Nightingale Read online

  But there were happenings, a voice inside insisted, chilling her blood. Unholy signs abound of a sick mind in tatters. Be honest with yourself...

  June grit her teeth and pushed certain details out of her head forcefully, details like how she’d stopped sleeping at a certain point while writing her story, and how she’d begun to see creatures in her room at night. She thought about that last year leading up to graduation. How she’d planned to break it off with Robert right away, how she never had, how she still hadn’t, not officially anyway.

  After what had happened the night before June was admitted, there was no way she and Robert were still together, right? She wondered where Robert was now. Still devastated from what he’d suffered? Angry at her for what had happened? (It had, after all, been her fault.) Perhaps Robert was even happy that June was here, locked away from the rest of the world, no longer a risk with all those delusions in her head.

  It was surreal for June to know that despite the forced circumstances that had brought them together in the first place, Robert had always claimed to truly love her. But with that love came assumptions, expectations. And as hard as she did or didn’t try, June couldn’t bring herself to feel the same way about him. It drove her mad, really. So much so that, even now as she was making her way across the common room of the institution toward the nurse with the red lips and wicked grin, she looked wildly to the past for answers.

  Robert had often talked to her blatantly about their future, exactly as he saw it to come, as though no other option was fathomable: someday they’d be married, and she would wait at home for him to return from work every day and they could enjoy each other “like we did in your bedroom that night, but also in other ways, like board games over scotch and hosting parties for friends,” and how he would take her to casual business events, and she would charm all the old men silly, although of course she’d need to go to the beauty parlor beforehand so that she could be “spruced up a little.”

  Yes, he had really suggested that she’d need to spruce up her appearance once they were married. This was hilarious to June, considering the fact that she intended to marry Robert about as much as she planned to become the president of the United States. And he would say all of it with such confidence, such surety, his neatly combed hair blowing delicately in the wind as he drove with one hand on the wheel in his convertible, leaning on his elbow and smiling at June but unable to see that she wasn’t smiling back.

  To have the confidence of such a pathetic type of man! June theorized that such power would gift her the world and all its possibilities.

  But everyone at home had told June how lucky she was to have Robert. Her mom, her dad, her stupid older brother, Fred. “You’re so homely,” her mother had remarked one night over dinner, her head cocked to the side as a sloppy effect of the scotch June saw her sneak from Dad’s cart before dinner. “Shoulders like a boy, big feet, hair on the back of your neck. Even when you were younger I worried about it.”

  Mom had seemed to realize then that she was staring and had pulled herself up straight again, moving her focus to the dismally white, unseasoned chicken cutlet on her plate. “And then your habits only followed. Writing, lazing around, and let’s not talk about how big of a slob you are.”

  Yes, June’s room was often a chaotic collection of all her belongings, strewn about just like her thoughts. There were clothes on the floor, papers on the desk, chocolate wrappers hidden hastily behind the headboard. She’d wear the same dress for days in a row, before it started to really stink and she couldn’t deny that a new one was needed. The box of baby-pink plastic rollers that had been a birthday gift from her mother sat unopened on her dresser. A girdle, also unused, lay in a crumpled pile in the top drawer.

  It wasn’t that June didn’t love herself as her mother had once suggested; quite the contrary, she found herself quite interesting. It was that she just couldn’t bring herself to care about the things that others expected her to. Be yourself was a great phrase to live by to a point, but when she approached the situation logically and factually, June knew that in order to be considered successful by anyone else’s standards, she’d have to force the pieces to fit somehow.

  If she were ever to do what she really wanted to do—travel around and write and meet new best friends all around the country and experience life—she’d be forever cast out from her family. Why on earth did she care if her family shunned her for no other reason than because she was simply being herself? Why couldn’t she flip them the bird, ride off on her newly purchased motorcycle into the night, and never look back again?

  Yet, June found that she did care, and she hated herself a little bit for that. It made her doubt her identity as a strong, confident girl with her own feelings, made her feel spineless and confused, someone who wanted to be in control and strong but just...wasn’t.

  June wondered: Was it possible that she was wrong about her parents being replaced by impostors? She had set her brain on how she felt when she’d first been overcome by terror, trying to remember every single thing that had gone through her mind in that horrifying moment the Mom-thing had turned to her and said, Good morning, Nightingale.

  Something felt funny in her stomach when she did this; it was like the memory was out of focus. She couldn’t really remember why she’d felt the way she did, how she’d known something else had taken her mother’s and father’s places. All she remembered was the cold handle of the knife in her palm, the crash of the plate that she’d accidentally knocked onto the floor when she’d backed into the corner, the look in her parents’ eyes when she’d pointed the knife back and forth between them.

  June realized that she’d stopped walking across the big recreation room, had been simply staring at the ground ahead of her, and that the nurse who’d called her name was watching her carefully. June quickly made her way across the remaining distance, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her frayed sweater.

  “Sorry,” June mumbled at the sight of the nurse’s face. “I...I thought I saw a roach on the floor.”

