Chapter Text
The showers were a cold, clinical affair, the water spitting from rusted pipes in a tiled room that smelled of bleach and despair.
Nurses stood watch, their eyes sharp as they leaned against the cold sink, offering Frankie a dull razor with the same tired line: “ Are you sure? It’ll make you feel better.”
Frankie always refused, her voice flat, her gaze fixed on the cracked floor.
She liked her body hair—legs, underarms, all of it.
To her, it was resistance, a quiet rebellion against the world’s obsession with taming women.
And she had been tamed enough already.
The nurses though, weren’t here for revolutions.
They were here to monitor, to ensure she didn’t turn the soap or the showerhead into something dangerous. Nurse Evelyn, with her tight bun and lips pursed like she’d tasted something sour, stared the hardest, as if Frankie’s unshaved legs were a personal affront.
Nurse Raymond, kinder but awkward, would sometimes look away, giving her a second of privacy in the sterile stall.
After Bible study, when the nun’s droning verses still echoed in her head, Frankie was granted free time—a fleeting hour to exist outside the retreat’s suffocating rhythm.
Most days, she’d slip to the barn, its sagging beams and musty air a refuge where she could smoke her dwindling cigarettes and watch the pasture’s tall grass sway under the weight of dusk.
The vast grasslands stretched beyond the retreat like a forgotten promise, its weeds tangled with wildflowers, bordered by cypress trees that leaned like mourners, their roots sinking into the swamp’s dark water.
But today, Frankie didn’t go to the barn.
She headed to the library, her footsteps soft on the warped floorboards, her heart quickening.
She wasn’t looking for Sister Geraldine— not exactly . But if she found her, tucked among the shelves with her alleged forbidden book, that would be enough.
It was a narrow room in the west wing, past the chapel’s flickering candles and the hallway’s ever-present crucifixes. Its walls were lined with sagging shelves, the air thick with the scent of forgetfulness and bury.
The books were a mix of new and old hymnals, tattered Bibles, and lives of saints. But there were oddities too— Man’s Search for Meaning , a beaten copy of Wuthering Heights , a surprisingly well-thumbed The Bell Jar. They even had Harry Potter and Nancy Drew, also a self help section, romance novels and the Sex and the City ones.
A single window let in slants of gray light, filtered through moss-draped oaks outside, casting the room in a perpetual twilight. A wooden table, scarred with scratches, sat in the center, flanked by chairs that wobbled on uneven legs.
Frankie paused at the threshold, her eyes scanning the shadows.
There she was—Sister Geraldine, alone, curled in a corner chair with that same black hardcover and no title visible.
Just like before her mousy brown hair concealed under her veil, those sage-green eyes catching the light like still water, her lips, thin but rosy and heart-shaped, curved faintly as she read, a quiet rebellion of tenderness in a world built on severity.
It takes strength to be gentle and kind.
She stood apart from the rest of the convent’s cast—no stern sermons like Sister Patricia, no sour scowls like Sister Gabrielle, and certainly none of Sister Hayley’s exhausting optimism. And the more Frankie stared at her the more evident it became that there was no holiness in her gaze , no feverish devotion.
She moved like a librarian, content to lose herself in pages, as if the world beyond St. Agnes held nothing worth seeing.
Frankie didn’t know how to speak to her—not after their last conversation, not with the smoke still clinging to her memory like a second skin. The silence between them had hardened, brittle and sainted, and every attempt to break it felt like trespass.
She’d spent the last few nights watching the barn from her window, breath fogging the glass, ridiculous in her vigil. Waiting —not just for the orange flicker of a lighter, but for proof the Sister was real. That she still moved through shadow with that same quiet defiance.
And Frankie— God help her —was starting to measure her nights in glimpses of her. She was fast becoming a prayer Frankie didn’t know how to unpray .
“Hi,” Frankie said, her voice low, almost swallowed by the library’s hush. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Sister Geraldine looked up, her green eyes sparkling with muted amusement.
“Well, that’s because I take the night shifts,” she said, her tone soft but warm, like a candle’s glow in the dark.
“How gracious of you,” Frankie said, echoing Sister Hayley’s bubbly praise, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.
Sister Geraldine’s smile was small, almost sly, as if she caught the mockery but didn’t mind.
