Last time on the Summoning, Chloe found a box…of boring things. Then the flashlight went out…so Rae lit a match so they could see their way out.

Chloe helpfully explains that Rae is disappointed by the lack of anything interesting, because that wasn’t obvious. The she goes off to mommy nurse to say she has to work with Derek for math tutoring, and mommy nurse just nods because it’s not like she’d have been told about any such thing beforehand. Remember when Chloe was complaining the place was run like a boot camp?

Simon’s walls were covered in what looked like pages ripped from a comic book, but when I squinted, I realized they were hand drawn. Some were black-and-white, but most were in full color, everything from character sketches to splash panels to full pages, done in a style that wasn’t quite manga, wasn’t quite comic book.

…So Chloe doesn’t know basic film tropes, but she reads American comic books (current audience: a small handful of 30 year old men) enough that this is all perfectly recognizable.

Also I think the author is really underestimating how much effort it is to hand color things on top of drawing them, as well as the expense when you’re getting to the point that the stuff looks like it’s professionally done. In fact, even drawing should take up way more of Simon’s time than he has – he’s busy following around Derek and playing basketball.

And then there’s the whole digital issue, which is just so common these days. Even if you grant that lots of kids can’t afford the equipment, Simon’s a rich kid. Where’s his tablet?

Anyway, Derek goes off to take a shower, so why he asked her to show up right then is beyond me. Chloe promptly snoops and finally realizes he’s unusually good in math instead of unusually bad. In fact, Simon explains, for some reason he’s super awesome at science too. Unless this is because he’s a zombie growing smarter by eating brains, I DON’T CARE, BOOK. DO SOMETHING ALREADY.

When he said that no one would question us working on math together, he hadn’t meant that he needed help. Great. It was bad enough Derek thought I was a flighty blond, jumping at every noise. Apparently he figured I wasn’t too bright, either.

So he has basic observational skills. Well, that’s consistent with the idea he’s smart.

Chloe, did it occur to you that you might also want math tutoring if you thought math was awesome and wanted to know more? There’s evidence here is that he’s better at it than the teacher, since unlike in a normal classroom, the kids are all getting one-on-one lessons, so if he’s off by himself doing his own thing, it means she can’t help him with it.

Simon says he’s made it clear he’s not into Tori but she won’t stop going after him.

“I guess that would be hard—having someone really like you and you aren’t interested back.”

That’s quite nice of you to say, Chloe, especially with how nasty Tori’s been to you.

“The only person Tori really likes is Tori. I’m just a stand-in until she can get back to her football captains. Girls like Tori need to have a guy—any guy—and here I’m her only option. Peter was way too young and Derek’s—Derek’s not her type. Trust me, if another guy walks in here, she’ll forget I exist.”

Fuck you, Simon.

Part of why this comes off particularly bad is it doesn’t sound anything like what a fifteen or sixteen year old (can’t remember his age) would say. Maybe if he’s parroting back what Gill said when he consulted her, but in that case the blame just shifts over to Gill. Tori doesn’t act like the sort of person who likes herself. She acts like the sort of person who’s desperate for any positive attention, and given she seems to be getting none whatsoever, her desperation doesn’t even seem excessive.

Incidentally, Gill blowing off Tori’s feelings like this actually fits well with borderline personality, since even a lot of professionals will often treat them as deliberately manipulative instead of simply unwell.

Do I look like diva bait to you?” He turned onto his side, head propped on his arm. “Oh, sure, when Derek and I start at a new school, I’ll get some attention from the clique girls. Like”—he raised his voice to a falsetto—”‘Hey, Simon, I was, like, wondering if you could maybe, you know, help me with my homework after school? ‘Cause it’s, like, math and, like, you’re Chinese, right? I bet you’re sooo good at it.'”

See, I can see why that would be irritating, but just given how inept middleschoolers are about flirting, this isn’t even particularly noteworthy, and it doesn’t prove the girls are uniformly airheads.

He goes on to say he’s not really good at school, and Chloe assumes he’s at least doing well in art because he’s got pretty pictures on his wall! Chloe did you not hear the boy he doesn’t like assumptions.

Either because he’s got a crush on her or because at least it’s not a racially based guess, he doesn’t flip out before telling her that actually he nearly failed that one too.

I pissed off the teacher because I kept handing in my comics. I was doing the assignments, just taking the techniques and using them for my stuff. She thought I was being a smart-ass.

I haven’t really run into any dictator art teachers myself. And considering he’s a rich kid presumably going to rich kid school, since so much has been made of that, it seems there’d be more pressure would be on not randomly penalizing kids than normal.

“That’s not fair.”
“Well, when I kept handing in my stuff even after the first couple of warnings, I probably was being a smart-ass.

Oh, so it’s more likely you just weren’t really doing the assignments. Okay, but in that case you’re probably rather shit at art since you’re so unwilling to expand.

Anyway, Simon starts flirting with her about starting a soccer club. Final nail in the coffin then, he’s not love interest material at all.

