Future Sisters of America

by Jessica Lafortune

It was raining, and the prospect of passing another lunch period in the cafeteria proved uninspiring to a small group of sophomores who, on days like this, took to the library to see Sister Genevieve, all four-foot-eleven of her hunched over a stack of returned books at the check-in counter. “Sister, can we pray?” the tall one asked. Without a word, the octogenarian matriarch of the Sisters of Mercy left her post and led the girls down the sterile hallway to the chapel and began muttering fervent prayers, eyes closed, fingering a worn rosary. The girls had no intention of becoming nuns themselves, as they had led Sister Genevieve to believe. They knew that lying to a nun, and an elderly, saintly one at that, was a sin of the highest order; but they also knew the rumors about Catholic school girls, carried the weight of their sinful contributions beneath perfectly pleated plaid skirts. And they knew they needed all the prayer they could get.

6S

Jessica Lafortune is a teacher, tutor, and freelance writer. She lives in Florida surrounded by humans and canines who (barely) tolerate her obsessive reading and writing habits.