“Not really,” she said, tilting her head slightly, the book loose in her hands. “I’m more antisocial than I let on.”
“ You ?” Frankie asked sarcastically, one brow arching. “You don’t strike me as antisocial.”
“Maybe I’m just selective,” Geraldine replied, her tone dipped in velvet.
Frankie stepped closer, her sneakers whispering against the linoleum, and sank into the chair beside her—close enough to catch the subtle, improbable musk of lavender clinging to Geraldine’s habit.
So floral, so womanly.
The library breathed a stillness so deep it felt excavated. The ancient bookshelf’s wood moaned in slow communion with the phantoms it had learned to house.
Just the two of them, suspended in a silence so thick it felt like it had teeth.
Geraldine watched her with a gaze that was neither mellow nor harsh—just seeing . Her eyes were fatigued, but not dull. Like someone who had read too much and wept too little. Frankie found herself holding onto that look as if it might offer shelter.
Because Sister Hayley would’ve gushed about banana pudding or Jesus or Baton Rouge. Sister Gabrielle would’ve pierced her with a stare meant to diagnose her soul. But Geraldine? Geraldine simply looked at her —without rescue, without judgment. It felt perilously close to intimacy.
She opened her mouth, as though about to speak, then hesitated—words caught on the ledge of her own restraint. Frankie leaned in slightly, voice lowered, like they were already in the middle of a long conversation.
“Aren’t you tired of reading the Bible?”
That earned a breath of a laugh from Geraldine—a quiet exhale that warmed the air like breath fogging glass.
“I told you it’s not the Bible,” she said, her fingers brushing the book’s cover, her eyes glinting with a hint of mischief.
“Is it Dracula?” Frankie asked, tilting her head, her tone playful, almost daring.
“Kind of,” Geraldine murmured, her lips folding into a smile that felt like a shared mystery or a half-remembered dream. Her eyes held onto Frankie’s, quiet and warm, the kind of look that didn’t reveal a thing—but made you want to search for it anyway.
“Can I read it with you?” Frankie ventured, her voice softer now, a thread of something bolder weaving through it. It wasn’t just a question. It was an offer. A key turned partway in a locked door.
Geraldine closed the book slowly. Her fingers moved with a quiet grace.
“Why don’t you find something to read for yourself?” she murmured, her voice solemn, but not stern. “If you’d like to stay.”
Frankie’s pulse ticked up. There was something weighted beneath the words—a permission that didn’t feel institutional. A small doorway in a wall no one else saw.
“Can I at least know the name of the novel?” she asked, angling her body just slightly toward her.
“No,” Geraldine said, her voice faint, her smile softening into humaneness. “I don’t want trouble.” Her eyes flicked to the book, then back to Frankie, a spark of defiance in their depths.
“Why? Is it anti-Christian or something?” Frankie whispered, leaning in as if mouthing something forbidden, her breath catching slightly.
Her head shifted like a pendulum caught mid-swing, her lips twitching.
“Well… Anything supernatural’s a defiance to God around here. Though they let us read Lord of the Rings.” Her voice dipped into a velvety hush, conspiratorial, her eyes glinting like they held some sort of outlawing, exclusive to her.
Frankie let out a small laugh, startled by it. The sound didn’t reverberate—it settled , warm against the walls.
“Have you read it?”
“Of course,” Geraldine replied, her eyes lighting briefly. “Have you?”
Frankie nodded quickly, though not entirely honestly. She hadn’t read the books.
She’d watched the first film in someone’s basement when it came out on VHS, high off a crushed Klonopin and a stolen beer. Still, she liked the way Geraldine spoke—like she was being invited into something sacred.
“What’s your favorite character?” Geraldine asked more peacefully now, a touch playful, her expression a little looser than before. Her posture shifted, leaning in, her veil catching on the chair’s worn backrest.
Frankie hesitated, then smiled with a touch of mischief. “You go first.”
Geraldine’s lips parted in a grin that felt just slightly wrong for a nun.
“Shelob,” she said proudly, her voice dropping as if giving away a guilty pleasure. “The spider.”
Frankie blinked. “The spider?!”
Geraldine laughed—this time fuller, though still restrained. A sound like wind stirring forgotten curtains.
