Nightingale Read online

  June’s chest swelled with elation at the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to tell anyone about this, wouldn’t have to ask permission and let someone else make the decision. She was soon to be a full-fledged adult, and honestly this was what she felt being a better young woman was: being someone who took chances in order to be happy. And just look at how it was turning out so far!

  When Monday came, she sent in her reply, again waiting sneakily for the mailman to come so she could see her envelope off with her own two eyes. When he was gone, it felt even more official.

  She had made her decision, and nothing could stop her now. June felt invincible.

  In between school, and trips to the supermarket with Mom, and vacuuming underneath Fred’s feet while he watched TV and helping prepare dinner for parties with Robert and Mr. Dennings, June kept her mind’s eye on her book. She realized with an electrifying jolt of excitement that she’d be typing THE END while in a private cottage somewhere in upstate New York. She’d make sure to arrange it so that she finished very late at night, so that immediately afterward she could go outside and climb up onto the little roof and lie there to look at the stars and thank them for her story. She could get drunk up there, eat chocolates, embrace what it felt like to be herself.

  Then, she could spend the rest of the retreat making edits and forging connections with anyone in attendance who might know how to pursue a publishing house in New York City and move on to the next stage of trying, trying, trying...

  June thought maybe she ought to sit down and write out an outline for all the chapters that were left so she could lay the story out properly and make sure the pace would be satisfying to her readers. She’d already decided that the heroine would live, but still didn’t know yet if the character would end up back on Earth or if she’d stay in outer space.

  June went carefully through her book of star maps while she thought it out one rainy afternoon, tracing her fingers along the imaginary illustrated lines that made everything look so structured and purposeful in space. Was the infinite blackness a path to something better? Or was it a churning pit of cold, nightmarish chaos? When she was ready, she sat down in her chair and put a new page in the typewriter. Downstairs, she could smell chicken frying, which combined marvelously with the cool, rainy air coming through the window. This was what it was like to be content. June wrote:

  Her new vision was nothing like her old sight. She knew her eyes were the same ones she’d had before, since they had never been completely detached from their roots while the creatures were poking around in her eye sockets, so she drew the conclusion that something very specific had been done to her brain.

  At one point, the creatures undid the straps that were holding her down to the cold metal table. She sat up, shivering, not as self-conscious about being naked as she would have imagined she might be in such a spot. These things were nothing like her, and she doubted very much they cared about the details as much as men from Earth would. They looked at her, and she looked at them. She wondered what they could possibly be planning.

  Clearly, it wasn’t as simple as her being hunted and killed for sport. They had taken her with a specific purpose in mind, but what was it? What had they done to her brain? The more upset she got, the more nervous the creatures became. At one point, the girl locked eyes with one of them and just started begging. The creature made increasingly urgent sounds at her cries, almost as if it were in pain. The others swarmed over within a few moments. One of them sprayed a greasy mist into her face from a device on its arm, and she passed out instantly.

  Suddenly, the door leading to June’s bedroom burst open. June knew before even turning around that her brother had come in. She closed her eyes slowly and sighed, breathing her rage out through her nose.

  “Mom asked me to find out if you wanted to learn how to make gravy using pan drippings and potato water.”

  No, June did not, not even a little bit. But in order to keep up with the image she’d been projecting since the poodle-skirt date with Robert, she had to act interested.

  “Sure,” she mumbled under her breath as she finished the sentence she was working on, then leaned back to read over what she’d written. It took her a few moments of peaceful silence before she realized that Fred was curiously reading over her shoulder. She worked her eyes to his face as nonchalantly as she could, so as to not let him realize that she was watching.

  His lips moved slightly as he read, and she could tell that he at least found it interesting because he didn’t pull away for quite a few seconds.

  “That the story you’ve been working on for months?” he asked as she stood up from her desk. Outside, thunder sounded in slow and heavy rolls. She nodded and picked at her elbow.

  “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

  He looked at her with an eyebrow raised for a good, long time. She stood still, taking in his ridiculous side-combed hair and brown slacks, a miniature version of Dad, including the crumbs on the shirt from snacking on the couch.

  He’d always talked to her like she was an idiot, but he also had a history of rare, brief and bewildering moments that showed he could care, like when as a child her Halloween jack-o’-lantern lollipop had broken on the sidewalk, and he had instantly given her his. As they’d grown up, June could tell that it worried Fred how unconventional, to use his word, she was.

  He wanted the same things for her that her parents and Robert did, which was just to ensure that she’d be safe. Happiness wasn’t as important as safety. If she’d just shut up and go along with things as she was supposed to, she’d always be taken care of by others.

  June felt no inner remorse knowing how she’d soon give the family one hell of a shake-up by disappearing for her writing retreat. Screw Fred and her parents and Robert!

  “That is a very strange story,” he said finally, his face completely void of anything that could be construed as warmth, turning back to the open door. “You’re a very strange person.”

