Last time on the Summoning, Chloe decides to find out if she’s allowed to be freaked out by Derek.

The plan is simple: they wake up in the middle of the night to go to the office where the files are kept.

Rae had checked out the lock a week ago.

Rae apparently only came up with this plan a week ago. That’s about as bad as her waiting for Chloe to show up before actually trying anything, since we find that Chloe’s job is to stand there uselessly while Rae goes into the room and does everything. Instead of reading the sheets there, she makes copies.

Then they hear someone, so they rush back into the kitchen to pretend they’re just trying to steal food. Naturally, it’s Derek.

Oh, and Chloe has a panic attack just seeing him.

He looked at me and, in a flash, I was back in the basement, sailing through the air.

But it’s fine as long as the file tells her he’s not abusive, surely.

It had been my plan, and I thought it was so clever, but as his gaze swung back my way, the hairs on my neck rose and I knew he didn’t buy it.

It’s the “so clever” that gets me. The phrasing’s used to mock someone for being stupid, yet somehow it’s worked its way into what should be Chloe’s internal narration. There’s something wrong with this author.

Perhaps he’s on better terms with the local ghost and it’s told him about these shenanigans, because he then goes and stares meaningfully at the office door.

They go back to bed. Rae thinks Derek was just going for a snack. Chloe finds it suspicious but doesn’t say so. This actually is a good summation of all of Chloe’s conversations. No one else matters, so there’s no point in sharing information with other people, just weaseling out stuff she doesn’t know from them.

Turns out Simon doesn’t have a file. Eh. So he’s just there to keep his psycho brother in line, that’s pretty much exactly how he’s been acting this entire time anyway. A good show of brotherly devotion, I suppose.

But it also turns out they weren’t put there by beloved dad but child protective services.

…but then what’s Simon doing there? I could totally see his dad telling the people to take both kids but why would a random government agency go along with it?

Also, Derek’s file is only two pages long. …maybe Rae only copied the summary.

The one she found in the dark.

Without looking at any of it.

Diagnosis . . . antisocial personality disorder.

Welp I think we’re done here.

The book just said the brooding loner is a manipulative mastermind because hey, antisocial means jerk right?

(Like Chloe’s schizophrenia, he also flat out can’t be diagnosed with this because one of the criteria is being older than eighteen. But that’s nothing compared to how fucking stupid every other bit of this is.)

So let’s try to recalibrate.

Nope, can’t. This book is a horrible mishmash of pop culture mental illness stuff and shit the author just made up. Not even invented, invented would imply some sort of addition to the world that might be interesting. Let me sum up how mental illness works here:

There are disorders. If you’re visibly crazy, you’re schizo. If you’re normal but like fire, you’re a pyromaniac. If you’re a jerk, antisocial personality disorder. If you’re too teenage girl, borderline personality disorder or maaaaaaaaybe bipolar. All of these are treated with magic medicine that has no side effects, works immediately and is fine to mix with any other drugs, and also doesn’t need to be explained to you. You go live in a big house where you’ve given sharp objects and no real supervision, but you can’t go out or sneak into boy rooms at night. Sometimes the people in charge murder one of the kids possibly by accident.

All of this is normal. Maybe some of it isn’t but how the fuck can I tell? Maybe in dumbass no research land lying to Chloe about her stay and drugging her with unknown pills is good psychiatry! Maybe stuff like Liz’s death happens every other week and there’s nothing unusual about it. Fuck, maybe they brought her back as a super zombie because that’s the cure for poltergeisting and she’s fine now, IT’S NOT LIKE IT’D BE ANY MORE OF A STRETCH AT THIS POINT.

Well, let’s learn what antisocial personality disorder means in dumbass no research land.

Rae doesn’t recognize the term and neither does Chloe, because naturally the film student has never seen a movie where this has come up, despite the fact I doubt the author ever heard it in any other context.

Luckily his papers have an explanation, just in case they were ever stolen by kids who were too stupid to recognize the term.

Antisocial personality disorder had nothing to do with being rude. It meant someone who showed a complete disregard for others

No, that does have to do with being rude. Dumbfuck.

who lacked the ability to empathize—to put himself in another person’s shoes. The disorder was characterized by a violent temper and fits of rage, which only made it worse. If you didn’t understand that you were hurting someone, what would make you stop?

