Last time on the Summoning, we finally talk to the damn crawlspace ghosts! And we find out that everything they know, we just learned already.

Chloe heads down for breakfast. With Tori.

she just sat there and ate, eyes forward, expression empty, like she’d given up.

Okay, yeah.

Tori is definitely mentally ill. Unfortunately, whatever’s wrong with her here doesn’t seem to have any correlation with her behavior at every other point. And it’s a very boring decision. Having someone not react to a major event usually is.

Tori should be surprised. Chloe says that Tori must have been expecting her to come out a raving lunatic. But she’s not. Nor does she appear to be scared, even though Chloe goes on to say that she must know that if Chloe tells, Tori’s gone. She doesn’t even seem confused by this turn of events, Chloe just showing up again like nothing’s happened.

She doesn’t react at all, in short. And not reacting isn’t interesting. Sometimes it can precede something interesting, because it’s certainly an unusual reaction, so it could be used to indicate something more. But we’re nearing the end, and we’ve already seen Tori do all sorts of more dramatic things.

I feel like what this really is is the author realizing she doesn’t want to deal with the fallout from what Tori did. The author wanted Chloe stuck in the crawlspace, so Tori does that, but it’s not meant to have anything much to do with Tori.

Chloe continues rambling about what Tori must be feeling despite the fact she’s just staring blankly. This entire sequence could be printed out as the final note on show vs tell. She explains that Tori must have decided the feud is over. She’d gotten it out of her system and seen how close she’d come to making a very big mistake.

Anyway, Chloe then switches over to the other elephant in the room.

I had to figure out what to do about Rae. How would I tell the guys? Derek would blame me for sure.

So, at the start of this, Chloe is the only one who matters. Then Simon and Derek prove themselves real people. But everyone else remains scenery. Chloe doesn’t think about the fact Rae has supernatural powers and is part of this. Or that the boys might care about that. It’s just a matter of Rae knowing about what the real people are planning, and how that might be inconvenient.

And speaking of Derek, how on earth did he figure out she’s a necromancer if he missed the fact there were two other supernatural kids with visible powers?

Chloe takes a shower, then when she’s coming back she overhears the nurse talking about a new lock.

“Dr. Davidoff wants a deadbolt,” Mrs. Talbot replied. “I don’t know whether they make them for interior doors

That doesn’t even make sense! It’s something you install on a door. It’s not like an interior door is something hugely different from a regular door. They’re all just doors!

The deadbolt is for the crawlspace door, by the way.

So then Chloe goes to breakfast again, because Simon’s there. Then Simon goes off to get more food and Chloe asks if Derek’s okay and he says he is and Chloe thinks he looks like he is and okay I get it moving on.

To give you an idea of the sort of stuff I’m skipping over in this book, here’s the conversation that comes after this.

Then, gaze still on his breakfast, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Something’s up. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
His head turned, gaze going to mine. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
A snort and he returned to his bowl as Simon came back.

Simon informs them that their chore is to rake the leaves up from “last fall”. I can’t remember if we’ve ever had it clear when this is taking place. Since Chloe’s already well-established in her club, I’ll assume it’s spring since the only other option would be the very beginning of school. Anyway, point is it’s warm out and there’s grass growing. If it was fine leaving them this long, no need to rake them up now.

With Dr. Gill, Ms. Wang, and Miss Van Dop gone, Ms. Abdo out running errands, and Mrs. Talbot doing paperwork, we had the run of the house and I had an excuse for getting Simon outside alone, by offering to help him with the raking while Derek was upstairs changing the bedding.

So the mixed sex group mentally ill kids are totally unsupervised. Why do they even bother having nurses, it’s not like they seem to do anything. Chloe’s housekeeper was doing a better job of keeping an eye on her.

This super important conversation with Simon is:
Simon: You don’t want to go.
Chloe: No I totally do.

Only spread across a page.

Chloe also mentions that Derek told her about why he won’t go, which then derails into another half page of rambling as Chloe says that she knew because she read the file and Simon says it’s good she read the file and also Derek already read hers, only no one cares.

Then, to my shock, actual new information! Simon’s finally going to spill about the details of why Derek attacked the boys!

It was totally justified because they attacked Simon and Derek was just trying to defend him.

You know, considering how late we’re learning this, this must be meant as some sort of revelation, and god knows it’s dragged out in lengthy detail. But it’s such an obvious twist even before we know anything about Derek, and by now we know a great deal all on the subject of why Derek is awesome and nice and Chloe’s a mean jerk for being mad and mistrusting him.

Anyway, then Chloe finally brings up Rae.

“I didn’t know what to say and that only made it worse, but she caught me completely off guard. Now Derek’s going to think I let something slip or I was chatting with my girlfriend, telling her my secrets, which I didn’t do, I swear—”
“I know. You aren’t like that.” He leaned on his rake. “Rae’s right about Brady.

That’s your response?!

First, stop fucking apologizing. Not only do you know full well you didn’t do that, but it’s not like it’d have been wrong if you had. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to tell Rae about what’s happening to you if you want to?

We are nearly done with this book and no one has so far given any explanation for why it’s wrong to tell people about things. Simon and Derek just take it as a fact. I would say Chloe adopts this view, except Chloe consistently lied about random shit so she seems to just be anti-truth in general.

Speaking of such, Simon then says that it’s really Derek’s fault if Rae noticed them since he should have been paying attention, and Chloe thinks about how he must have missed it because of how he was sick but that she can’t say that because she’s keeping that a secret too. Simon rambles a bit about how Simon’s been acting weird, then finally bothers to address the Rae issue.

Well, a little. He returns to the topic, at least, to say they’ll have to tell Derek.

Chloe, for once on the ball, reminds him of the whole “but apparently she’s a supernatural kid” thing.

Could be half-demon. If she is, though, what does that mean, for us, being here? Four out of five kids? Maybe Liz, too, if she’s a shaman?

There is no “maybe” Liz.

You don’t know if Liz was a shaman because apparently you have no idea what shaman powers are really, but you know she was moving stuff without touching it. She had supernatural powers.

This is beyond Idiot Plot. There are not terms for this beyond fuckawful writing.

Anyway, but screw her, the real issue is that Rae knows their plan. No worries, reassures Chloe, she doesn’t have any idea what it is, she just wants in on it.

Simon then emos that he won’t get to be alone with Chloe.

I wouldn’t have argued about it just being the two of us.”
He glanced over at me. My heart started pounding double time.
“There’s a lot I want to talk to you about.” He touched the back of my hand, leaning so close I could feel his breath against my hair.

The sad thing is this is the closest to interesting the book gets, the goddamn romance plotline. The probably red herring romance plotline, in fact.

At this point Derek appears for cockblocking duty, demanding to know what they mean about Rae.

I guess this chapter was necessary, but only because it’s trying to juggle the accumulated weight of all the bad writing decisions. Address the issue of Tori, address the issue of Rae, finally update the supernatural kid count, finally lay out what happened in Derek’s fight. The reason it has to is because these things weren’t getting addressed when they naturally should, so this chapter does catchup duty. At least there’s the sense of progress, but it’s entirely based on the fact the previous chapters were so badly put together this one was necessary.