“You didn’t read them, did you?”
“No,” Frankie confessed, letting the grin stretch wider, something like warmth pooling in her chest, embarrassment probably. “I liked the movie, though.”
“You should read them. They’re over there,” Geraldine said, nodding toward the shelves across the room. Her speech took on an edge—just enough to be a dare. “Go on. Earn your favorite.”
Frankie rose slowly, her hands in her pockets, and ambled toward the bookshelves. Her fingers skimmed along cracked spines and multicoloured covers—gospel, saints, testimonies, light novels. She found The Fellowship of the Ring , the title barely legible by decades of use.
She turned, holding it up like a relic.
“I’ll read it,” she said, a flicker of something wicked in her voice. “Then I’ll tell you who I fall in love with.”
Geraldine’s eyes didn’t flinch. Her smile softened, but stayed—steady, unreadable.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, almost a whisper.
Frankie sank into the chair once more, the book heavy in her lap, its spine warm from her touch. Spiraling into madness.
Those words looped like a song twisting into ache. Her thoughts bathed in perversion and divine blasphemy, because all she saw now were Geraldine’s arms around her. Being . Held. By her. The image bloomed with such fragile beauty it felt damning.
Fantasizing to be cradled by a woman bound to God had to be more sinful than any arson crime.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. But the silence between them wasn’t empty anymore.
And Frankie wanted— really wanted—to focus on Frodo.
But her mind was loud. Slippery. Restless.
Her eyes scanned the pages, but the words wouldn’t stay still. They blurred and shifted like shadows at the edge of a dream.
She thought of all of her bad choices , of her mother. Of all the silent, trembling moments that had bent their house out of shape. Of the slow decay: the unpaid bills curled up like dead leaves on the kitchen table, the lawyers that spoke in riddles, the hospitals with fluorescent lights that buzzed like flies. She thought of the N.A. meetings, the shame-soaked coffee, the night she lit the car on fire because it felt like the only way to make anything stop .
She thought of the cross above her bed, plastic and crooked. Of the scream she’d heard last night, two halls over, raw and animal. Of the barn and its impossible stillness, how it seemed to watch the facility rather than sleep beside it.
It was everything that had led her to this bizarre place.
And she thought of Geraldine—this quiet, almost sacrilegious interruption to all of it.
Sister Geraldine sat beside her, immersed in her own forbidden book, posture relaxed but always impossible to decode, like a painting no one knew how to interpret. The light from the overhead bulb caught the pale curve of her jaw, the slope of her cheekbone, the hint of a smile that came and went like it didn’t owe anyone permanence.
Frankie glanced at her again—just a flicker, a second too long.
Because to look at her was a disruption wrapped in calm—a kind of stillness Frankie hadn’t tasted in years. Geraldine’s presence glowed like fractured light on a broken floor.
Frankie feared she’d notice her eyeing and realize what was happening, since some kind of weaknesses aren’t housed in the body—it just hovers around. It slips between people like a shared fever. And now, those tender, volatile feelings floated freely, oblivious to the ruin or radiance they might unleash.
But watching her felt like absolution in disguise—so much solace, Frankie could forget the wreckage trailing behind her.
Staring at Geraldine brought her so much solace she’d almost forget herself for all the damage she’d caused.
“You have to actually look at the book to read it,” Geraldine said softly, not looking up from her own.
Frankie blinked. Her mouth parted, something between a breath and a laugh caught in her throat.
“I am reading,” she murmured, a touch defensive, a touch shy.
Geraldine turned a page with practiced ease, voice a little lighter now. “You’ve been staring at the same page for fifteen minutes. Frodo deserves better. ”
Frankie bit the inside of her cheek, suddenly self-conscious.
“I got distracted ,” she said, letting the words fall casually, though her pulse betrayed her. “You know… trauma, or whatever.”
Geraldine’s smile was fleeting, but it lingered in her eyes. “Fair enough.”
They both fell quiet again. But the silence had changed—stiffen now, crystallized into sweet rock candy.
Frankie tried again to concentrate, but it was no use. Her thoughts kept orbiting Geraldine, tracing the way her fingers curled around the edge of the page, how her eyes narrowed slightly when she was focused, how her lips barely moved when she read.
