Last time on the Summoning, we learn that no one in the building knows anything about psychiatry.

Things continue in that vein.

AFTER THAT, CALM DESCENDED. Like the calm before the storm, only in reverse. The nurses put dinner in the oven, then sequestered themselves in Dr. Gill’s office, on a conference call, not to be disturbed.

So…the fact Liz has a violent outburst then runs away sobbing means the people involved ignore all the kids and leave them to their own devices. Sure, Liz could be committing suicide or attacking someone else, but shhhhhhhh they’re busy having grownup talks. About what a terrible, terrible person Liz is.

No one had disagreed with Ms. Wang’s explanation of events. No one tried to say it had been an accident. No one even seemed surprised that Liz had almost put someone’s eye out.

Well, yeah. Honestly, as long as Liz wasn’t aiming to stab her eye out, this is the sort of thing that’ll happen occasionally when dealing with kids. You’re supposed to outgrow it, but a place treating them as too young to handle Jurassic Park should be aware they may not have that kind of self-control. Humans are built to handle a couple thrown objects. I’ve had things thrown at my face before, and none of them actually went right into my eye because the miracle of evolution means that’s harder than it looks.

Liz is still miserable and withdrawn at dinner. It doesn’t seem like any of the adults have said anything to her this entire time.

Tori hovered over her, coaxing her to eat.
…
After dinner Tori reminded Liz it was movie night, when they could get a DVD delivered. She gave Liz the honor of choosing

Tori really does seem like she’s a good person.

Rae says she has to go fold laundry, and for some reason Chloe immediately volunteers to help.

Rae and Tori share a room, and not well.

Tori’s side was so clean it looked like mine when I’d first walked in. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the bed or the floor. Every surface was bare, except two picture frames on the dresser. One held a shot of Tori and her parents and the other of a huge Siamese cat.
Rae’s half had enough clutter for both of them. Hooded sweatshirts on the bedposts, textbooks balancing precariously on the desk, makeup left open on the dresser, drawers leaking clothing. The room of someone who didn’t see why she had to put things away when she’d only be using them again the next day. Her walls were covered with taped photos.

This seems like a terrible matchup. And we still don’t know what’s wrong with Tori, but if compulsive cleanness is a factor sticking her with someone who isn’t could just be making it worse.

Rae set her basket on Tori’s bed

Someone who isn’t and goes out of her way to fuck with her over it definitely is making it worse. Not wanting people to touch your bed is really common even in people who aren’t otherwise obsessive about stuff.

But we get no such thoughtfulness in the book – for all I know it’s a throwaway detail. Rae just asks if Chloe really does see ghosts, and since Chloe’s desperate to tell someone because apparently the actual psychiatrist isn’t good enough, she explains it all to Rae. (She also says she thinks Rae is least likely to gossip, which…Rae’s already gossiped about Tori, and we don’t know anything else about her. What this really seems like is the author using gossip to mean “is/isn’t a good person” in general.)

Unfortunately, we skip over what exactly she says. This would normally be acceptable, except that the book has been skipping over everything. We still don’t know what exactly Chloe thinks is going on. Chloe has only used the term ghost to refer to what Tori said. It didn’t seem to occur to her that the original ghost was one, and she’s only referred to the second one as being just a hallucination.

So what does she tell Rae? Whatever it was, it was apparently a good story.

When I finished, Rae knelt there, holding up a shirt for at least thirty seconds before realizing what she was doing and folding it.
“Wow,” she said.

See, I was right there the entire time, and the story sure didn’t seem worthy of thirty seconds stunned gaping. And I actually know they’re ghosts! Chloe probably said they were just hallucinations and downplayed that aspect entirely, although we can’t be sure because the book won’t even tell us that much.

“And it started right before you got your first period? Maybe that’s it. Because you were kinda late, all that stuff built up, and then . . . bam.”
“Super PMS?”

The only thing in the world I hate more than someone mentioning PMS is when that person is female. I can understand that some men are both stupid and assholes, so they don’t see any contradiction in saying someone menstruating is suffering from premenstrual syndrome. I can also understand how, not having a period, they wouldn’t get a monthly reminder that it doesn’t actually work that way, and being stupid and assholes they assume they know enough anyway.

