Excerpt from The Guineveres by Sarah Domet, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"It's like they're not embarrassed or anything," Ginny said.

"It's like Eden before the Fall," I noted.

"I'd hate to live in a world without makeup," Gwen added.

Win said nothing, just sat there and stared at the picture as if it were the most perplexing thing she'd ever seen.

We used to joke that we lived at the Sisters of the Supreme Constipation School for Girls. Behind the Sisters' backs, we'd contort our mouths in imitation, in what Win dubbed our Holy Constipation Faces. During Morning Instruction, while we sat in varnished desks reading about the lives of the saints, Ginny doodled pictures of the Sisters, their cheeks sunken and their expressions strained, cradling their torsos and sitting on a toilet as a heavenly light shined down upon them. This too shall pass, the caption read. We laughed, but not Gwen. She told us we were too old for such antics, and in some ways she was right. Had we lived "outside," we'd be in high school, learning to drive cars, getting part-time jobs at Woolworth's, and smoking cigarettes on our breaks in order to appear older and occupied and, thus, more attractive to boys. But the convent stalled the progression of time, stunted our growth. We lived cloistered lives, and in that way we were like all those saints.

"And look at how they turned out," Win reminded us. We had spread ourselves out on the lawn near the bandstand, watching the trumpet player's face redden and the saxophone player's cheeks blow in and out like a fish's.

"Yes. They died! It was horrible! I don't want to die," Ginny said, clasping her forehead, then pulling back her palm to examine it for stigmata wounds.

"And most of them never even got laid," Gwen said.

"There are more important things than that," I added.

"Like what?" Gwen asked, but it came out like a yawn. She constantly preened herself, and at that moment she picked dirt from beneath her nails, grimacing as she flicked each speck to the grass.

"Like faith." I was the only true believer among us.

At the far end of the lawn, we saw Lottie Barzetti, the sun reflecting off her glasses. She was handing out tufts of cotton candy to her friends like manna, bending at the waist to administer each piece. Her curly hair had frizzed out in the heat, and she had her socks pulled up to her knees, even though the Sisters said we could go without socks for the day. Lottie was never one to break the rules. Her devoutness bordered on ascetic. The Guineveres once found her in the Bunk Room hitting herself over the head with her Bible. "Stupid girl, stupid girl," she kept repeating with each thwack.

From behind her we could hear the crowd cheer, and we watched as Father James emerged from the dunking booth. His now transparent undershirt revealed his wide chest, patched with dark hairs. His shorts clung to his body in a way that showed a lump of manhood. We looked on in horror, not like we did with those National Geographics; something seemed irreverent about it.

During the festival, even the old folks from the convalescence wing seemed livelier. During the day, they'd usually sit stone-faced at the tables in their lobby. Some would stare out the window toward the parking lot as though waiting for someone, but they seldom received visitors. These decrepit old men and women were left behind, forgotten, like us, and so we felt sorry for them. But still, we didn't ever want to be put on Sick Ward duty. We called it the Sick Ward, even though most of them weren't visibly sick—like Mr. Macker or Miss Oatley—just old and dying slowly of age.

The Sick Ward comprised the entire east wing of the convent, a different world altogether. Old men and women would moan from their beds, call out the names of people they'd once known in voices that sounded ghostly, like the slow hand-spinning of a record. It frightened us. The Guineveres agreed that this must be a kind of purgatory, where souls of old people went when nobody else would claim them. And purgatory, we repugnantly observed, smelled like rubbing alcohol, bleach, and urine. From a distance, the old folks looked like a militia's front line. Their wheelchairs pointed toward the church, and the balloons tied to their armrests shifted in the breeze like colorful flags. Mr. Macker had fallen asleep in his chair, his head leaned back at a forty-five-degree angle, his mouth parted as if he were waiting to take communion. His crooked toes poked out of his slippers like an atrophied hand.

Excerpted from The Guineveres by Sarah Domet. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Domet. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.