She didn’t just want to look at her. She wanted to study her, the way you do with valuable and peculiar things. Like she might crack open if you ogled hard enough. Like she might tell you all the secrets she kept hidden beneath that habit.
And Hell—Frankie wanted those secrets. Wanted them like a good sleep , like silence, like the cigarette she'd stubbed out too early. She wanted them like she wanted to believe there was still something good that could unfold in her hands without trashing it.
She turned back to the story, pretending to care. But how could inked boys on a stupid hill compete with the living myth in her presence?”
She kinda looked like a mountain. A tall and solemn mountain.Her presence commanding in its quiet majesty. The black habit framed her like a shadow against snowfall, the soft cream of her shirt echoing moonlight on stone. And her eyes, moss-green and unwavering, carried the hush of high altitudes—alive, ancient, and impossibly motionless.
She glanced at Geraldine one last time. Just a glance. Just in case the nun wasn’t reading either.
But she was. She always was.
She’d finished The Fellowship of the Ring in a week, devouring it in her third-floor room, the pages lit by the weak glow of a lamp that flickers like it was on its last breath.
After all, she had more free time than she knew what to do with.
The book was dense, full of winding paths and epic quests, but no spiders.
She felt like a fool when she realized Shelob was probably in The Two Towers .
So she grabbed the next volume from the library, her cheeks burning with the thought that she was reading to impress a girl.
No—a nun. Sister Geraldine.
Frankie wondered how long it had been since someone looked at Geraldine the way she did, with a longing that felt dangerous.
She clutched The Two Towers , her fingers tracing the faded cover, and found Geraldine in her usual corner, her tall frame folded into a creaking chair, that black hardcover book in her hands—no title, no clue, just the same worn edges she’d seen before.
Geraldine’s pixie-like nose and thick eyebrows caught the light, her rosy lips parted slightly as she read, her sage-green eyes tired but sharp, like she saw more than she let on.
“Hey,” Frankie said, her voice low, a thread of nerves weaving through it. She slid into the chair beside Geraldine, closer than necessary, the air between them warm and heavy. “Finished Fellowship.”
Geraldine looked up, her lips curving into that faint, knowing smile that made Frankie’s pulse skip.
"Did you?" she asked, voice low, playful, like she was nudging a bruise just to see if it still hurt. "And? What’s your favorite character?"
Frankie grinned. A wicked, sun-flare kind of grin that made Geraldine’s stomach do something small and chaotic. “He’s got that broody, stray-dog energy.” She paused. “But honestly? Kinda overrated.”
Geraldine blinked. “Overrated?” The corners of her mouth twitched. She looked both scandalized and deeply entertained.
“I mean, yeah. It’s just dudes in tunics running around after prophecies. No stakes. No real intimacy . Not even a kiss. Just a bunch of grown men trauma-bonding over an evil ring.” Frankie tapped her nails on the wooden table between them, restless like a moth thumping against a lightbulb. “Kinda dry , don’t you think?”
Geraldine chuckled, her fingers brushing a stray thread from her sleeve. "You’re not wrong. It’s a bit... chaste ."
"Like… where are the girls?" Frankie leaned forward. "So, you’re telling me this Tolkien guy spent a thousand pages writing about dudes in the woods. Not a single girl...? “I'd set myself on fire just for the drama. There’s no way I’d survive. I’d cause a scandal within twenty-four hours."
That pulled a real laugh out of Geraldine—sharp and sudden, like something knocked loose inside her. “You would.”
"I mean, I'm lowkey glad tho," Frankie continued, eyes glittering, "Imagine being stuck in the woods with those losers. Jeez, I’d lose it so quickly. The story would be so much shorter."
"How so?"
Frankie smirked, emboldened. “If I were Sam, I’d have kicked Frodo’s whiny little ass by the end of chapter two.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “ Shit —sorry. Can I curse in front of you?”
Geraldine gave her a look—half amusement, half reprimand. “I’ll let that one slide. But Sister Gabrielle wouldn’t”
“I mean, for real though—he’s just doing what Gandalf tells him. There’s no resistance. No questions. Just, ‘Yes sir, here’s my entire life, take it.’ That’s not heroic. That’s… I don’t know. Institutionalized.”
