Last time on the Summoning, escape plans are…mentioned, at least.

Chloe decides to hang out in the boy’s bathroom to ambush Derek, because how could that backfire.

Her rationalization involves using the shower to drown out their conversation, even though Derek’s the only one with superhearing they’d need to worry about.

Anyway Chloe’s realized that Derek is using her to convince Simon to leave. Uh, fine, if you say so. Chloe making a sudden leap of logic is certainly better than Chloe failing to add one and one to get two.

She thinks he’s overstating his worries about Chloe to get Simon to leave. You know, I don’t even care. He’s not making it up, Chloe doesn’t think he’s making it up –

Oh, wait, she does. She thinks he told Tori to try to kill her (even though Tori and Derek don’t go anywhere near each other) and that he’s lying about being worried and that he didn’t really hear them talking about transferring her. Chloe’s two seconds of intelligence are over.

Derek starts to defend himself.

“Cut the crap, okay, Derek? You got your wish.

By this, she naturally means “I’m going to keep bitching about it and insulting you because that’s just how I roll.” So while she’s telling him she doesn’t care about his explanation, she just switches to a new topic based on her not liking his explanation.

Of course, you could have saved us all this trouble by just going with him yourself. But that might be dangerous. And he’s not your father so it’s not really your problem—”

I find this particularly suspect because Chloe’s obviously closer to her aunt than her father. Also, Derek’s been raised by the man since age five. Even if it’s just an attempt to piss him off, it’s so incredibly blatant about that I don’t see how it’d work.

Naturally Derek flips out anyway, because that’s what Derek does. Instead of throwing her across the room, though, he just looms threateningly at her and tells her his file says he’s a dangerous dangerous guy.

After a moment, I looked back at him. “You must have had a reason for doing it.”

Chloe. Chloe. No. This is why your aunt is lecturing you about boys. Because she’s right.

Okay, obviously it’ll turn out Derek is just all guilty because he’s so awesome and there totally was some super important reason, but – no. Chloe. If someone says “I have anger issues and cripple people when I lose my temper”, back away.

It’s my fault. All my fault. Our dad disappearing. Simon being thrown in here.

I find that dubious. If Simon didn’t want to be there, surely he could just say so? Sure, it’d be to a foster home, but I really can’t believe that even in dumbass no research land you throw a kid into the nuthouse because his brother’s nuts. And if they don’t even know what happened with their dad, how can it have to do with Derek crippling some guy? Especially if the normal way supernaturals deal with problems is getting out of Dodge and going to ground, their dad should have plenty of contingency plans that involve doing so with his kids.

Derek finishes by telling her to STFU, because he’s staying and she’s getting out to safety, prompting Chloe to tell him to STFU because omg it’s scaaaarry. She has seen all the afterschool specials on runaways, okay? All of them.

Derek says but she’ll be alone with Simon so it’ll hardly be that awful. Less thought about your brother’s sex life would be appreciated, Derek.

Chloe says she’s not even into him.

I continue to not give a fuck about any of this. The only relevant bit is Derek explaining why he doesn’t want to go, and that was already clear enough from Simon’s explanation last chapter.

“You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” I said, then shot up my hand. “No, don’t answer that.Please. News flash: getting a boyfriend is not at the top of every girl’s priority list.

Technically, Chloe, he wasn’t saying you were doing it because you want to bang Simon. He just was saying to stop acting like you’ll be miserable the whole time because you’ll also get to bang Simon.

I mean, I’m happy to hate saying that girls are only motivated by boys, and the assumption that any boy you spend time with you must be attracted to. But Chloe’s not better by saying that if she was attracted to him at all, she’d be an idiot. This is hardly the first time we’ve seen the book saying this. Sexual attraction is seen as the same thing as being a boy-crazy slut. You’ll notice she also doesn’t say she’s just not into Simon, upholding the idea that if she was at all into boys, then what Derek says would be true.

Chloe goes on about how also it’s not like she’s even going to necessarily get fixed. Chloe we’ve been through this it’s not a mental illness. Also you can fucking raise zombies. That’s the point as which I would stop wanting to be fixed.

Raising zombies has some ethical issues. But so does stabbing people, and I still like having the ability to do so if I ever really need to.

Derek claims part of his motivation is that supernaturals gotta stick together, which might make sense, but is obviously not how anything works or else the existing supernatural community would have done something to protect them already. Not only should their dad have had backup people to take care of them, he was a worker at a company for supernaturals who would have stepped in to do something.

“I do need help. My life is falling apart and maybe someday I’ll look back on this as the biggest, stupidest mistake I’ve ever made, but at the moment, it’s the only solution I see. You need me to be your designated damsel in distress? Okay. But don’t ever say you’re doing this for me. This has nothing to do with me, Don’t you dare pretend it does.”
I turned and walked out.

So in sum this entire chapter was a waste of time.