The Summoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

in my room for two years, banished from my bed when I’d outgrown him. But I took him and buried my nose in his ratty fake fur that smelled of home.
    ***
    I awoke to the wheezy sleep breathing of the girl in the next bed. I looked over but saw only a form under the quilt.
    As I turned onto my back, hot tears slid down my cheeks. Not homesickness. Shame. Embarrassment. Humiliation.
    I’d scared Aunt Lauren and Dad. They’d had to scramble to figure out what to do with me. What was wrong with me. How to fix it.
    And school …
    My cheeks burned hotter than my tears. How many kids had heard me screaming? Peeked in that classroom while I’d been fighting the teachers and babbling about being chased by melted custodians. Seen me being taken away strapped to a stretcher.
    Anyone who’d missed the drama would have heard about it. Everyone would know that Chloe Saunders had lost it. That she was nuts, crazy, locked up with the rest of the loonies.
    Even if they let me return to school, I didn’t think I’d ever have the guts to go back.
     
----

Five
    « ^ »
    I WOKE TO THE
CLINK-CLINK
of metal hangers. A blond girl flipped through clothes that I was pretty sure were mine, hung up yesterday by Mrs. Talbot.
    “Hello,” I said.
    She turned and smiled. “Nice stuff. Good labels.”
    “I’m Chloe.”
    “Liz. Like Lizzie McGuire.” She waved at an old and faded magazine cutout on her wall. “Except, I don’t go by Lizzie, ‘cause I think it sounds kind of—” she lowered her voice, as if not to offend the picture Lizzie “—babyish.”
    She continued talking, but I didn’t hear it because all I could think was, What’s wrong with her? If she was at Lyle House, there was something wrong with her. Some “mental condition.”
    She didn’t look crazy. Her long hair was brushed into a gleaming ponytail. She wore Guess jeans and a Gap T-shirt. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I’d woken up in a boarding school.
    She kept talking. Maybe that was a sign.
    She seemed harmless enough, though. She’d have to be, wouldn’t she? They wouldn’t put anyone dangerous in here. Or
really
crazy.
    Oh no, Chloe. They don’t put any really crazy people in here. Just the ones who hear voices and see burned-up janitors and fight with teachers
.
    My stomach started to ache.
    “Come on,” she said. “Breakfast’s in five minutes, and they get real snippy if you’re late.” Liz put out a hand as I opened a dresser drawer. “You can wear your pajamas down to breakfast. The guys eat lunch and dinner with us, but they have breakfast later, so we get some privacy.”
    “Guys?”
    “Simon, Derek, and Peter.”
    “The house is coed?”
    “Uh-huh.” She pursed her lips in the mirror and picked off a dry flake. “We all share the bottom floor, but the top one is divided.”
    She leaned out the door and showed me how short the hall was. “They get the other side. There’s not even a joining door. Like we’d sneak over there at night if we could.” She giggled. “Well, Tori would. And I might, if there was someone worth sneaking over for. Tori has dibs on Simon.”
    She scrutinized me in the mirror. “You might like Peter. He’s cute but way too young for me. He’s thirteen. Almost fourteen, I think.”
    “I’m fifteen.”
    She bit her lip. “Oh, geez. Um, anyway, Peter won’t be around much longer. I heard he’s going home soon.” She paused. “Fifteen, huh? What grade?”
    “Ninth.”
    “Same as Tori. I’m in tenth, like Simon, Derek, and Rae. I think Simon and Rae are still fifteen, though. And did I say I love your hair? I wanted to do that, with blue streaks, but my mom said…”
    ***
    Liz kept up the commentary as we headed downstairs, moving on to the whole cast of characters. There was Dr. Gill, the psychologist, but she only came for her office hours, as did the tutor, Ms. Wang.
    I’d met two of the three nurses. Mrs. Talbot—the older woman, whom Liz proclaimed “really nice,” and the