Last time on the Summoning, Chloe remembers Liz exists again, but doesn’t bother to tell anyone else.

I DID USE THE JAR, as gross as it was.

I can’t figure out why the jar is so much grosser than peeing into a cup. I was assuming she was balking in part because of how bad it’d be if she was caught.

I did it in the upstairs bathroom, in the jar, hiding it behind the cleaning stuff under the sink. Cleaning the bathroom was one of our chores, so I hoped that meant the nurses never went under there.

Except the person you need to worry about is Tori, who’s already used her own supernatural trouble-sensing ability to know exactly when you leave your room in the middle of the night.

While not as bad as handing her sharp objects or letting the kids hide in their rooms alone, unsupervised access to cleaning products also seems unsafe, but then that’s nothing new.

It is Friday, rendering Chloe’s OMG I HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE WEEKEND very weird. She says that she and the other kids nobly try to do work but their teacher just hands them assignments and plays solitare the rest of the day.

Aside from this flying in the face of every teacher I’ve ever had, I’m confused because I don’t even see what it adds. We never get any details about the schoolwork and so if they did a lot or a little it’s not plot relevant.

Around lunchtime, Simon goes downstairs to “help” with the laundry. You know, for somewhere that tries to keep the boys and girls separated, they sure don’t try very hard. If there was enough time for Chloe’s adventures in crawlspace, there’s more than enough time for the two of them to have sex before anyone notices. And nothing makes rich people happy like knowing the place they paid to fix their kid has actually gotten them teen pregnant.

“So this is where our resident ghost lurks,” Simon said, circling the laundry room.
“I think so but—”
He held up a hand, then lowered himself to the floor and started sorting the last basket. “You don’t need to tell me there might not be a ghost here, and I’m not going to make you try to contact it. When Derek comes down, he might. Don’t let him push you around.”

Uh, what?

She’s sure it’s a ghost, and she wasn’t even saying anything particularly denialy there, just general uncertainty. For the life of me I can’t understand Simon’s exaggerated “or not that’s cool too!” bit. Maybe he’s just jumping for the chance to show off how much better a guy he is than his brother, but that makes no sense given that Simon’s the attractive one so if he was interested in Chloe his first impulse wouldn’t be to worry Derek would steal her. This section reads like it’s something other than just plain conversation, but I can’t figure out what, which makes me think it’s just badly written and I’m seeing things that aren’t there.

Derek comes down right then to defend himself regarding the pushing around thing and how he doesn’t. I think it’s supposed to be more of Derek being bad with people and not seeing that he is, but he actually isn’t very pushy, just blunt. Every time Chloe balks, Derek gets mad, but in more of a RAGEQUIT way.

What he does do is keep pushing on subjects people are just ignoring, but given Chloe is currently ignoring dead or comatose Liz, I think that’s just a sane response to insane circumstances. So he asks her what she’ll do if they decide to transfer her.

Chloe stands around while Simon starts arguing with Derek about how they don’t even know that’s true, and fine if he thinks it’s so important she have a plan then what’s Derek’s plan if they transfer Derek, huh????????

Chloe interrupts then to say that if they want to transfer her she’ll let them, because Chloe is committed to never acting like a believable human being. She hasn’t expressed any real anxiety about what happened to Liz and by god she’s not going to start now.

As if to highlight this problem, Derek then brings Liz up. He knows she asked to talk to Liz.

“Tori asked this morning. I heard. Talbot told her no and said she’d told you the same thing when you asked last night.” He grabbed the soap box from my hands, lifted the measuring cup from the shelf, and waggled it. “This helps.”
“They said I can call Liz on the weekend.”
“Still, seems a little odd. You barely knew the girl, and you’re the first one wanting to call her?”

This is Encyclopedia Brown bullshit.

Tori may well have not asked because either she does blame herself/fears Liz blames her for what happened, because she was trying to convince herself it was just temporary and Liz would be back in a day or two, or because she was told being upset about it was a sign she still had a long way to go so she’s been trying to pretend she’s not that concerned. Bear in mind she got drugged into a stupor over this once.