Geraldine’s fingers stilled on the book. Her expression shifted—barely—but it was enough for Frankie to notice.
“You’re not entirely wrong,” Geraldine said after a moment, her voice quieter now, more like candle smoke curling around the rafters. “The Church favors stories like that. Order. Obedience. Good and evil with no shade between.” She waved a hand, smiling. "Also, the lack of women is outstanding... But I still love the story. There’s something about the weight of it. The way Frodo just keeps going. It feels real, even without the romance."
Frankie rested her chin on her hand, her gaze never leaving Geraldine. "Real? It’s all wizards and hobbits. I understand now why we’re allowed to read it. It’s so... inauthentic . No actual humanity, no real complexity . In the end, they’re either good or bad."
Geraldine leaned in too, the space between them charged. "I think you’re being reductionist. However, even if that was the case… There’s power in these stories. Frodo’s carrying that ring—it’s not so different from carrying your own demons."
Frankie softened. Her fingers drifted to the edge of the table, close to Geraldine’s. "Demons, huh? Bet you think I’ve got a whole hive."
Geraldine met her eyes. Her gaze was steady, moonlit, and kind. "Don’t we all? Don’t you think Frodo’s choice—to carry the ring, to keep going—was his way of facing his own?"
Frankie hesitated. Her smirk flickered. She felt like she was suddenly holding something fragile and ancient. "I think Frodo is a pussy."
Geraldine broke. Her laugh rang out, sharp and scandalized and beautiful.
Frankie grinned, emboldened. "I think he’s just doing what Gandalf tells him to. He’s a pawn, not a hero. The whole book is about following orders, not questioning them. There’s got to be some religious subtext in that, right? Like, all these rules, all this blind obedience. It’s kinda culty…"
“Okay, fair enough Professor… What would you like to happen in the book? If you could rewrite it, what would Frodo do?”
Frankie leaned closer, her voice dropping to a husky murmur, her words laced with defiance.
“I’d have Frodo run away with the ring.” she almost whispered. As if revealing a proposition. “Screw the quest. I want him to test it, and let him decide for himself if it’s worth destroying, instead of just doing someone else’s dirty work.”
Geraldine’s smile returned, slow and deliberate, a spark of admiration in her eyes
“That’s bold,” she said, her voice soft but edged with challenge. “But would Frodo be strong enough to make that choice? Or would the ring break him, like it breaks everyone else?”
"Does it matter?” Frankie said. “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what a good person does after knowing evil power?”
“I thought that was what the book was about,” Geraldine replied.
“No.” Frankie contradicted “the book is about a dumb privileged hobbit who goes on a quest to destroy something he doesn’t understand. He is granted freedom, but he is too stupid to see that”.
“Freedom’s not as simple as running away, Frankie. Sometimes it’s about choosing what to carry.”
Frankie’s heart thudded, her fingers twitching closer to Geraldine’s hand, the space between them electric.
She wanted to grab her hand. She wanted to do something really wrong with those fingers, something perhaps unholy.
“Maybe,” she said, her tone teasing but sharp. “But at least he’d get to choose. Don’t you ever wish you’d chosen something else, Sister?”
Geraldine blinked with tardiness, her mouth still curved with amusement, but her fingers had stilled. Frankie watched her carefully.
"Haven’t we had this conversation already?" Geraldine murmured, her voice low, her eyes undecipherable.
Frankie looked away, embarrassed. "Sorry. I get carried away when I speak to you."
"Why?"
Frankie swallowed. "Umm... you’re kinda the coolest," she let out. Then, a little softer: "Wish you were my friend."
Geraldine nodded, and for a second, her smile turned inward. Sad. But sincere. "We can be friends. As long as we respect each other."
Frankie smiled, but it came wrapped in something bitter. Because she wanted more than friendship, more than this hushed little corner of a dying library.
She wanted to be back at a bar in New Jersey, her boots on a stool, her guitar plugged in, Geraldine leaning against a wall watching her sing with a drink in her hand and no crucifix around her neck.
But they were here. And Frankie couldn’t stop staring at the way Geraldine’s fingers curled around the spine of the book, like she was holding something alive and holy.
"So," Geraldine said, eyes sparking again, "What about Gollum?"
Frankie grinned. "What about him?"