  June went to follow him but stopped at her mirror for just a brief moment, to look at the lines under her eyes again. They couldn’t be scars, she told herself again. That was simply impossible, impossible, impossible. They were wrinkles, fattened with whatever disgusting natural oils and skin cells were permanently clogging them, two strange wrinkles of the exact same size.

  They were very hard to detect at all unless you stared at them, anyway. June needed to stop thinking about them, remove that stress from herself completely.

  So she went downstairs and listened with her hands folded neatly in front of her while she watched Mom pour out most of the grease from the chicken pan into a metal bowl, then used a whisk to stir some flour and potato water into the newly emptied pan. No salt or pepper, and when June politely suggested it, Mom scoffed.

  “Simple is best, June,” Mom said while the gravy thickened and bubbled. “This is how my grammy taught me to do it, and nobody’s ever complained. The excitement’s all in the chicken.”

  June smiled and nodded before being sent off to finish setting the table and getting everyone’s drinks arranged. She made up the plates while Mom got Dad and Fred seated. June loaded the men’s plates significantly more than hers and Mom’s, just as she’d been taught. She so desperately wanted to give herself more mashed potatoes, just as much as Fred had on his plate, but knew Mom would raise a big stink about it if she tried. That belly of yours doesn’t need any more. June could hear as if it were really being spoken.

  After everyone had eaten and dishes were done and everyone was asleep, June woke up, got out of her bed, went downstairs, and headed into the kitchen. She took the bowl of leftover mashed potatoes that was covered in plastic wrap, sat on the floor, and ate it all with her fingers. She threw the bowl away in the trash can by the street. She crawled back up the stairs and into her bed.

  The next morning, she didn’t remember any of this. When Mom asked with irritation in her voice whe
re the leftover potatoes had gone, June only shrugged.

  the institution

  “Let me ask you something,” Nurse Joya said from where she stood behind the doctor. Her bright red lipstick was as bold as ever, a clean white cap still pinned impeccably around her perfect blond bun. “Do you think it’s possible that the stresses of your everyday life have culminated in this manifestation? By making you believe that your parents have been replaced by impostors?”

  June was once again sitting in the office with the yellow and brown triangle carpeting, on the white wooden chair facing the enormous desk. She’d been brought in a few hours after she’d finished breakfast with the girls, where Lauren had sat silently in her wheelchair, her head still covered in bandages postlobotomy.

  When she had first been called back, June was afraid that the doctor and Joya would somehow know about the weird drug trip she’d had. Now, she nervously threw a glance over to the spot she thought was where she’d seen the doctor through the air vent.

  In that location, there was a trash can pushed up against the wall, completely out of place and blocking her view. June did not remember seeing it the last time she was there, and she thought she’d been thorough as she looked over the room.

  Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. Of course there isn’t an air vent there. The trash can was there last time, and you missed it.

  “June.” Nurse Joya was still waiting for an answer.

  “Sorry,” June said, looking away from the trash can at last. “Can you repeat the question?”

  She wished so badly that the doctor would speak, for any amount of time. She didn’t like Joya, and she also knew that he was the one who spoke whenever Eleanor was in here. Why would he not speak to her?

  “Your life at home.” Joya looked down at the chart in her hands, rubbing her lips together. “Was there anything going on in your life that was especially stressful before the incident that led you here? Anything that weighed on you or caused you distress?”

  At least she was saying the sorts of things that June would have expected from a medical professional. It may have been the first thing about her stay so far that felt normal. She felt hope begin to unfold in her heart for just a second before remembering Lauren with her pus-stained bandages and her forever frown.

  “Not anything that would amount to something this drastic,” June answered after hesitating. “It was just the same old stuff.”

  No it wasn’t. There had been some extra stress, loads of it actually, surrounding her graduation, and the writing program and everything that came after, especially the big party that took place the night before she was admitted. But was it enough to push her brain over the edge in such a visceral way? She doubted it.

  On the other hand, here she was.

  “Last time you mentioned that you knew your parents had been replaced because your mother had called you—” she turned a page “—Nightingale. You said that she wouldn’t have called you that, especially after that previous night. So what happened that night? You got too nervous to talk about it last time.”

  Good morning, Nightingale.

  “There was...a party.” June desperately wanted to leave. She missed Eleanor in a strange and unexpected way, very much wished she were here right now. “It just didn’t go very well, that’s all. My parents were...very unhappy with me.” Because I hurt someone very badly. She thought back to it, remembered the sounds of the glasses breaking and people shouting, her mother hysterical. Fred grabbing her roughly, lifting her from the floor. Get up, June. Move, damn it!

  “Why?” Joya was getting impatient. “Tell me everything. Everything that happened that night. Everything leading up to it. Everything you remember.”

  The urgency in her voice made June take pause. It was like Nurse Joya was looking for something important, more important than possible sources of stress—something personal to herself and not just to June. The paranoia bloomed in one unfurling motion.