There are a lot of reasons why someone with only a minor investment might happen to ask first. Also, they ask within twenty-four hours. The only weird thing here is that it took Tori days to ask, not that Chloe happened to think of it last thing in the evening instead of first thing next morning.

Also, it’s been days since Liz left, well within the timeframe for people who barely know her to still want to ask her if she’s okay at the new place. It isn’t like Liz just happens to not be around any longer, she left under pretty bad circumstances.

He batted my hand from the dials. “Darks, cold. Or you’ll end up with the dye bleeding.” A glance back at me. “See? I’m considerate.”

As a random aside, does this matter a lot?

It just seems like in modern times I don’t run across much clothing where this is an issue. I almost exclusively wear rather dye-filled clothing, far more than average. (I don’t know why people wear so much gray and brown IT’S NOT THE MIDDLE AGES WE HAVE SYNTHETIC DYES AND THEY’RE AWESOME) I do laundry by throwing everything in a pile and my socks remain white. I’ve even had a handful of clothes that came from less American sources that clearly bled color at one point in their lifespan because the stitching was adulterated with red, and those went through without any issue because loose dye had apparently stopped being a real issue many washes ago. And their stuff should be pretty heavily washed by now given they’ve been stuck at the home since their dad disappeared and presumably weren’t clothes shopping during that time.

I guess jeans can be an issue? But you can get those prewashed, and I only rarely see very dark jeans around at all.

And really, if you’ve already separated darks and whites you’ve removed anything that would really show bleeding.

The most effort I usually make is being sure new clothes get washed once away from anything that could be damaged. My clothing related concerns generally have to do with stains and dirt.

Considering that these are rich kids with fancy clothes (or at least Tori is, all we know about Chloe’s wardrobe is that she’s embarrassed by having regular panties) I can imagine them having more finicky clothing, but that usually translates as a lot of delicate/dryclean only stuff. There could also be issues with clothing shrinking in the wash. Having it be perfectly normal clothing except not colorfast just seems weird.

“As for Liz,” I continued, “I just wanted to be sure she was okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
He’d scoff at my stupidity, thinking Liz was dead, murdered. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what I wanted. Reassurance that my head was stuffed too full of movie plots.

I like how actual concern for Liz isn’t actually a factor in telling the two people who seem to actually know what’s going on.

I got as far as the part about waking to see Liz on the bed, chattering away.
“So . . .” Derek cut in. “Liz returned from the great beyond to show you her really cool socks?”

A Liz who didn’t even understand something had happened chatted with Chloe because she didn’t know what was going on. Derek, you’re supposed to be smart.

The only real point of this, as far as I can tell, is that it stretches the conversation out even further.

Chloe then tells them about the second appearance, and Simon says that sounds like a ghost as if the first one didn’t.

“Just because she’s a ghost doesn’t mean she was murdered,” Derek said. “She could have had a completely unrelated accident on the way to the hospital. If that happened, they wouldn’t want to tell us right away.”

If she was in an unrelated accident you could easily look it up online to see if there was a car crash.

Also, Liz didn’t say she fell asleep. Liz said they did something so she couldn’t breathe. That’s not what happens when someone injects you with more tranquilizer.

Also, there’s an enormous difference between not announcing what happened and lying to kids about how they’ll get to talk to her this weekend.

Anyway, Chloe brings up her shaman theory.

You said our powers kick in around puberty, right? If we don’t know what we are when that happens, this is just the kind of place we’d end up. A home for teens with weird problems.”

Derek apparently considers this and the theory in general plausible, completely ignoring the two issues it raises:

Again, that means that out of seven kids, four of them are supernatural. Even discounting Simon we still have one out of two with weird powers, and he now knows this. That’s without even getting into the possibility that Tori, Rae, or even Peter had some as well. Derek apparently didn’t know her poltergeist was real, so he’s obviously shit at noticing supernatural stuff and just got lucky with Chloe because someone else brought up the ghost possibility.

And again, if Liz is astral projecting, she is apparently not writing any new memories because she doesn’t know time has passed since leaving and she doesn’t know anything about her current surroundings. When your best case scenario is a coma, things are bad.