"You didn’t mention him. And I feel like you have thoughts."
"Okay," Frankie said, leaning in. "Gollum is a victim. Straight up. PTSD, addiction, betrayal. He's the realest character in the whole damn saga. Everyone treats him like garbage, but he's just... broken."
"He is broken," Geraldine said softly. "But he’s also dangerous. That’s what makes him tragic. He can’t be trusted, but you can’t help but pity him."
"Maybe that’s why I like him," Frankie replied. "Because people always expect the broken to be pure. But they’re messy. Dangerous. And still worth saving ."
Geraldine didn’t say anything right away. Just looked at her, lips parted, breathing slow.
“Do you relate to him?” the nun questioned. “Do you think you’re worth saving?”
These were the moments that truly unsettled Frankie—just like their first quiet meeting in her room, or that conversation in the barn— the way Geraldine gloomed.
She would get really fucking dark. She pondered things that a nun shouldn’t touch, let alone cradle. Thoughts about mercy twisted into something cruel, making you doubt whether God ever truly looked anyone in the eye.
Her voice would dip, soft as ash, and Frankie could feel it—something sacred and partially evil burning sideways.
Because in those glimmers of suspicion, of darkness gently folded into faith, she saw someone cracked in all the right places. And that terrified her more than any sermon ever could.
“I don’t know yet”. Frankie confessed. “Now, for some reason… I feel filthier than ever”.
She felt like an insect under a microscope—studied, dissected —by the creature before her, a woman who held equal measures of heaven and hell in her gaze. It made Frankie feel unbearably small. Not just sad, but insufficient. Because each time Geraldine unraveled into shadow, Frankie felt herself pulled deeper, more willingly than she ever admitted. And she knew—one day she’d wake with the serpent curled around her throat, or the venom already blooming sweetly in her heart, too late to resist, too gone to regret.
"You’re really something," she said finally.
"You too," Frankie agreed.
The air between them thickened, charged with an unspoken tension that made Frankie’s skin prickle.
She wanted to keep talking, to swerve closer, to see how far this could go in a place that forbade it. But before she could speak, a scream tore through the library’s quiet—sharp, raw, coming from the hall. Geraldine’s head snapped up, her composure shifting to alertness.
Like she could smell Frankie’s inner desires.
“I have to go,” she announced, standing, her tall frame unfolding with a grace that made Frankie’s chest ache. She left her black book on the table, its cover worn and unmarked, and hurried out, her footsteps fading into the chaos beyond.
Frankie stared at the book, her heart pounding.
The library was empty now, the shelves looming like silent witnesses. She reached for it, her fingers trembling, and flipped it open, the pages yellowed and rough.
She scanned quickly, her eyes catching a name— Laura —before footsteps echoed in the hall again. She snapped the book shut, shoving it back onto the table, her pulse racing like she’d been caught stealing. Laura.
A vampire novel with a character named Laura. It was all she had, but it was enough to spark a desperate need to know more.
She needed answers, needed to understand what Geraldine was hiding. Or thinking. She wanted more of her.
When the bell rang for evening phone hours, Frankie slipped past the murmuring rec room and ducked into the tiny office where the landline lived—a squat beige relic on a scratched desk that reeked of dust and instant coffee. It wasn't actually her day to make calls. She dialed her mother’s number with shaking fingers.
“Frankie?” Her mother’s voice crackled through, surprised and laced with worry. “Is everything okay?”
“Hi, mommy, I’m fine.” Frankie swallowed and softened her tone. “I called you earlier this week because I just… I need you to look something up for me. Online. A vampire novel—there’s a character named Laura. It’s important.”
There was a pause. Then the tired sigh of someone navigating both concern and dial-up limitations.
“Sweetheart, I’d have to disconnect the phone to get on the internet. Remember? One line.”
Frankie gave a breathy laugh, almost fond.
“It’s 2003, Mom. You’re the last person on Earth without a cellphone.”
“I like my landline,” her mom huffed, but without heat. “How’s the place? Are they treating you okay? Are they… respecting the vegetarian thing?”
“They mostly think tofu’s a vegetable,” Frankie muttered, then shrugged even though her mom couldn’t see it. “But yeah. I’m managing. There’s a lot of Jesus everywhere. And the nuns are cool… in a weirdly polite way . It feels like high school, actually.”
