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

The Assumption

We were known as The Guineveres to the other girls at the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration because our parents all named us Guinevere at birth, a coincidence that bound us together from the moment we met. We arrived over the course of two years, one by one, delivered unto the cool foyer of the convent and into the care of Sister Fran. Each of us had our own story. Usually, our parents whispered that they loved us; they told us to behave. Our mothers gave us lipstick kisses on our cheeks, or our fathers said they hoped someday we'd understand. Then they drove away for good, up the one-lane drive and into a world that was easier without children. They all had their reasons.

But The Guineveres had our reasons for wanting to run away, which is how we found ourselves stowed inside the cramped quarters of a parade float, wheels whirring beneath us, gravel bumping us like unpredictable hiccups so that we had to brace ourselves against the chicken-wire frame that cut into our skin. Inside the float, the air was suffocating, a thick blanket thrown over us. Through tiny gaps in the tissue paper, we could see Sister Monica, the handle of our float thrown over her shoulder as though she were heaving a giant cross up that graveled hill. Half-circle sweat marks appeared at her armpits; she grunted as she struggled with the weight of us.

Soon we heard Sister Fran's voice snap from behind, "Keep with the pace. This is a parade, not a pilgrimage." She appeared in our line of vision, her whistle swinging around her neck in place of the cross pendant that the other sisters wore. Sister Fran looked almost translucent in the sunlight, her arms and legs exposed and her veins appearing like little road maps beneath her pale skin.

"It's quite heavy," Sister Monica said between short breaths.

"Sin is heavy," Sister Fran said. She trilled the whistle three quick times into a wincing Sister Monica's ear, then marched ahead toward the front of the parade.

Our float was the largest entry in the parade, and for good reason. We'd designed it to hide us. Eight feet at its tallest point, it was shaped like a hand of benediction—two perpendicular fingers set closer than a victory sign, resembling a double-barreled, gun-shaped hand pointed toward the air. Win and I stood crouched in the upright fingers, Ginny had curled her tiny body into the thumb, and Gwen pancaked herself inside the narrow hollow of the plywood base. Outside we could hear the cheering of onlookers, some squealing and hooting. The band boomed in the distance, not the slow, haunting organ music we normally heard in the chapel during mass, but something infinitely more upbeat, with horns and guitars.

The parade itself capped off the Sisters' annual August festival celebrating the Assumption of Mary, her earthly departure. At the end of her life, Mary was carried up to heaven on the wings of angels, her body too sacred to remain on earth, succumbing to dust like the rest of us. To be certain, The Guineveres didn't believe we were perfect, not like Mary. How could we, with Sister Fran's constant reminders of our waywardness or the sins of our bodies that shamed us for the simple fact that they were bodies and thus subject to the laws of biology? "The Flesh, girls, the Flesh," Sister Fran warned, her habit swaddled tightly against her face so she appeared to have no ears, though she always seemed to hear us, to overhear us, and so we often found ourselves whispering, even when we were alone. For The Guineveres, the festival marked not Mary's departure but our departure, our freedom. We refused to wait until we were eighteen; we were leaving the convent for good.

Of course, this was nearly two decades ago, and some of the details I've since forgotten. Call it willful amnesia or an act of forgiveness. I'm not sure which. I gave up writing in my notebook a long time ago—life got in the way, and I grew out of the habit. Besides, after everything that happened that year, there were some things I didn't wish to remember, some questions I couldn't bring myself ask. Back then, I hadn't yet realized that time had a way of providing the answers. Back then, I believed The Guineveres were all I had.

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.