Then they go eat. Afterward, they’re told that Tori’s mom is coming to see Tori, so they should stay in the rooms on the other side to give them privacy.

Now, last week, if anyone told me to give someone privacy, I’d make sure I stayed away. That was only polite. After a few days at Lyle House, though, when someone said “Don’t go there,” I didn’t say “okay,” but “why?” . . . and decided to find out.

Uh, you just had the why. Because it’s a private conversation you little twit. For all you know the other kids got the same conversation when you and your aunt were there to talk about you being found in the attic.

Especially given that there’s already been once incident with someone overhearing confidential information.

In this house, knowledge was power, and I was a quick learner.

Also, this kind of thing is proof that there is no unreliable narrator and any suggestion of such is just because the book is that damn bad.

I could ask the guy with the supercharged hearing, but didn’t want to owe Derek any favors.

Yes, god forbid you attempt the practical option.

Look, author. If you want to have Chloe overhear it firsthand, which is actually a decent writing decision, all you have to do is have her ask Derek and Derek tell her hell no. This would also have the benefit of having someone else point out violating Tori’s privacy like this is wrong.

Anyway, in this as in everything, mommy nurse is pretty incompetent and doesn’t bother watching the kids, so Chloe goes up on the girls’ side, through the nurses’ unlocked (?!) rooms, and down the boy’s side to get to the room Tori and her mother are in.

Her mom is berating Tori for being an embarrassment to her.

“If that wasn’t enough, they tell me you’ve been sulking over that girl’s transfer.”
“Liz,” Tori whispered. “Her name is Liz.”
“I know her name. What I don’t know is why it would send you off the deep end.”
“Deep end?”
“Sulking in your room. Bickering with Rachelle. Gloating over that new girl’s setback yesterday. Is your medication not working right, Victoria? I told you, if that new prescription doesn’t help, you’re to let me know—”
“It is helping, Mom.” Tori’s voice was thick, muffled, like she’d been crying.
“Are you still taking them?”
“I always take them. You know that.”
“All I know is that if you’re taking them, you should be getting better and this week proves you aren’t.”

Yup, it’s pretty depressing.

Honestly, this makes me think my original guess that Tori is in there for being a teenage girl is right. She hasn’t actually shown any behavior that’s outside the norm given her circumstances. A heavily medicated girl in a nuthouse is going to be more unbalanced than a regular one, but Tori’s reactions have always made sense.

This isn’t to say she can’t have an underlying issue that only an actual professional would be able to notice and diagnose, but given that we’re seeing her mother is treating Tori having emotions as a sign she’s sick, it seems a lot more likely that this is just a matter of Tori not being a perfect daughter and her mom deciding she’ll get medicated until that stops.

Tori starts complaining about Chloe.

She’s driving me nuts. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes. Always trying to show me up. Always trying to prove she’s better.” She switched to a bitter falsetto. “Oh, Chloe’s such a good girl. Oh, Chloe’s going to be out of here in no time. Oh, Chloe’s trying so hard.”

This seems really weird, just because we really haven’t seen any sign of it. Either Tori eavesdrops a lot and the nurses talk about how awesome Chloe is every instant Chloe’s not around, or Gill is actually telling Tori she’s a fuckup compared to Chloe. Aside from how unlikely both of those options are, there’s the fact Chloe’s only been there five days, and people should not, the first day in, be saying she’s a model patient or anything because why would they.

Of course, you could say that Tori’s just imagining things, but Tori already has a much better reason to hate Chloe’s guts, she blames her for Liz being kicked out. And as complaints to “it’s Chloe’s fault Liz is gone and I bet she’s trying to get rid of me too” works a lot better than “Chloe’s so much better than me”.

This also gets to the fact that Tori’s archetype is clearly supposed to be the suckup popular girl, yet she’s completely unable to get anything from the adults around her.

Tori goes on to insist she wants to get better and she’s trying really hard and it’s not fair that Chloe was lying (and there’s a pretty good point there. Not only does Chloe currently believe she’s fine and doesn’t need to get better, but even before then she was going to lie to get out just for the sake of it) and then that Chloe’s a bitch.

I’d never been called anything like that, probably not even behind my back.

