Last time on the Summoning, magic fog! That actually counts as something major happening compared to the rest, fuck my life.

WHEN I CAME IN THE back door, I almost mowed down Tori.
“Have fun putting out the trash?” she asked.

That’s all. Even read in the most sneering tone imaginable, it’s still no big deal. Chloe assumes Tori’s being (presumably) nasty here because she saw Simon talking to her, but the far more likely option is she’s just still angry about Liz, considering it’s only been a few hours since she was chasing after Chloe just to insult her more over that.

Anyway, Chloe is a good girl so she decides not to get into an argument and apparently just wanders away without saying anything.

Then we learn about Rae. Rae’s mom apparently really likes adopting kids but loses interest in them when they’re older. I wish this book wasn’t so full of bad writing, because by this point I’m stuck in oppositional mode and feel like pointing out that Rae is a teenager and teenagers believe all sorts of things about their parents that isn’t true. I got along terribly with my mother at this age, but that wasn’t because Mom she bored with me.

Interestingly, Rae’s recap removes the father from the picture, with all the blame going on her mother for being flighty and treating kids like new toys. If she’s not a good mother, either the father should have stepped up or he should be doing something to stop her from acting this way.

But since childrearing is a female occupation, the dad neatly dodges any responsibility. If he wants to ignore the kids, well, that’s fine.

Then Rae realizes bitching about her mom is somewhat impolite around Chloe, but eh, it’s not like Chloe’s mom died recently, she can barely remember her.

That afternoon, during my session with Dr. Gill, I put on an Oscar-worthy performance. I admitted that, as she’d suspected, I had thought I might be seeing ghosts.

Once again, nothing about that makes sense. Chloe was straight up hallucinating a random guy, that’s all anyone knew. A hallucination is by definition something that other people can’t see. You don’t need to add in “and is a ghost”.

Anyway, so Chloe claims she totally believes they’re just hallucinations and the meds are working great and that she needs help. Somehow, she thinks admitting she’s an unstable nutcase who needs help and monitoring means she’ll be out shortly. Not how schizophrenia works, Chloe.

If we weren’t in dumbass no research land, I’d point out that the medication does not kick in this fast, so anyone claiming it did would just be telling the psychiatrist they’re lying about it. But we are, so who the fuck knows? Maybe in dumbass no research land medication works instantly and also no one in the history of mental illness has figured out you can lie.

I thought about that patch of fog in the yard. If Derek hadn’t seen it, too, I might have mistaken it for a ghost.

Only if you’re a fucking moron, since none of your ghosts have looked like fog.

She momentarily considers if Simon’s behind all her hallucinations, but that’s too stupid even for her. She is stupid enough that she doesn’t consider that the fog was actually supernatural, because just because she believes she’s seeing ghosts doesn’t mean she believes in any other form of magic.

She then thinks that Derek is obviously trying to get her to ask what’s going on. It doesn’t occur to her to tattle – I really don’t think anywhere interested in helping kids instead of making them crazier would look kindly on people pretending they can’t see things around a kid who has problems with hallucinations. She can also just straight up threaten him – corner him somewhere and tell him to spill or she’ll start screaming and saying he cornered her. Ethical? Fuck it, he’s an asshole, she’s just being one back.

that fog would be a simple effect to pull off. Maybe Derek had done it. That’s why Simon had protested, and Derek had shut him up.

Okay, I’m really starting to get the sense there was a rewrite very late in the game that involved switching names. Because Derek was the one that objected to the fog.

Anyway, because apparently Simon was the one protesting it, Chloe gets the idea that maybe Simon’s afraid of his brother. Well, maybe. But he can’t be absolutely terrorized because by all appearances he’d there voluntarily, he’s not stuck with his brother.

Where was his father?
Why had he enrolled Simon and Derek in school under false names?

This is getting really irritating. Disappearing and enrolling kids under false names are both illegal. So is kidnapping someone else’s kid. So odds are the answer is he was generally doing illegal shit, he had them under false names to make them harder to find because illegal shit, and illegal shit is why he decided he needed to get the hell out of dodge. This is really not that hard.

The only question is why child services put them in the rich kid’s asylum.

Why was Simon even here, if he didn’t have a file?

To look after his brother jesus christ Chloe figure something out already.