“I’d feel better if you’d just tell me what this is about.”
“Oh it’s just a dumb book people keep talking about…” Frankie hesitated, her voice slipping back into urgency. “Please just find it. Buy it, send it to me. Please? Promise?”
Another pause. A softer breath. “Okay, honey. I’ll try.”
Frankie closed her eyes. “Thanks, Mom. Swear I’ll call you again, during my phone hours!”
She hung up before she could say anything else, the words tangling in her throat. The office door creaked as she leaned back against it.
Had she ever gone this far before? Would the old Frankie have hunted down a name like this—chased after scraps of a girl’s existence like a fucking creep?
This place was getting under her skin, into her bones, maybe into her head. But how could she blame herself? What was she supposed to do here—pray like a ghost and rot in regret, like the sisters wanted? No. Not her.
She knew exactly why she came. She wasn’t crazy. A little criminal, maybe . But not insane. And the way her body thrummed near flames, the way the burn felt like truth? Everyone’s got something. Frankie just happened to like fire , a little too much.
But that wasn’t the real reason why she was sent here.
Thanks to Sister Geraldine she’d tried escaping into high fantasy novels, tales of elves and quests, but their pages had grown brittle and predictable, unable to hold her attention against the suffocating reality.
The library was her only refuge, not for the books but for her — the stern nun whose presence was both a challenge and a fascination.
Frankie would linger in the shadowed stacks, pretending to read while stealing glances at the older woman.
Geraldine’s bushy eyebrows furrowed as she turned the pages of her missal, her thin lips moving silently in prayer or study.
The severity of her habit couldn’t hide the human beneath—the faint lines of age, the calloused hands that betrayed a life of labor.
Frankie wondered what else was hidden, what secrets lay beneath the starched veil. Her thoughts strayed to places they shouldn’t, dark and tangled as the asylum’s corridors.
She wondered what else was tangled under her clothes.
She stopped herself, heart thudding. She was crossing a line, one she’d danced along for weeks.
But why not? The whole charade of treating nuns like saints and priests like gods had always rankled her.
Even in Catholic school, she’d seen through the facade. Priests were men, nuns were women—flesh and blood, not divine. Their “holy” garments were just costumes, granting authority without morality.
She remembered her confessions at fourteen, the priest’s probing questions: Do you have a boyfriend? Have you kissed? How does he kiss you? His voice had been oily, too eager. She’d frozen, then fled, telling her mother everything. The complaint got him relocated, whispers trailing him like smoke—apparently, he preferred boys. Frankie, with her cropped hair and boyish swagger, might’ve confused him. She’d always been a puzzle, even to herself.
Now, in the common room, she sat across from Anthony, cards splayed between them on a scarred oak table.
The other patients milled about, their murmurs blending with the creak of the floor.
Anthony was different from the rest, all softness—long lashes, a poet’s sensitivity, his words lilting like Kurt Cobain after a helium hit.
It made sense why he was here; that kind of fragility made the world a razor’s edge. He scribbled poetry in the margins of his prayer book, verses about stars and sorrow, and Frankie liked him for it, even if she didn’t trust his charm.
“Don’t you wanna make out?” Anthony asked, tossing down a card with a grin.
Frankie snorted, flipping her own card.
“I’m kinda gay , dude.”
“I’m growing my hair out tho,” he teased, running a hand through his shaggy locks. “In a few months, you won’t even notice I’m a man.”
She smirked, studying him. Maybe it was true. Anthony’s delicate frame and soft voice blurred the edges of masculinity.
He was pretty, in a way that made you forget gender entirely. But she wasn’t fooled.
“I’ll notice,” she murmured, leaning back. “I’ll notice once the clothes are off.”
Anthony’s laugh was bright, cutting through the room’s gloom.
“Frankie, you're a slut. I never mentioned nudity”.
“I’m a romantic, I could never just kiss someone I like,” she confessed jokingly.
“Don’t worry then, we can always scissor ” he said, playing another card. “My dick’s so small it might as well be a clit.”
Frankie burst out laughing, the sound raw and unguarded.
“Really? Maybe I’ll let you hit… just ‘cause you know what a clit is.”
