Last time on the Summoning, don’t you hate it when adults insist boys shouldn’t manhandle you, even when you try to lie to protect them? Adults just don’t understand, he didn’t mean to do it! It was just you made him mad! He’d never really hurt you!

I’D SPENT THAT FIRST class braced for Miss Van Dop or Dr. Gill to stride in and yank Derek out for a “conference.”

Yep, that’s totally what you should be worried about there, Chloe.

What’s somewhat interesting here is Chloe actually has a reason to be anxious. She’s already behind Liz’s disappearance. If she gets rid of a second kid, how will the remaining kids treat her? And if any of them do start bullying her, will the staff continue to believe her or will they start to think she’s the problem?

Of course, the small cast means this isn’t much of an issue. If Derek leaves, so does Simon. Tori will be livid, but Tori’s already livid, so there’s no change there. And there’s no sign Rae cares about either boy, plus with the boys gone her only options for a friend are Chloe or Tori, so she’d probably stay friends with Chloe.

Anyway, she tells us Simon always goes to the bathroom before a meal (…she’s already noticed this after just two days?) and then she mentions he’s shoving something into his pocket when he comes out. So Simon’s doing something. Well, that was informative.

Derek is there but he doesn’t seem mad at her, so Chloe assumes everything’s fine because Chloe is a fucking moron. Then Derek heads up to get something from his room and Simon’s all …OH I GUESS I’LL GO TOO so they’ll probably plot to murder her or something.

I hope so, I want something to happen already.

After lunch, it was my turn to take out the trash. Life experience, I kept telling myself as I wheeled the wagon to the shed, swatting away flies buzzing in for a closer look. All life experience. You never know when I’d need a critical scene with the protagonist hauling trash.

You know, I realize people have a wide range of childhoods and stuff, but the more Chloe talks, the more I see her aunt’s point. She doesn’t do any chores at all. She can’t do basic cooking, she can’t wash her own clothes, she’s never taken the trash out.

The sun was shining, heat beating down on my face, tree and daffodils blossoming, the faint smell of newly cut grass almost masking the stink of rotting garbage.

Speaking of life experience, my actual life experience is that newly cut grass doesn’t mask rot all that well. And my life experience is also that garbage takes time to rot, yet in a house with this many people, they should need to throw it out quite regularly just to free up space.

Then Chloe sees a little girl in a ridiculous frilly victorian dress in the yard next to hers.

I tossed the bags into the shed, where they’d be sale from marauding raccoons and skunks. The bags thumped as they hit the wooden floor

…okay, if the bags are closed well enough to do that, then she shouldn’t be able to smell anything much. And also, why are they thrown in a shed? They don’t have an actual dumpster, but they’re still generating bags of trash? This doesn’t seem a very hygienic system, especially not with kids just chucking them onto the floor to break, and with no real protection from raccoons. A shed door isn’t going to stop one of them.

Anyway, Chloe figures the little kid’s a ghost, but after she says hi the girl’s mom runs out because actually the kid was in the outfit because she was getting her picture taken.

“I told you not to go near that fence, Amanda. Never talk to the kids over there. Never, do you hear me?”
Don’t talk to the crazy kids. I longed to shout back that we weren’t crazy. I’d mistaken her kid for a ghost, that’s all.

You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the women doesn’t give a fuck about your stupid hallucinations. A lot of the kids there are dangerous. Liz could have hurt the kid without meaning to. We haven’t seen any proof Tori’s especially violent, but she just got into a fight on the third morning and we don’t know how far she’d have gone if there weren’t adults right there to grab her before she could do anything. Derek can easily kill her and presumably would if she did anything to set him off, and that’s ignoring his actual diagnosis, which is that he might happily trick her into range and strangle her for the hell of it. The safest kid is Rae who plays with matches, which even if we assume she’s competent with is not something you want your three year old learning is fun.

It is bad that people believe anyone with a mental illness is dangerous. But if the book wants to condemn that, maybe it shouldn’t have then had most of the mentally ill kids be dangerous. This is like a Very Special Comicbook where the people living near Arkam Asylum protest having it in a populated area with lots of kids, and everyone gets a lecture about how most mentally ill people are perfectly harmless, and then the Joker breaks out again and uses their skin as part of an elaborate tapestry.

I couldn’t be the only person in the world who saw ghosts. Was it something I’d inherited, like blue eyes? Or was it something I’d contracted, like a virus?

Nope, you totally could be the first and only. I’m not sure why you think it’s so impossible when you’re able to accept the idea you’re SEEING GHOSTS.

Here we run into a common problem with these things.

Chloe is actually seeing ghosts. It should be relatively easy to verify she’s seeing ghosts assuming the ghosts are able to perceive their modern surroundings, which we know they can because the ghost in the prologue could fake being the babysitter. Science has wasted a lot of time, effort and money on trying to find the paranormal. There are people who would kill for a chance to help her prove that the ghosts are real. If anyone in recent times could see ghosts, they would have ample ways to prove it.

There had to be others. How would I find them? Could I? Should I?