Here, a female author has one female character talk to another another female character using the term that reinforces the idea women are just irrational bags of hormones.

PMS only effects a few percent of women, or more accurately it’s a meaningless and arbitrary distinction. Women have a monthly hormone cycle. PMS refers to the tiny fraction of women whose hormone cycle in the time around a week before their periods causes severe problems. Because everyone is different, it’s quite possible for other women to have problems at a different point in the cycle that’s not right before their period, but no one bothers making up a disorder name for it because women’s irrationality always stems from their wandering womb period.

It’s not even the stupidity of the concept that I really hate here. It’s that it plays into the general viewpoint of women as hormone driven and unstable. Women have a monthly hormone cycle. Men have a daily one. Therefore, women must be the ones with the sudden mood swings. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, it always proves whatever people already believed.

…but naturally the only point of it was a clumsy transition where Rae asks if she’s looked up the ghost, despite the fact the whole point of that infuriating exchange was the idea she’d lost it because of her period. Her period that seems to have magically vanished.

This makes a certain amount of sense given Rae seems like the worst character to be getting mental illness advice from. She already believes she’s not crazy, so of course she’ll encourage that behavior in others. I’d say that they really should be keeping a closer eye on her under the circumstances, but they leave Chloe alone with sharp objects.

I won’t say the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I’d only given it permission to flit through my brain

This is sloppy plotting, so again, pretty much as we’d expect because this whole thing is horribly sloppy plotting. We’re in her brain. If something’s flitting through, we should be informed.

She thinks that ghosts aren’t real and if she believes they’re just hallucinations she’ll get to leave, but I’m pretty sure they’re keeping her until the meds kick in and she actually doesn’t see them. It also doesn’t occur to her that she could check to see that it didn’t happen – she seems to be assuming that looking up to see if a guy died means the ghost was real, even though she might find out that no one there died. I would want to check to reassure myself.

She cautiously raises the whole “but I’m just crazy” option, only for Rae to shoot it down.

“Ah, the label. God, they love their labels here. Can’t even let a girl get through her first day without slapping one on. Mine’s pyromania.”

It’s not a label, it’s a diagnosis. Without a diagnosis, you can’t treat someone.

In this case, Rae is presumably not on antipsychotic medications due to her diagnosis of pyromania. This is a good thing because antipsychotic medications work extremely well for people who are psychotic and extremely badly for everyone who isn’t. And Chloe is not going to be treated for her compulsion to set fires, because she doesn’t have one.

Chloe is emo and says that’s fine when you have a cool diagnosis like pyromania, apparently feeling that being sexually attracted to fire is awesome, but…

“They say I have schizophrenia.”
I studied her reaction. Just a small frown of confusion.
“Isn’t that multiple personality?” she asked.
“No. Schizophrenia is, like, you know, schizo.”

The book keeps doing the schizophrenia like schizo thing, despite the fact one is just a shortened form for the other. It needs to stop, because it isn’t actually clever. It also needs to shut up about how awesome pyromania is, while we’re here. (One in five pyromaniacs is a nonviolent sex offender. Cool disorder it is not.)

Anyway, Rae may not know what schizophrenia is, but she totally knows what schizo is because I hate everything I hate it so much.

Chloe says there’s other symptoms besides hallucinating, but she doesn’t have any of them.

She eased back, uncrossing her legs. “See, that’s my problem with it. You have one weird episode and they slap on a label, even if you just have the one problem. It’s like coughing and they decide you’ve got pneumonia.

Actually the diagnostic criteria explicitly say that one weird episode is not good enough for schizophrenia, because psychology has actual rules.

I bet there are a lot more symptoms to pyromania, too. Ones I don’t have.”

Not really.

I mentioned that I like fire earlier. But clinically, they distinguish between fire-setters and pyromaniacs. Setting fires out of curiosity or boredom, and being able to stop if anyone tells you it’s dangerous, is not pyromania. Although in theory I like fire, in practice lighting fires is limited to during camping, when Mom wants to burn brush we’ve cleared, and lighting candles during holidays. Arson is also different from pyromania. If you like to cause destruction or kill people with fire, you’re a whole different type of mentally ill.