  “No, you didn’t,” the nurse said curtly, turning on her heel to lead June to the big door at the very end of the residential hallway. “That was a lie.”

  June immediately felt her cheeks warm. What kind of nurse was this woman? June noticed now that she was the strange nurse who’d stared at her before, the one who looked like she was wearing a costume. Those red lips, that magazine-worthy blond hair with a cap pinned perfectly on top, that wicked curl in the corner of her mouth. Nurses were supposed to be...not warm exactly—June would never expect to be coddled—but still, at least willing to reflect that mutual wish for wellness, right?

  “Excuse me?” June said shakily, proud of herself for not letting the silence take over. “What did you say?”

  The nurse looked over her shoulder to meet June’s eye for just a second, one eyebrow slightly raised. “The doctor will see you now.”

  The door at the end of the hallway was huge: both door and hall were unnaturally wide and tall, painted a solid and startling black. There was a worn brass knob. It chilled June a bit to stand before it: she felt like it was trying to swallow her. How had she not noticed before how big it was? Maybe it was just because from her room at the other end of the hallway it looked much smaller. Yes, she decided with a nervous clearing of the throat, that must have been it.

  The nurse raised a dainty fist and knocked a lively little beat on the face of the door. Without waiting for an answer, she grasped the old brass knob and pushed. Disbelief immediately washed over June as she caught sight of the room on the other side of the door.

  While the rest of the institution seemed to be all a worn white and even a little shabby, this room was immaculately decorated. A yellow and brown carpet that featured a long, recurring triangle design was a stark contrast to the flooring outside the black door. Furniture of dark cherry oak loomed tall, casting shadows over the carpet. An enormous
, unframed oval mirror hung directly over a desk centered to the back wall.

  Behind the desk sat an old man. His wrinkles were so severe it reminded June of one of those bulldogs from the dog park Robert loved so much to go sit at and do nothing. The man was looking her over in a way that made her stomach turn—she could see his eyes wash over her slowly from her head to her feet.

  The nurse cleared her throat, and June noticed that she was pointing to the empty chair in front of the old man’s desk. The chair was wooden and painted white, very out of place with the rest of the furniture. The nurse didn’t lower her sharply pointed finger until June had sat down on the rickety chair.

  “Thank you, Joya,” the man said. The nurse gave a silent nod and made her way to stand behind him. June expected the doctor to do the talking and was surprised when Joya spoke up instead.

  “So,” the nurse said, her thick lashes lowering as she glanced at the chart she held before her. “June Hardie.”

  “Yes,” June said, feeling a little silly. Why wasn’t the doctor doing anything except staring at her?

  “You’re here because you believe that your parents have been killed, when they’re indeed alive.”

  “No,” June said, a little defensively. “Not killed. Replaced.”

  Again came the flicker of doubt in her mind. That was exactly the sort of thing she shouldn’t have said out loud, but she couldn’t help herself. It was real. It had happened. Saying it out loud made it seem so nonsensical. Don’t get yourself lobotomized. But June figured that something as intensive as a lobotomy could never be the first course of action; there’d be plenty of time for her to dial back if she needed to. They would try other things on her first. Right?

  Joya scribbled something on her chart, rubbing her crimson lips together. “Replaced by what?”

  June shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She avoided the old doctor’s gaze and tried desperately to force the nurse to reassure her in some way, but no reassurance came, just that same cold stare, full of expectation, impatience even.

  “Replaced by—” June’s breath caught in her chest. “I don’t know. Maybe...maybe aliens?”

  This made the old man’s eyebrows rise for just a moment. But he didn’t look perplexed, or disgusted, or like he wanted to laugh at June for saying such a thing. He looked curious.

  “Why do you think that?” Joya asked, and June was struck with the hysterical notion that Joya was reading the doctor’s thoughts and voicing them for him. Stop, she scolded herself, her eyebrows furrowed. Stop, stop, stop it!

  “I don’t know.” June was trying not to cry now. She felt disoriented.

  “Well, you must know,” Joya insisted, her expression unchanged by June’s upset. “It says here that you couldn’t be reasoned with. That you were out of touch with reality.”

  And I am, June thought wildly. I am, I am, I am.

  “Yes,” she mumbled, not sure of what else to say. “I suppose that may be right. I mean, I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t want to believe they’ve been replaced. I just...knew somehow.”

  Joya was writing furiously as June spoke, as if copying her words into the file verbatim. “Go on.”

  “They didn’t look any different.” June forced herself to forget the strangeness of the institution, of this very loud room and the odd silence of her doctor. In order to move past all of this, to get out and continue living her life, no matter how dull it may have been, June knew that she’d need to cooperate. “But the thing—” She stopped herself. “My mother, I mean. She smiled at me when I came down. She called me Nightingale.”

  “And that struck you as odd?” Joya asked, raising a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “That your mother smiled at you, called you a pet name?”

  “Yes,” June confirmed, knowing already how ridiculous it sounded. “I know that sounds wrong, but believe me. With the way the night before went—” she took a deep breath, trying to calm the rising panic in her chest at the memory “—she wouldn’t have been happy to see me. She wouldn’t have called me Nightingale. She’s never even called me that before. It didn’t make sense.”