Mrs. Talbot came into the dining room with a man she introduced as Dr. Davidoff, the head of the board that ran Lyle House. With only a thin circle of hair and a huge, sharp nose, he was so tall that he seemed to be permanently leaning down to hear better. With the hair and the nose, he bore an unfortunate resemblance to a vulture, head tucked down, eyes beady behind his glasses.

Hey, it’s unflattering description aimed at a guy! Cliché description, but hey, I’ll take it.

“This must be little Chloe Saunders.” He beamed with the false heartiness of a middle-aged guy who doesn’t have kids and never stops to think that a fifteen-year-old girl might not like being called “little” Chloe Saunders.

Uh. He’s a psychiatrist running a home for teenagers. He should not be totally out of touch. If nothing else, he should be good enough at reading people to see how the kids react when he says stuff like that.

Also, who would say that in the first place? You don’t call fifteen year olds little not because it’s rude but because they just honestly aren’t.

Rae flashed a perky smile, one custom-made for adults she had to suck up to.

She’s only known Rae for three days. Not even three full days. This is the same problem as knowing Simon always uses the bathroom at certain times, it’s something you notice over time, not while you’re on the first few days of your personal nonstop dramacoaster.

Now, Chloe, Dr. Gill tells me you had quite a breakthrough today. She’s very pleased with your progress and how quickly you’ve fit into the therapeutic routine and accepted your diagnosis.”

You win again, dumbass no research land.

“Normally, I don’t meet with our young people until they’ve been here at least a week, but since you’re speeding right along, Chloe, I don’t want to hold you back. I’m sure you’re eager to get back to your friends and school as soon as possible.”

Jesus so she actually is getting out just because she isn’t spitting the meds in their faces.

See, the real reason dumbass no research land is bad is that there’s absolutely no way at all to follow the story. Until you’re handed the resolution, you have no idea what it’ll be, because you can’t use any cues at all.

Tori stepped in front of us. “Hello, Dr. Davidoff. That new medicine you have me on is working great. I’m really doing well.”
“That’s good, Victoria.”
He absently patted her arm, then led me out.

Instead of raging further, let’s talk about Tori and Harry Potter.

Remember the first book? Early on there’s some mention that Slytherin has been winning the cup for the past few years. Harry’s end of the book victory was supposed to be a victory for the underdog against the reigning champions.

The reason why plenty of people never even noticed this is that the Slytherins are treated so badly. Sure, you have Snape’s overt favoritism, but even that’s mostly shown to us as more Snape hating the other students (and he mostly just overreacts to actual fuckups or Harry’s existence) while every other character is on a spectrum from mild disdain to outright hatred. Even if you accept it as a good vs evil thing, it’s hard to ever see the Slytherin as being the ones with all the power.

We’re running into the same thing with Tori. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be the teacher’s pet suckup, but we don’t see any of this. So when he brushes her off here, it doesn’t say read as someone seeing through her act and rightly blowing her off. It reads as a kid desperately trying to get attention and being ignored, because no one else is paying attention to her either. She’s not getting anything out of the act, which makes it look less like she’s a two-faced manipulator and more like she’s sincerely trying to do what they want her to.

Anyway, Chloe repeats the song and dance for this guy. Then later she tries to go see Simon. When she gets to the room, Simon sees her, then Derek tells Simon to go get him a coke.

Simon paused, gaze shunting between us. His brother was giving him the perfect excuse to sneak out and talk to me, but he still hesitated, as if sensing a setup or a test. There was no way Derek knew I was here, behind his back. Yet Simon slouched in his chair.

Derek chased them down when they were stealing the files in the middle of the night. Noticing her approach is comparatively nothing.

Anyway, Simon’s playing on a DS, so Chloe’s solution is to borrow Rae’s DS, walk by again and wave it at him, then retreat and try to connect to use the chat feature.

He drew a check mark, then wrote D followed by a picture that, alter a moment I realized was an eye. Yes, he wanted to talk, but Derek was keeping an eye on him.
Before I could reply, he sent another. D 8? a box with “soap” drawn in it, surrounded by bubbles. It took a moment, but I finally interpreted that as “Derek has a shower around eight.”
He erased it and drew an 8 followed by yard. Meet him outside at eight.

Okay, just because you can draw stuff doesn’t mean you have to. It’s entirely possible to write such lengthy words as “watching” or “shower”.

Also if people are shortening things d8 has a very different meaning, author.