Really, the pyromaniac diagnosis is more a matter of ruling out all the other reasons people light fires.

But since Rae’s right about Chloe, we do seem to be heading toward a moral that psychology is bunk and psychiatrists are just concerned about meaningless labels. So my earlier guess about the aesop seems to be wrong in favor of an even worse one. Act, you seem to be right. Stop doing that, this book is bad enough already.

And if she really thinks that, why has she never bothered looking it up on the computer? I googled it. That’s all I’ve been doing for each disorder.

Then this plot hole is lampshaded as Rae suggests they do just that. Why has this never occurred to her? Also, why wasn’t she told what the full diagnostic criteria are? I mean, yes, it’s obvious Rae would just start insisting it didn’t apply to her because she wasn’t a perfect match, and even if she was it still didn’t mean anything, but that’s something they should be trying to work through.

Somehow, that’s connected to what’s going on with Liz, although there actually isn’t. It’s just a sloppy way to transition into the new topic, that Liz might be leaving.

This place is for kids who have problems, but they’re not too bad and they’re getting better.

Chloe is psychotic and Tori probably has a major personality disorder. Neither of those are minor issues. Pyromania normally is quite treatable, except for people (like Rae) who don’t believe there’s anything wrong with them in which case it’s extremely hard, but even among the treatable group it’s still a sign of a major problem. And for someone like Rae who’s insisting she doesn’t have a problem… None of these are problems that are “not too bad”.

A couple weeks after I got here, they transferred a guy named Brady. He wasn’t getting worse or anything. Not like Liz. He just didn’t want to get better. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with himself.

…you know, like Rae. She then claims she’s playing their game, except for the part where she’s lighting matches every time she gets a free moment. I’m also dubious that this would work, but god knows it’s not like anything else makes sense, so sure, the trained professionals believe your attempts to convince them despite knowing you have every reason to lie.

She folded the blue pair together, then shoved the lone red sock under Tori’s bed. “Done

I really think that Rae’s comments on Tori may have more to do with Rae antagonizing Tori. Sure, she might be messing with her because Tori was mean first, but what she just did shows a casual disregard for anyone’s property, not just Tori’s. And Tori does have some sort of mood disorder – though I suppose Rae’s belief that no one’s really mentally ill could mean she doesn’t believe Tori has any excuse for how she acts.

She then begins to attack the boys. Simon and Derek are skipping movie night, which is of course not because they’re not into romcoms, or movies, but because they’re stuck up and don’t want to be around crazy kids.

“He’s as much of a diva as Tori. They’d be a great pair. Derek might be a jerk, but at least he’s honest about it. Simon makes nice during the day when he has to hang with us, then bolts the minute he can escape with his brother.

Simon also stole a juice box to give to Liz during supper to try to make her feel better. That’s more than Rae’s done for anyone.

Really, Chloe’s claim that Rae is the best confidant because she’s not judgmental or gossipy just gets weirder and weirder. In fact, that and her insistence she’s not crazy are her whole character here. In a better book I’d expect Chloe’s trust of Rae to end up biting her in the ass.

Simon never goes to therapy, but Derek gets more than anyone.

We were told earlier that everyone gets the same amount of therapy, one hour. Also, everyone gets pills. And if they’re pretending Simon’s mentally ill for some reason and giving him sugar pills, then they should pretend he’s getting therapy too.

Amid Rae’s gossip she raises a point – why are two unrelated kids from the same family both mentally ill? Of course, she expresses it as if it’s impossible. What it really points to is a nurture rather than nature type problem. They speak well of their dad, and really, there’s a lot of room for speculation here! But Rae is acting like the only reason someone could be ill is biological. Sorry, abused kids! You’re freaks and even the normal crazy kids know it.

(Pyromania is generally an environmental disorder as well.)

Rae then says she wants to read their files. But not this instant.

“We couldn’t risk taking a peek tonight anyway,”

We don’t have a date for how long Rae’s been here, but we know that she’d been here for several weeks before the other boy was transferred, and she talks as if he’s been gone for some time. I would personally assume months. So why has everything been in stasis until Chloe arrived? Why hasn’t Rae ever gone for the files or checked out her diagnosis before now?