Chloe decides flirting can take a backseat to actually getting info. Thank you Chloe.

“Okay, you’re a necromancer and I’m a sorcerer. You speak to the dead and I cast spells.”

So she’s nothing but a mislabeled psychopomp and he can actually do shit. Of course, he’s shit at the spells, so I suppose it’s relatively balanced.

Something happened. With Der—” He cut himself short. From Derek’s file, I knew why he was here, though I wasn’t about to admit it. “Anyway, something happened, and then my dad disappeared and it’s a very long story, but the short version is that we’re stuck here until someone figures out what to do with us.”
And until Derek was “cured,” I supposed. That’s why Simon didn’t have a file or go to therapy. He wasn’t here for any problem. When their dad left, the authorities must have brought Derek here, and decided to leave Simon with him.

If we weren’t in dumbass no research land, I would say this means there’s a lot more going on that Simon isn’t saying (or even worse, may not be aware of) because this just screams conspiracy. His dad may have disappeared, but someone (or perhaps some group) is still manipulating things enough to keep the kids together and out of the way here.

But maybe that’s just how child services normally work in dumbass no research land, fuck if I know.

Chloe figures background is more important.

“Supernaturals. The different types are called races. There aren’t very many. The biggies would be necros, sorcerers, witches—which are the girl spellcasters. Similar, but a different race, and not as strong as sorcerers, or so everyone says. What else? Half-demons, but don’t ask me about them because I know next to nothing. Derek knows more. Oh, and shamans. They’re good healers and they can astral project.”
witches—which are the girl spellcasters. Similar, but a different race, and not as strong as sorcerers

Oh book, you shouldn’t have. I already have so many perfectly good reasons to hate you already. (Also, considering how weak Simon’s powers are, how do you get weaker and still have noticeable powers?)

The unneeded feminine form of sorcerer is sorceress, just like the masculine of witch is warlock. They’re also very different in terms of formality and etymology, plus, and this is just a thought, maybe if you really have magic powers you shouldn’t pick a term people used to identify those they were going to burn at the stake. People with actual magic wouldn’t use a term that overlaps with random peasant women who were getting killed over herbs, if for no better reason than elitism.

Shaman is just terribly random, since it’s basically the religiousy version of a sorcerer. I assume the author’s only real connection with shamans is some New Agey Native American stuff.

And speaking of religion! I have never really been able to make heads or tails of why hardline Christians care about random magic spells. But demons? Unless they’re literally Christian demons, there is no way in hell that would be anyone’s preferred identifier. And if Christianity and demons are real, then things like necromancy (the dead generally being the province of religion) and shamans (who are powered by spirits and generally polytheistic) shouldn’t be around, unless they’re both subsets of demon-dealing.

Chloe guesses that Derek is a half-demon. That does seem like the only area he fits in, but on the other hand Simon just said he doesn’t know jack about that class.

There’s not really a name for what he is. I guess you could call it the superman gene, but that’s really cheesy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which is why they don’t call it that. Guys like Derek have . . . physical enhancements, you might say. Extra strong, as you saw. Better senses, too. That kind of thing.”
I glanced at the math text. “Smarter?”
“Nah, that’s just Derek. Or so my dad says.”

If there’s more than one around, why not just have a damn name for them? Names don’t just pop into existence out of nowhere, book, though if that’s your level of understanding it does explain a lot about the list of people you gave.

Dad used to be into the whole supernatural network. He worked for this research company, supernatural doctors and scientists trying to make things easier for other supernaturals. Dad’s a lawyer, but they needed people like that, too.

You know what would make things easier?

Going public. There is no real reason not to.

Anyway, they got Derek because somehow the company got the kid, and then they ended up adopting him, yet somehow a research company and a lawyer couldn’t manage to get the kid legal documents.

See, Derek’s type? It’s rare. We’re all rare, but he’s really, really rare.

You know what would fix this? A high school level knowledge of genetics. Or hell, an elementary knowledge that the way to get more is to have more kids.

Oh! You know what would be a really cool idea? Some minority supernatural group infiltrating sperm banks to get their numbers up.

…if Magneto hasn’t tried this, I am disapprove.

“Okay, so we’ve got sorcerers, witches, half-demons, necromancers, shamans, and other really rare types, like Derek. That’s it, right? I’m not going to run into any werewolves or vampires, am I?”
He laughed. “That’d be cool.”
Cool, maybe, but I was happy to leave werewolves and vampires to Hollywood. I could believe in magic and ghosts and even spirit travel, but turning into an animal or sucking blood stretched disbelief farther than I cared to.

Uh.

Really, a lot of this conversation reads really weirdly, with people not quite responding to each other. But this takes the cake. He just said it’d be cool to run into one of them. He could mean:

It’d be cool if those existed.
They’re pretty cool guys.
They’re insanely rare.

That’s without the option that just because you’re a rare whateverthefuck doesn’t mean you automatically know other whateverthefucks exist. It could easily be that there’s some evidence other things exist but nothing conclusive. Considering vampires are very different from the rest, which are all living creatures, I wouldn’t expect them to be in the same category in the first place.