Okay.

So let’s compare this to Derek.

Derek is able to guess Chloe prefers his brother over him and infer that she’ll be more likely to respond to a note by his brother. Real empathy, not proven, but he’s obviously capable of putting himself in another person’s shoes at least long enough to benefit. Derek understands other people have different opinions than he does. (This is perfectly in line with actual, real world sociopathy, of course.) He’s also quite invested in Chloe’s whole ghost thing for someone who’s incapable of caring about people either way.

Derek then had rage fit, which immediately stopped and he either had or pretended to have remorse. So he definitely understood he hurt her and this did make him stop.

So this doesn’t even fit our dumbass no research version.

Then comes the background.

No birth certificate or other identifying records could be found. They likely exist, but the lack of concrete information on his early life makes a proper search impossible. According to DS and his foster brother, SB, Derek came to live with them at approximately five years of age. DS does not recall—or refused to share—the details of his life before this,though his responses suggest he may have been raised in an institutional setting.

Earlier, it identified his real name as Derek Souza and gave a birthdate. But apparently they have no evidence for either, so where’s the surname? The adoptive dad’s name is Bae.

Also, wtf with “his responses suggest”? Someone who’s adopted at age five (theoretically, since they don’t actually know his real age), particularly someone adopted under these sort of sketchy circumstances, probably not going to have the clearest memories and what they do remember is going to be a bunch of jumbled nonsense. They shouldn’t know that. It must be there because Derek actually was and the author just wants to tell us.

Simon’s father, Christopher Bae, appears to have taken de facto custody of DS, with no record of a formal adoption or fostering arrangement. The boys were enrolled in school as “Simon Kim” and “Derek Brown.” The reason for the false names is not known.

Well, considering he obviously forged papers to get the kid enrolled, I believe the obvious reason is BECAUSE DEREK IS KIDNAPPED YOU FUCKING MORONS. “Oh hey I just happened to find this kid and just happened to never bother to tell anyone and just happen not to have any birth certificate, and oh, I also happened to feel like making sure the kid was enrolled under a false name so it’d be that much harder to track him down.” The only confusing point is why he gave his kids two different surnames. I would assume it’s related to Simon also being a stolen kid and maybe some sort of plan so that if anyone tracked down one it wouldn’t be immediately obvious the other kid was also kidnapped.

God, child services suck in dumbass no research land.

Anyway so Derek starts to get sullen and violent as puberty hits, except:

No incidents have been properly documented, making a complete forensic study of the disorder’s progression impossible. DS seems to have avoided expulsion or other serious disciplinary action until

So he has a long history of violent outbursts that there’s no documentation for whatsoever.

Then there’s a single fight where he attacks three kids and cripples one in what officers suspected was a chemically fueled rage though we can guess no one bothered to follow that up in any way either. And since there’s no actual proof those kids didn’t attack him first there’s probably some perfectly good reason for this that the norms and their labels just don’t get. Maybe the kids were zombies or demons or something.

Chloe freaks out because why is someone so dangerous here? Once again, Chloe, you have a psychotic disorder and they’re giving you sharp objects.

See, in dumbass no research land, there are no mysteries, only nonsense that shambles along until it stops at random. You can’t work things out by seeing what’s odd and thinking about it, because there’s no research! Your knowledge or just basic sanity is useless here, random shit just happens at the author’s whim. Is Chloe pointing out a real problem or is this just another iteration of Chloe being bad for her prejudice against the mentally ill? After all, she was thinking something similar about Liz earlier. Maybe we’ll have a very special lesson about how Derek is getting better and Chloe just needs to avoid triggering him with her uppitiness. Maybe Derek is secretly an evil vampire who has the adults in his thrall so he can terrorize the other kids. Who knows! Anything can happen in dumbass no research land.

And we get a dramatic ending line:

I shone the flashlight on my arm. The finger marks were turning purple.

So now Chloe knows she was wrong about it “fading” and leaving her with no evidence, and that the adults will definitely believe her if she says he attacked her because he’s a violent sociopath who’s done so in the past.

Predictions on what Chloe does next?