  June remembered the last time she was in here, how the nurse had essentially threatened her with various methods of handling her in order to find out what had happened that night. She remembered what the monster in the tunnel had said about her brain and what Simpson had said at breakfast about worms being implanted into brains. June looked again to the trash can shoved against the wall and shivered.

  “I can see that you’re not going to make this easy for us or yourself.” The nurse snapped the chart shut, and the doctor gave a quick but sharp nod, causing the old skin on his neck to ripple. “We’ll have to continue your treatment until we can get to the bottom of this and decide together when you’re ready to go back home. All it’ll take from you is honesty, June.”

  Nurse Joya led June back to the enormous door, while the doctor stayed seated behind the desk. June followed, relieved to be leaving the duo. The uncertainty and fear that were flooding her were overwhelming, making her feel as though she might faint at any minute. Was there an air vent behind that stupid trash can or not? Was there an underground tunnel snaking around below the institution or wasn’t there? Did these people want their brains?

  Impossible.

  “The doctor hopes you can begin the process of accepting our help to fix yourself,” the nurse said cheerfully, laying a heavy hand on June’s shoulder. “If you help us, we can help you. That’s all we want here, Nightingale.”

  June’s spine tingled, and her mouth went dry. Joya was watching her very closely. Why would the nurse say such a thing, especially after June had just talked about what had happened when her mother used the word? It felt intentionally antagonistic. That wasn’t how it should have been; she was certain of that.

  Mumbling a hurried Thank you, June walked away as quickly as she could, already turning over Nurse Joya’s words in her head, already building a plan from them. The next time she was brought into the office, she’d tell Joya everything that had happened that awful night, the night that still haunted her with confusion and upset. Then she’d lie through her teeth and confess that the incident with her parents must have indeed been a coping mechanism. And then she’d be free, discharged to the care of the parental intruders, but after that she could run away immediately. She could escape both options. She could get out of here before she ended up like Lauren.

  Clearly, she wouldn’t be able to go home, but June would have been happy to cross that bridge in lieu of this one.

  “That didn’t take long,” Eleanor remarked as June approached her in the recreation room, on the couch where the other girls were lounging in various states as Fantasia played on the television set in black and white. “What’d you say to get out so soon?”

  “Nothing,” June said, sinking down next to Eleanor, leaning against her. Eleanor leaned back. “I didn’t say anything. Next time I’m going to, though. Next time I’ll tell them everything.”

  “It won’t help,” Eleanor whispered. “They never stop looking for the answer.”

  I’ll just help them find it, then, June thought, and turned to see Eleanor looking at her. They stared into each other’s eyes for a lingering moment before June asked, “Where’s Lauren?”

  The other girls all looked at her then. “They came and took her away pretty soon after you left,” Adie said sullenly. “She’s gone now.”

  Somewhere behind her, June heard the sound of squeaky wheels and a rattling tray. Her heart skipped a beat as she turned to see Nurse Joya pushing her little cart toward them, a serene grin on her brightly painted mouth. She felt Eleanor stiffen beside her and fully expected to be stuck with a monster needle any second; instead, the nurse kept pushing the cart past them and ended up parking it behind Simpson.

  “Just a little something to relax, babycakes,” Joya cooed, preparing the injection while the other girls watched in frozen horror. “You’ve been all up in a tizzy these last few days.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Simpson cried, but she d
idn’t try to run away as the nurse cleaned her arm with a wipe. “I’m calm, Joya. Look at me. I’m just sitting here, watching Fantasia and minding my own goddamn business...”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Joya insisted with a sudden edge to her voice and stuck the needle into Simpson’s arm. “You’ve been saying some wicked things lately, haven’t you, buttercup?”

  June watched as Simpson slumped back against the couch, her breathing already long and deep. Joya noticed the other girls were watching her and shot them all a theatrical wink. “I’ve got to go get ready for more appointments with the doctor,” she said as she began to wheel the cart away. “Eleanor, after I finish up with Miss Adie here, it’ll be your turn, darlin’. Adie, please follow me.”

  “Okay,” Eleanor said, and June could tell that she was nervous but trying to hide it. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, it has,” Joya replied over her shoulder. The sudden coldness in her voice was chilling. “We sure do have a lot to talk about. Adie, now please.”

  Adie stood up and walked after the nurse quietly, her hands curling into themselves.

  Nobody moved or said a thing until she and Joya were completely out of sight. After the click of the door to the office echoed down the hallway and into the rec room, the conversation level resumed its normal, constant buzz. “That goddamn bitch,” Simpson slurred from where she was slumped on the couch. “I know just what she’s doing.”

  Cassy and Jessica, who had been sitting right next to Adie, moved over to the couch with Eleanor and June, as if the other girl had been cursed by Adie’s summons. Sometimes you only get called back once in a blue moon, Jessica had told June sometime during her first day there. Sometimes you go every day.

  Simpson’s eyes were red and wet and unblinking, and she wasn’t talking anymore. June went over to her and took her hand: nothing. Complete dead weight. “Simpson,” June said directly into her face. Again, nothing.