Plus, there’s the fact this list contains half demons yet no actual demons, so we know at least one other species exists unless half-demon has as much literal basis as calling a kid a hellraiser. And that gets us right back to the issue of how it doesn’t make sense they’d be identifying themselves in that manner. Unless, I suppose, each supernatural group has a favored term and likes to ignore the other groups’ favored terms, which does kind of fit with Simon’s terms – I can more easily see someone wanting to be called a sorcerer than witch, and he does immediately add that also, he hears witches are lame and sucky compared to awesomesauce sorcerers. And he doesn’t even know that much about the half-demons, so he certainly wouldn’t know what their viewpoint on it was.

“So there are three of us?

LIZ YOU FUCKING MORON

In one place? That has to mean something.”
“Derek thinks it’s because some supernatural powers— like yours and his—can’t be explained, so humans chalk them up to mental illness. Some kids in homes could be supernatural. Most aren’t. You have to talk to him about that. He explains stuff better.”

Yes, but when Chloe arrived, there were a total of seven kids, and we now know four of them are supernatural. So that is in fact “most”.

Also, there’s a major difference between “out of the pool of all children, supernaturals with a particular set are going to get pegged as having mental illness and end up in the smaller subset of kids with mental illness” and “supernatural kids are common among kids with mental illness”. The pool of children with mental illness is still massive. Even counting Simon and Derek as a single unit, the odds of them running into another not really mentally ill kid in this small of a group is astronomical. Two kids is one out of every three kids that’s there.

Chloe, proving she actually did need those remedial lessons, just accepts this and goes on to asking what the ghosts want. Simon says he figures they want help, which is obvious. Then Derek shows up to know more about it.

He continued. “How many necromancers do you think are walking around out there?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, if the answer was ‘a whole lot,’ don’t you think you’d have heard of them?”

I think I’d have heard about them in the answer was one, Derek. Once you start saying there’s a massive conspiracy to keep this stuff hidden, that sort of reasoning flies out the window.

“We’re talking hundreds in the whole country.” Derek yanked a comb through his hair. “Have you ever met an albino?”
“No.”
“Statistically speaking, you’re about three times more likely to bump into an albino than a necromancer.

Let’s check Wikipedia.

its frequency worldwide is estimated to be approximately one in 17,000. 

So your odds of running into a necromancer are one in 51,000. Let’s assume sorcerers are far more common, at albino levels. Now, let’s assume that all sorcerers and all necromancers end up in mental institutions, despite the fact it’s unlikely sorcerers ever do. And let’s assume only one in a hundred kids normally has mental problems for any period of time. Now merely one out of every 510 kids is a necromancer and one out of 170 kids is a necromancer.

Your odds of even two sorcerers coming across each other in a group of under ten kids remains insanely unlikely. And that’s before we get into the issue that surely some necromancers are part of the supernatural community and protected from this or at least removed relatively quickly. (In fact, if there is any supernatural community, they should be keeping an eye on these places to find new recruits.)

And this estimate also assumes he’s referring to all forms albinism and not just the rare even among albino type that’s obvious on sight.

Of course, all that said, coincidences happen. It’s only when we include Liz in the equation that things start looking completely impossible, and Chloe certainly isn’t including Liz anywhere in her head.

She tells them about the ghost and the basement door and Derek says it’s probably some dumb thing like a letter to his wife, because apparently the fact something’s blocking it from communicating isn’t suspicious at all. He also accepts Chloe’s claim that the meds stop her from hearing it and just tells her she’ll have to stop taking them.

We should get her off those meds. I don’t really care what that ghost wants, but he could be useful. As long as we have a willing subject, Chloe should take advantage of it, so she can learn.

What’s she learning? All she seems able to do is talk to ghosts that show up. She can already do that fine, and it’s not like it’s a particularly impressive skill anyway.

Then Derek lets slip that they’re considering shipping Chloe out.

Seeing ghosts isn’t easy to hide. It’s not like casting spells.

So? I mean, yes, she obviously shouldn’t be there when she’s schizophrenic, but they accepted her knowing she hallucinated ghosts. Why would her hallucinating ghosts be a dealbreaker?

Then mommy nurse calls them down for snacktime (where’s EEEEVIIIL nurse? I liked her better) and so Derek only has time to give her the summary:

“Just a sec,” I said. “You heard the doctors talking. What about?”
“You. And whether Lyle House is the right place for you.”

OH NO wait why does this matter?

I mean, yeah, we know that something bad happened when Liz “went to the mental institution”, but no one else, including Chloe by all indication, knows that. Even Rae only agreed that the reason Chloe saying she really could see ghosts was a bad idea us because of Gill’s personality in particular. Somewhere new she’d have a chance getting a different therapist, or even, seeing how her aunt acts and with how things went with her speech therapist, complaining until she gets one that’s willing to at least consider the idea.