Time for another flashback to Rhode Island.  Jude and Mara pull up to the old asylum, where everything is set just like some spooky movie set.  Clair’s car is there already.  Before they get out, Jude asks if she’s sure she wants to do this.  Mara is sure she doesn’t want to do this, but she doesn’t say so, she just wants to get ‘this’ over with.

Although, if Jude was so concerned for her willingness, why did he also drag her out of bed to go on this little adventure?

But tonight was different. Rachel had been begging me to do this since last year. And now that she had Claire in her corner, my neuroses could cost me my best friend.

Okay, really, what is up with this book pulling in legit medical concerns for the weirdest things?  Does Mara actually have a neurosis?  One line before that, she mentions that warm covers beat cold midnight adventures all the time, and to juxtapose that with ‘neuroses’ really gets my hackles up.  Being scared of creepy abandoned buildings and/or not liking cold midnight adventures is not a neurosis.

On the other hand, we don’t know what they’re doing or what Mara’s objection is at heart, so who knows, maybe that is accurate.

We find out that Mara and Jude have been dating for two months, but lately Mara is a bit disenchanted with the whole arrangement.  And also Jude is not as sweet as he first appeared.

They get out to meet up with Rachel and Clair, and apparently the plan is to just spend the night in the asylum, with handheld cameras, looking for paranormal activity.  Mara’s only intent, however, is to get Clair to stop teasing her about…um…stuff?

I was sick of hearing about the Ouija board incident. And after tonight, I wouldn’t have to.

See, I went back and read that “incident.”  Mara was mildly hesitant, and then accused Claire of spelling out her name on the board to freak her out, then refused to play mostly out of petulance.  I don’t really understand what the big deal is?

And is Mara supposed to be afraid of the paranormal?  It’s been rather unclear so far.  She’s never really specified what she’s afraid of; she just acts nervous in a rather unfocused manner.  I guess we can extrapolate that she’s afraid of ghosts and other general horror-movie-type-stuff, but if so it’s pretty mild (being creeped out by a creepy building is not exactly novel) and she doesn’t telegraph it well enough to draw teasing from others. 

And that’s certainly not bad enough to call “neurosis.”

Back to the present.  Apparently that was a dream, and Mara worries that her dream-memories will progress too far and she’ll remember watching her best friend die, which is a pretty tense thing to be worried about!  Lots of drama potential in there!

On Saturday I tried to prepare myself to dream more, to remember more—to watch her die. I crawled into my sheets shaking, wanting and not wanting to see her again. I did, but it was the same dream. Nothing new on Sunday night, either.

Wow.  What a soulless delivery on all that drama potential.  I’m thoroughly underwhelmed.

(Also, she’s really scared of her dreams but apparently has no change in her sleep cycle?  Fail in general, right there.)

It was a good sign, the remembering. It was happening slowly, but it was happening nonetheless. And without a psychologist or mind-altering chemicals. My mind was obviously altered enough.

Um…is Mara under the impression that there are chemicals that would restore her memory?  And that they are a bad thing?

Also, if your mind is altered, then the mind altering drugs are supposed to alter you back to baseline.  Like, that is literally the point of them.  That is the whole reason they exist.  She acts like they’re going to make her even further “out there,” but that exactly the opposite of what psychiatric drugs are designed to do. 

You would think that the daughter of a psychologist would know better.

It would be cool if Mara’s knee-jerk refusal of all things mental health care related was somehow a result of suppressed trauma from her night spent in an abandoned asylum.  It would certainly explain why her assumptions of how things work is about a hundred years out of date.  But it doesn’t explain why she’s so chill with hallucinations or why her parents are letting her get diagnosed with PTSD but then also never receive any treatment. 

(Seriously, that is still bothering me.  She’s already got a diagnosis, who gives someone a diagnosis and then just tosses them out into the world without a treatment plan?)

We skip over to Monday, where Mara plans to ask Noah about the dog, but Noah isn’t in class.  Mara doddles pictures of him in her notebook without quite realizing it, until class ends and she’s like “aw, shit, that’s a lot of doodles of Noah.”

I was afraid to keep looking. I needed serious help.

Look, I get that this is probably just some hyperbole/idiom nonsense going on here, but when your character has some very confusing issues surrounding mental health care and staunchly refuses to think that literally being insane and seeing hallucinations is still better than therapy, you cannot throw this line out just on a lark.  You just can’t.

She gets to her next class, and everyone is chuckling at her, but she doesn’t know why until she notices that someone taped a piece of paper to her back. It reads “slut.”

She throws the paper at Anna, then there is some banter with Jamie about how much they hate everyone and will gladly insult the shit out of them because, you know, they’re just such good people. 