  “And what happened the night before the incident?” Joya asked, and the doctor leaned forward on his elbows, clearly interested. June wished so badly that he’d open his big fat mouth and say something, anything. She didn’t want to be treated by Joya. That wasn’t how it should have been happening.

  “I—” June found that she was short of breath. Wouldn’t they have known the story already somehow? “I don’t think it matters, really, the details. I just meant to say my mother shouldn’t have been happy to see me that morning. And yet she was. It couldn’t have been her.”

  Already she was sorely regretting bringing up the night before her parents were replaced. It hadn’t been the only thing that made June believe her mother had been replaced. Of course not. It had been a feeling when she saw the Mom-thing standing in the kitchen, everything about her perfectly identical to the real thing, except for a slight variation of the eyes. A daughter knows her own mother. This wasn’t her.

  “Well, June,” Joya said shortly, closing the file with a smack and tonguing the corner of her red painted mouth. “I regret to inform you that those details do matter. Very, very much.”

  June said nothing. She picked at her nails, banged her heel against the leg of the chair, bounced her knee up and down without even thinking about it. She would not be talking to Joya about what happened. She truly didn’t believe it mattered, but even more so, she didn’t want to remember it herself.

  “Let me tell you how this is going to go.” Joya moved away from behind the desk and sat on a front corner of it, as the doctor shamelessly let his eyes linger on the plump of her behind. It made June’s stomach sick to see. “We’re going to help you work through this. It may take a few tries and a few different methods, but believe me, we are fully equipped to handle you.”

  June didn’t like being told she was something to be handled. It filled her with a newfound sense of fearlessness and irritation that had been quelled by trepidation up until now. She wasn’t lesser than this stuck-up bitch, she told herself sourly, even though deep down she didn’t quite believe that was true. “Why did I receive medication before having my first appointment?” she asked boldly.

  If this doctor wasn’t going to do anything but gawk at her and Joya’s bodies, maybe she could make him talk, provoke him into it. “That doesn’t seem very legitimate to me. It’s this place that isn’t being handled right. You’ve got women sharing nasty bathwater that’s cold and stagnant. You’ve got a pail filled with bloody rags from our periods in the corner of the bathroom.”

  She turned her attention to the doctor now, choosing to stare as intensely as she could straight into his eyes. “You’re treating us like animals, yet you expect to make us better? How exactly are you planning on helping me work through this, as you’d say? By doping me up until I can’t do anything but drool all over myself? By cutting into my brain?”

  “Yes,” Joya responded simply, with a glowing grin that made goosebumps run down June’s back. “If that’s what it takes, we most certainly will.”

  The doctor gave a small nod. June stiffened in her seat, the wonderful and weirdly soothing bout of anger gone as quick as it had come. Be more careful, damn it!

  “That’ll be all for today, June Hardie,” Joya said. She lightly dropped the file on the desk in front of the doctor, who rested his hand on top of it and drew a little circle with his finger over and over. “We’ll be starting your first treatment immediately.”

  An unconscionable wave of fear washed over June. They’re going to kill you. She didn’t know why she thought so, and she couldn’t control what the fear made her do in response. Apparently in her fight-or-flight response, June’s survival method of choice was flight.

  She scrambled out of the seat as quickly as she could, forgetting
to pull the door open and initially trying to push it instead. The nurse and the doctor didn’t move to go after her, didn’t try to calm her down, didn’t do anything but watch quietly. June fled and while she was scurrying away, she could have sworn she heard the sound of Joya and the doctor laughing.

  days past

  She had hoped her mother would forget about dragging her along to the supermarket to check out the pork roasts on sale, but by the time June was finished with her breakfast that morning, Mom was already wearing her black leather pumps and pink lipstick and making sure her pocketbook was full of coupons before snapping it shut.

  “Is that what you’re wearing?” Mom said when it was time to go, looking at June’s green dress with a curled lip. “Didn’t you wear that yesterday?”

  “It’s clean,” June answered, rolling her eyes as she wriggled her feet into her flats. “And you’re the one who bought this dress for me.”

  “I can’t imagine why I’d buy such a thing.” Mom turned and clicked her way across the hardwood floor to the front door. “That color reminds me of baby spit-up.”

  June didn’t take it too personally. She’d learned by now that most of the things that fell out her mother’s mouth were not so much malicious as they were careless and thoughtless. She doubted that her mother thought about anything before she said it, especially when it came to her daughter. Also, June was the one who had really bought the dress, at the Goodwill one afternoon when the family had gone together to look for housewares.

  She wasn’t supposed to have been looking at clothes, but the green dress had struck her as delightfully simple and comfortable looking. She’d known her mother would hate it even then—it didn’t cinch at the waist with a belt, it didn’t have a floral print or lace around the sleeves. But still, she sneakily made her way to the front and paid with her saved-up pocket money while nobody was looking, shoving the dress into a crumpled ball in her purse before rejoining her family in the back.