There probably aren’t, the internet, yes it’s the internet, what’s the big deal of course you should.

The thump of footsteps told me someone was coming. A living person. That was one lesson I’d already learned: ghosts can yell, cry, and talk, but they don’t make any noise when they move.

But they do produce echos.

You know what would actually work well? If ghosts only interacted with the world when they remembered it. So a ghost that remembers the echo of a shout will have an echo, and one who remembers footsteps will have those, and one who remembers shadows will have one. That’d be a unifying rule that’d still allow a lot of variation.

Alternatively, the author could just not be so stupid she doesn’t know how echos work. If you’re going to have your character pondering how things work, you should give it a bit of thought.

I was still behind the shed, hidden from view. Like being in the basement, only here, no one would hear me scream for help.

So Chloe is honestly terrified of Derek hurting her, yet this hasn’t been a factor at any point in all the decisions made about him.

It’s not Derek, though. It’s Simon. But he’s mad. He wants to know what Chloe said.

Simon explains that his brother has been perfect since he got here. (which, Simon? Doesn’t actually sound that good, you make it sound like he’s been successfully hiding his serial killer tendencies or something) and now he’s suddenly in trouble and if he gets near Chloe he’s gone. Well, maybe he should leave Chloe the fuck alone, did you think of that? It’s not like she’s been seeking him out.

“Something happened with you two last night, didn’t it? Derek came upstairs completely freaked out. Said he was talking to you and screwed up. That’s all he’d tell me.”

This, in contrast, is more sympathetic. He sounds like he’s actually sorry about the whole attacking her business. Of course, he might just be upset that things didn’t go how he wanted.

I considered the truth—that I hadn’t meant to tattle on Derek. I’d been quiet at breakfast and my aunt had figured out I was upset. But that might sound as if I’d been sulking, wanting her to drag it out of me.

So instead she lies. She says she rolled up her shirt and her aunt saw the marks. That actually sounds a hell of a lot more like someone trying to get the adult to notice.

Anyway, so Simon’s all “but it was an accident right???”

“He threw me across the room.”
Simon’s eyes widened, then he lowered his lids to hide his surprise. “But he didn’t mean to. If you saw how freaked out he was last night, you’d know that.”
“So that makes it okay? If I lose my temper and smack you, it’s all right, because I didn’t mean to, didn’t plan to.”
“You don’t understand. He just—”
“She’s right.” Derek’s voice preceded him around the corner.

Thank you Derek. You may be tolerable after all.

…

“I wanted to talk to you last night. When you tried to leave, I pulled you back and …” He trailed off, gaze shunting to the side.
“You threw me across the room.”
“I didn’t— Yeah, you’re right. Like I said. No excuse, Simon? Let’s go.”

Yay for apologizing. Thank you Derek.

Simon does not take the hint and continues insisting Derek didn’t mean to, he doesn’t know his own strength, etc etc. What’s missing from this conversation is that Derek also tricked her into the meeting and wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Derek says it doesn’t matter.

You want me to stay away from you? Wish granted.”

…okay, that’s a bit petulant, Derek.

Then Simon summons fog using his vampire powers. There are vampires, right? I want vampires.

Derek yells at Simon for doing this, but then…

I turned, pointing at the fog. “What is that?”
“What’s what?” Derek followed my finger. “Huh. Must be a ghost. No, wait, you don’t see ghosts. You hallucinate. Guess it’s a hallucination then.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s nothing, Chloe.” He pushed his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Just your imagination, like everything else. Now run along and take your meds and be a good girl. Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of your way from now on. Seems I made a mistake. A big mistake.”

So suddenly Derek’s back to being a controlling asshole.

Chloe, rightly, is getting pissed, so Derek taunts her further, saying she can’t hit him or else she’ll be the one who gets in trouble. Actually, asshole, I’m pretty sure if she hits you after you’ve cornered her behind a shed with your brother right after being told to leave her the fuck alone, you’re still the one who’ll be blamed, and rightly fucking so.

Simon stepped forward. “Cut it out, Derek. She didn’t tattle—”
“He knows that,” I cut in, holding Derek’s gaze. “He’s baiting me. He’s a jerk and a bully and whatever ‘secrets’ he’s taunting me with, he can keep them. He’s right. I’m not interested.”

Uh actually Chloe, Simon’s the one taunting you with the magic fog.

The whole thing actually reads really weird, like the two exchange personalities. Derek’s apologizing and Simon’s arguing, then after Simon summons the fog Derek starts taunting her and Simon tries to defend her.

Let’s just go with them both being assholes.

Anyway.

So, magic fog! That’s not really a very impressive magic trick. I mean, it could be cool in a competent person setting. I’m quite fond of low level magic getting used inventively. But the entire cast doesn’t have a full brain between them, so I’m not even going to hope.

Also, magic fog runs into my same issue as with the ghost seeing. It’s a problem I have with a lot of settings where there’s secret magic. Unless there’s people enforcing the masquerade really, really well, this should have come out already. And randomly summoning magic fog for a petty reason is not a sign of a believable masquerade.