First, you’ve probably been called lots of stuff behind your back. That’s part of what behind your back means, you rarely have a good grasp of exactly what’s being said. Second, the reason you haven’t been called any of that likely has more to do with the fact you’re fifteen and the kids in your area may only just getting into swearing. But it’s quite easy to express hate for someone in more network friendly terms while still being far more vehement, and I’m sure someone’s said it by now.

“I hate her. She moves in, gets my best friend here kicked out, shows me up with the nurses and doctors, steals my guy—” She stopped short, then mumbled. “Anyway, she deserved it.”

See, that’s a much better summary of things. Chloe gets her best friend kicked out, lies to look like a model patient then when she tries to harass Chloe Rae attacks her but she ends up getting in trouble for fighting, and Simon’s following her around.

Her mom doesn’t care about Tori’s drama, just the fact that she’s interested in a guy, at which point her mom loses it.

“Don’t tell me it’s Simon, Tori. Don’t you dare tell me it’s Simon. I warned you to stay away from that boy—”
“Why? He’s fine. He doesn’t even take meds. I like him and— Ow! Mom! What are you doing?”
“Getting your attention. I told you to stay away from him and I expect to be obeyed. You already have a boyfriend. More than one if I recall. Perfectly nice boys who are waiting for you to get out of here.”

So yeah, Tori’s in there for being a teenage girl.

At this point her mom just yells at her until she cries more. You might expect at this point Chloe would slink off, but she sticks around and then the woman says that if she hears about anything between Tori and Simon he’ll be kicked out.

Anyway, it’s time for another Very Special Lesson.

How could a parent blame her child for not overcoming a mental illness? It wasn’t like pushing a reluctant student to get a passing grade. It was like blaming one with a learning disorder for not getting As. Whatever Tori’s “condition” was, it was like schizophrenia—not her fault and not entirely within her control.

A terrible analogy, dear author.

You totally can blame a student with a learning disorder for not getting As, provided they’re getting the support needed to help with their disorder. Similarly, if Tori legitimately is mentally ill and actually is getting the correct treatment, and the problem was that she was refusing to work at it on her end because she using the fact she’s mentally ill to say she can’t help it, saying it was her fault she wasn’t better would be valid.

In fact, since you asked, that would be very like someone with schizophrenia instead deciding that she’s going to lie about the hallucinations being gone because she just doesn’t like being treated. And it’s also like someone with pyromania insisting it’s not a disorder so she should be allowed to play with matches all she wants.

This all gets into an issue of how much control anyone has over anything, etc, but short version, let’s not err on the side of victimhood. The fact Tori’s mother is blaming her for being ill doesn’t seem to be a matter of not getting mental illness, it seems to be Tori’s mother being an abusive, controlling parent who would be abusive and controlling regardless.

Anyway, Tori then goes to her room for the rest of the day.

She was in her bedroom, her sobs barely muffled by the closed door.
I stood in the hall, listening to her cry, yearning to do something.

Naturally, Chloe does no such thing. She makes excuses instead.

In a movie, I’d go in there, comfort her, and maybe even become her friend. I’d seen it on the screen a dozen times. But again, that wasn’t the same as experiencing it in real life, something I couldn’t really appreciate until I was there, outside the door.

Note how every time Chloe talks about this, she has a completely selfish viewpoint. It’s not “I could go in there and make her feel better” it’s “I’d do the Good Person thing and then I’d look awesome and become her friend”.

It would be understandable for Chloe to not go in because she has no idea how to deal with it. She’s fifteen, she can barely remember living with a parent, she’s not quick on the uptake… Or because it would be hard and she doesn’t know if she wants to get involved. And perhaps the fact is that while she feels sympathy for Tori, it’s still less than she would for an actual friend.

But I take issue with it getting portrayed as the correct decision, because it isn’t but the book wants to say it is:

If I walked into her room now, she wouldn’t see a sympathetic face. She’d see a victor come to gloat, and she’d hate me all the more. So I left her there, crying in her room, alone.