“He needs a knife in the eye,” he muttered, once Aiden was gone.

“Oh, [looking like public school]’s a compliment. I’ve sat in class with these douches for most of my waking life. It’s nothing to be proud of. Trust.”

Take Anna, for example. She’s only a few IQ points above a corpse, and yet she sullies our Algebra II class with her stupidity.”

Yes, you are really just so much better than all those other “douches.”  Truly, you are the one bastion of grace and goodness in the whole school and do not share in their douchery at all, you scum.

Noah shows up to be all sexy and shit.

Jamie says they’re clearly getting the hots for each other, but he’s not happy about it because Noah is such a jerk.  He’s a wham-bam-forgot-to-say-thank-you-Ma’am type, and everyone knows it but girls keep thinking they can change him and get disappointed afterwards anyway.  Jamie says one girl even tried to commit suicide after he dumped her.

“Sounds like a major overreaction on her part.”

Actually, sounds like she probably had other issues to compound getting dumped and that was probably just the final straw and not the whole reason, but sure, go ahead and use fucking suicide as nothing but a cheap bid to make your bad boy look more desirable and then also mock the victim in the process.

You are both scum and I hate you.

And I hate Noah, too, because holy fuck.

Jamie does also mention that Anna is a “prime example” of Noah’s effect on people but the goes merrily along with insulting the hell out of her because I hate him.

Later, Noah catches up with Mara at lunch and they talk about the dog.  Then Noah asks her out, and Mara almost says yes, before some girls walk by and then suddenly start to “sashay” because in this book that is the single role given to every woman who isn’t Mara.

It really pisses me off, because I don’t know which way I should be angry.  The book thinks this is deplorable behavior, so should I get mad at it for painting every single (EVERY.  SINGLE.) girl in this “bad” light?  Or should I get mad because it’s trying to make flirting with Noah into a “pathetic” act when being sexually attracted to someone who is sexually attractive is not a bad thing?

I’m just going to go with both, because fuck this book coming and going.

And then once more for the utter blandness of making SERIOUSLY EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE girl on campus into a homogonous blob of sameness who apparently all have exactly the same taste in boys.  And then one final time for the fact that Mara is the only female character in this school with an actual role to play in the book.  Even Anna, for all the claims of her eviltude, just sort of hangs around on the sidelines.

Okay, back to the point, the girls sashay by and Noah can’t help but notice them, which reminds Mara that he’s a horndog and she shouldn’t be taken in by his pretty, pretty smile.  She turns him down for a date, but Noah, incredible ass that he is, won’t take no for an answer.  Even after Mara says she’s got to study because exams are coming up and she’s way behind.

She tries to run away into a bathroom again because this asshole will not fucking leave her alone even when directly told to, but he just follows her in.

Noah directed his gaze at me, and something flickered behind his eyes. “What’s your problem?” he asked in a low voice.

I looked at him. Gone was the casual indifference. But he wasn’t angry. Or even annoyed. More like … curious. His quiet expression was ruinous.

STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT. STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP NNO NO ONONONONONONONONON ON ON ON ON O NO NO N ON ON ON O NO N ON ON O NO N ON O NO N ON ON O NO N ON ON O N ON ON ON ONOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFUCKTHISBOOK.

There is not enough capslock in the world to express how much I hate this fucking fuckfaced fucker and his whole fucking fuckness and I think it’s because the shitery is not limited to just Noah.  It’s because the book is trying to paint him as insightful and concerned, when MARA LITERALLY JUST TOLD YOU HER PROBLEM; IT’S THAT SHE’S BUSY AND YOU’RE A JERK.

And what is this trying to say?  That a guy that completely ignore everything you’ve ever said to him but still be soulfully concerned with your wellbeing?  What kind of message is that to sent to young girls?  It’s taking HUGE RED FLAG SIGNALS THAT HAPPEN ALL THE TIME IN REAL LIFE and trying to paint over them with a brush of bullshit romance fuckery and basically saying that, even if you’re annoyed at this behavior, don’t worry, eventually it’ll pay off!  It’s not like anything bad could come out of it, and it’s certainly not like his casual disregard for what you’ve said directly to his face could in and of itself be a bad thing!

FUCK THAT.

And then they almost kiss and the chapter ends on that s a cliffhanger.  Because it fucking hates me.

I don’t even get how this is supposed to be attractive.  I really, honestly don’t.  It’s too much.  Sometimes I get the appeal of the weird abusive-but-ignore-it characters, because there’s enough else mixed into the pot that at least if you take out the abusive bullshit there would be something there.  With Noah?  If you take Noah’s asshattery out of the picture you’re left with a fucking statue because he does literally nothing else.