrenic hallucinations. Thinking you see a poltergeist tearing apart the room despite everyone saying that every time they’ve seen it it was Liz: totally normal.

But what if it wasn’t? What if Rae was right, and I was seeing ghosts?

More script reading.

Seeing Liz should convince Chloe that she really is just straight up crazy, because she knows Liz isn’t dead. It disproves the ghost theory. Then, she might start getting nervous and want to make sure Liz is all right. Instead, Chloe once again thinks in reverse, first considering if it’s a ghost, them that Liz is fine, probably.

Then, still saying she can barely think because of that sleeping pill, she takes the antipsychotic pill she hid earlier, because that’s such a great idea.

You know, I can completely buy a kid thinking it works this way. But that’s why they should have told her otherwise, and if she does to it, the problems should be shown in the story.

Only Rae joined me for breakfast. Tori was still in her room, and the nurses seemed content to leave her there.

Another point for the theory this place is just warehousing the kids until they off themselves. Moody girl hiding in her room after you take away her best friend without even letting her say goodbye? Best to leave her be, it takes time to cut your wrists successfully.

“I’d like to talk to her if I could,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. Or thank her for helping me my first day.”
Miss Van Dop’s severe face softened. “She needs to settle in, but we’ll call her in a few days and you can speak to her then.”

This totally convinces Chloe somehow. So she’s willing to believe mental institutions can involve tying kids up and then murdering them, but not that the nurse who sent a kid there might lie about it.

I was being paranoid.
Paranoia. Another symptom of schizophrenia.

Okay, shut the fuck up book.

Chloe, as you know full well, is not being paranoid, because paranoia requires an excessive response to otherwise normal information. At most, her hallucination might be tied to budding paranoia, but considering her first hallucination was a nightmare and now her third has also been about something she’s afraid of, that seems the more likely explanation is they’re reflections of that.

If Chloe keeps thinking about this for the rest of the day, getting more and more certain the nurses are sinister and evil, then she can worry about getting paranoid. Until then, stop claiming that “paranoia” refers to reasonable beliefs. Paranoia is really, really awful, and does not need to be confused with minor suspicion.

Chloe goes to class. Tori stays in her room.

I remembered Liz saying Tori was here because she was moody. There’d been a girl at drama camp a couple years ago whom I’d overheard counselors calling “moody.” She’d always seemed to be either really happy or really sad, with no in-between.

So it is supposed to be borderline personality disorder. I mean, I guess it could be just as inaccurate bipolar disorder, but I figure that’d get less screwed up by the book.

Teenagers being up and down is pretty normal. So far, Tori hasn’t done anything outside abnormal, especially considering the circumstances she’s in. This doesn’t mean she can’t have a mood disorder, but the little we’ve seen from her doesn’t require it. She consistently reacts very strongly to things, but she has yet to react inappropriately – her moods are tied to whatever’s going on, and they’ve yet to hit actual extremes.

Chloe works all morning and it finally, finally occurs to her that the poltergeist could have been a hallucination.

You know, I’ve been saying she can’t have schizophrenia because it requires other symptoms and it usually doesn’t hit all of a sudden, but thanks to the miracle of bad writing, Chloe is displaying signs of another symptom. Gill claimed she wasn’t showing any impairment to her thinking, but she’s a couple rocks short of a bag and has been this whole book.

Chloe goes into the kitchen, where once again she’s cornered by the two boys, and once again she tries to pretend she’s fine with this.

Derek stayed in the kitchen, watching me. Studying me, again, with that spookily intense look of his.
“What?” I didn’t mean to snap, but the word came out harsh.
Derek reached for me. I stumbled back . . . and realized he was reaching for the fruit bowl, which I was blocking. My cheeks burned as I darted out of the way, mumbling an apology.

Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

Derek then decides it’s time to demand Chloe tell them what happened last night. She doesn’t. But neither does she say to leave her alone. Instead, she just makes the excuse she needs to leave.

Simon stepped forward, raising a hand as if to stop me. Then he glanced at Derek. I didn’t catch the look that passed between them, but it made Simon pull back, nod a good-bye to me, and busy himself unwrapping the rest of his bar.

HATE

See, I get that they apparently know something that’s going on and are probably trying to help, and that they can easily be totally unaware that the two of them cornering her all the time is just slightly threatening. But this book has no right to be unaware of it.

Next, Peter gets to go home! Godspeed, Peter. You were too good for this book. Everyone (except Tori, who’s probably bleeding out in her bedroom) has a little party to celebrate.

complete with cake. Low-fat, organic, frosting-free carrot cake.

I hate diet food and yet I still want Chloe to stop whining about rich girl problems.

Anyway, the sight of Peter escaping makes Chloe reaffirm her plan of pretending she’s fine long enough to leave so she can continue frantically trying to ignore hallucinations in her own home instead.

Another treading water chapter done.

We’re about one fourth of the way into this book, and I’d estimate we had maybe three chapters worth of plot. Chloe sees ghosts, people think she’s hallucinating, Liz is supernatural too.

There are two perfectly good actual storylines the book is frantically avoiding.

Storyline one: Chloe thinks there’s something up but can’t prove it. Insisting she’s not crazy, she hides her medication and investigates everything even halfway suspicious, but slowly begins to wonder if it really is all in her head. Or, Chloe is taking her medication and actually starting to lose it as a result. There are just enough hints with the ghosts and Liz to leave open the possibility that maybe there’s something up, but not enough to confirm.

I’m not a big fan of storyline one, since it relies on a mystery we already know the answer to and a resolution we already know the answer to, but it can be done decently, especially if the characterization is done well, and it’s definitely better than the same lack of answers but having it because Chloe just sits around stupidly.

Storyline two: Chloe realizes she’s not crazy and has to try to find out what’s actually going on. She immediately and vocally insists Liz actually had a poltergeist, only to be rebuffed. She tries to call Liz, only for the hospital to not know what she’s talking about. Then they take her phone away before she can contact her father, all the while insisting that it’s just the schizophrenia making her think this. And now she has to escape before they kill her like they killed Liz.