Tori might indeed feel like that. But it’s really unlikely Tori could feel worse at this moment, and if she responds to Chloe by telling her she hates her and wants her to die, then Chloe should just suck it up. It’s also really possible that going in and saying she’s really sorry would make Tori feel better, or even that if Tori won’t accept an apology now, she’ll remember it when she calms down.

Chloe even says that she understands that Tori honestly believes Chloe stole all the attention by coming there. So saying she’s sorry she screwed things up for Tori shouldn’t even be lying – wouldn’t you feel bad? And Chloe should also feel bad for what happened with Liz. It’s not exactly her fault, but you know, it wasn’t Tori’s fault either and that didn’t stop Chloe from saying it was.

And come on. Tori is clearly desperate for any positive attention whatsoever. I’d say the odds are pretty good that if Chloe went in making it clear she was sorry Tori would probably accept it. (Going in saying “Hey so do you want to talk about how your mom hates you?” probably wouldn’t be met so well, yes, but rule one of dealing with upset people is to tailor what you say based on the fact they’re upset and what they need to hear at the moment.)

Instead, Chloe heads back to class for some good news.

When afternoon break ended, Mrs. Talbot announced classes were over for the day. We were going to make a rare trip into the outside world. We weren’t going far—just to an indoor community pool a block away, within walking distance.

They are really dedicated to fucking with Tori, aren’t they? The suicide thing was sort of meant to be a crack theory, but…

Anyway Chloe’s just :( because no bathing suit. I’d say she sure forgot about Tori fast, but I’m busy saying she’s sure forgotten about Liz fast. So she can’t go, because apparently just stopping at a store and buying a cheap one is impossible, and she can’t borrow one from Rae.

Derek also stays behind, so that means of the outing only two of the five kids can actually go on it.

After everyone left, I took advantage of the nurses being gone and

I don’t even.

Anyway, Tori, ie sobbing in her room suicide risk girl, turns up at Chloe’s door. She’s a mess.

She says that she’s there to say Chloe can have Simon and declaring a truce and at no point in the extended conversation does Chloe respond by saying that she’s really sorry for causing trouble. I don’t fucking care if she actually believes it, she just Very Special Lessoned about how the mentally ill aren’t responsible for their behavior and yet she won’t even do this.

All I want is for you to tell Dr. Gill that I apologized for telling everyone you saw ghosts the first day. They were going to let me out Monday, but now they aren’t. And it’s your fault.

Assuming this is actually correct, because god knows the book is kind of all over the place, that proves that she’s there for being a teenage girl. Gossip is not a sign of mental illness, it’s just a sign Tori isn’t behaving in a nice and proper manner.

Tori says that in return, she’ll show Chloe what’s really in the crawlspace. She says a boy showed it to her and she assumes that he told Rae about it and that’s what they were looking for. Apparently it’s a bunch of old jewelery.

Chloe agrees.

Anyway, I think the worst issue with this chapter is that Chloe is never acting like she’s actually fifteen in it. She isn’t eavesdropping because she’s curious enough that she doesn’t care about violating Tori’s privacy, she’s eavesdropping because it’s SUPER IMPORTANT SHE DOES SO. She isn’t upset by how unfair Tori’s being but tells us that it’s not Tori’s fault she’s acting badly and that she understands how Tori really believes it. So when Tori’s crying in her room afterward there’s nothing mitigating her decision not to go in – not the selfish sense that Tori kind of deserves it for being so mean, not that she shouldn’t HAVE to apologize for anything when she’s done nothing wrong, not even the sense that she’s in over her head and wouldn’t know what to say. Just that the same way she knows that people with mental illness shouldn’t be blamed for their illness she knows that Tori would just hate her for saying anything.

And there’s really no reason Chloe couldn’t try and be rebuffed. If she’d made the attempt despite how uncomfortable it is, it’s very easy for her to have not done so perfectly or even for Tori to have told her to fuck off even if she did. Which means it’s very hard not to read it as the book officially saying that this is the Right Way To Handle This.

(And, of course, there’s no acknowledgment that Chloe probably is partly to blame for this, because again, she was part of Liz getting sent away and she did immediately tell Tori it was really Tori’s fault, and I’m betting both are factors in how much of a mess Tori is.)