Anthony chuckled as well.
“I wish I had one, though,” he said, eyes glinting. “Women are multiorgasmic, right?”
The room erupted, other patients hooting and chiming in, debating dicks versus vaginas with the kind of reckless abandon only the desperate could muster.
Sister Hayley joined in, her laughter too bright for the place’s decay. Frankie envied her ease, her ability to float through this purgatory without sinking.
“There was a time I wished I had both,” Anthony said, his gaze locking onto Sister Hayley with a mischievous edge. “But that’s the whole point of copulation, isn’t it, Sister? To get both parts to collide.”
Frankie caught the shift, the way his words weren’t for her but for Hayley. The nun’s cheeks flushed pink, her hands fluttering like startled birds.
“Well,” Hayley stammered, “the point of copulation is procreation. According to Genesis 1:28: ‘God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’”
Anthony’s grin widened, a fox in a henhouse. He shot Frankie a look, pleased with himself for rattling the nun. Frankie leaned in, not ready to let it go.
“But not all sex ends in kids, Sister,” she said, her voice low, challenging. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ”
Hayley’s eyes lit up, delighted by the Bible quote, oblivious to the barb beneath it. She didn’t know Frankie’s history, the years of Catholic school that had drilled scripture into her skull.
“Well, that doesn’t mean sex is less of a covenantal act,” Hayley said, her voice earnest.
“Then why’d God give me a clit? Female pleasure has nothing to do with procreation.” Frankie shot back, her tone sharp but playful. “And it’s forbidden”.
Hayley blinked, unfazed.
“It’s not forbidden,” she said, her cheer undimmed. “It’s tied to divine intention.”
“Hell yeah,” Anthony said, nodding like Hayley had just preached gospel truth. His eyes danced with amusement, clearly enjoying his role as instigator.
Frankie grinned, finding his audacity infectious. He was really trying to flirt with a nun, and it was working—Hayley was flustered but engaged, her innocence making her an easy mark.
“But it’s considered dirty,” Frankie pressed leaning forward, unanticipatedly the discussion stopped being a joke to her, and more like a personal attack. “Don’t they say that ‘Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.’”
Hayley nodded, undeterred. “Well, of course the Bible says that. Adultery is sexually immoral.”
“Pleasure is sexually immoral”. Frankie added.
“Enjoying delicious meals, the love of family, and the physical pleasures of marriage are considered gifts from God and not sinful in themselves, Frankie.”
“But you wouldn’t allow my marriage,” Frankie pushed, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Oh how couldn’t we?” Hayley added “If there’s love”
“Then you’d allow sodomy.”
The room froze.
Hayley’s gasp was audible, her eyes wide as she struggled for a response.
She was caught, trapped between her faith and the room full of patients—many here because of the scars left by conversion therapy or homophobic violence.
She couldn’t condone sodomy without betraying her vows, but she couldn’t condemn it without alienating the broken souls around her.
“Well,” Hayley began, her voice trembling, “Leviticus says: ‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination…’”
“Leviticus can say whatever the hell they want” Frankie debated “but what do you say Sister?”
The room exploded in noise, patients shouting over each other, some laughing, some angry.
And that was the thing that infuriated Frankie the most about Catholics: the way they hid behind scripture like it was armor.
Just say you don’t believe in homosexuality—don’t pawn it off on “the Bible.” It’s a book, not a weapon.
It doesn’t wield power on its own; people give it teeth when they choose to bite.
Part of her—maybe the softest part—had hoped Sister Hayley wouldn’t be like the rest. That she’d speak up, challenge the dogma. But instead, she’d just stood there, quiet behind her collar. Passive. And that silence stung worse than any preachment.
She was caught in the turmoil of the debate she started, when a soft, cold voice cut through the chaos like a sword, and she could sense the people start to gang up against Sister Hayley.
“Leviticus also states “And with a male you shall not lie. ”
Sister Geraldine stood in the doorway, her silhouette stark against the inconsistent light. Her face was a mask of misery, her eyes boring into Frankie with an intensity that felt like a physical weight.
The air grew heavier, the walls closing in.
Frankie met her gaze, unflinching.
“Oh, don’t worry, Sister,” she said, her voice dripping with defiance. “I won’t lie with a male.”