Come In and Cover Me Read Online Free PDF

to her, muttering under his breath because the toy was smarter than him. This was her first clear memory.
    She liked songs that told a story. Scott would teach her good new ones sometimes.
    â€œRepeat after me,” Scott said.
“Young teacher/the subject/of schoolgirl fantasy.”
    He sang it almost in tune with his average-but-pleasant voice, and Ren mimicked him. Her voice was pretty and much better than his—he told her that sometimes. He specifically called it “pretty.”
    â€œYoung teacher/the subject/of schoolgirl fantasy,”
she sang. She included the strange pauses.
    Their mother’s voice rang from the kitchen: “Don’t teach her that one.”
    â€œIt’s got literature in it,” Scott called back.
    â€œShut up, Scott,” said their mother.
    It was two days before Ren’s eighth birthday, and she had been promised a Wonder Woman birthday party, complete with a costume. Her mother loved parties. She liked to do research. She had spent time with comic books and had even gone to the library, and she now knew that Wonder Woman’s mother was named Hippolyta. She was going to wear a white toga and a gold laurel crown to Ren’s party. And a name tag that said, “Hi: My name is Hippolyta.”
    Ren was already wearing her Wonder Woman costume, which her grandmother had sewn. (She was disappointed because her costume was not a leotard like the real Wonder Woman’s—it had a blue skirt down to her knees.) Ren was pulling at the elastic waistband as she swept up raisins from the kitchen floor. The raisins were there because Sunday was pancake day, when her father tossed interesting things into a massive bowl of batter. Sometimes blueberries and chocolate chips and bananas and marshmallows, but today it had been raisins. Ren and Scott had ladled the batter onto the griddle, and it had dripped everywhere and then they both complained about having to clean up.
    Neither actually minded cleaning, but each was convinced that the other one was managing to clean less. They demanded equity.
    Scott threw a raisin at her, and she deflected it with her magic bracelets.
    â€œYou don’t have on magic bracelets,” said Scott.
    â€œThey’re invisible,” she said.
    â€œNo, her plane is invisible,” he said. “You don’t even know
that
?”
    â€œKeep sweeping, Ren,” said her mother. “Scott, you’re supposed to be wiping the counters. I am confident that Ren is wearing magic bracelets.”
    â€œThey can be invisible if I want them to be,” Ren said. “And also I can fly without the invisible jet.” She had never thought it was fair that Wonder Woman couldn’t fly. There were no rules to this. She would be whatever Wonder Woman she wanted. She would swoop down on Scott as he threw the football in the backyard, and she would lift him up by his T-shirt and drag him over the treetops, where his feet would scrape the branches. He might cry. She would let him fly, too, if he cried. They could do the backstroke through the air and maybe have a pet bird they would put on a leash like a dog. They would need to avoid telephone wires.
    She looked down at her wrists, and this time she could see the magic bracelets shimmering like glass.
    She sat in her own room, her back to the door, listening to murmurs of conversation from downstairs. Her cheeks felt dirty and sticky from tears, and her lips were salty and her eyes were swollen, but she wasn’t ready to go wash her face yet. They would feel so guilty if they opened her door and saw how hard she had been crying. She considered that scenario, then stood and walked over to her bed. She lay on her belly and pointed herself toward the door, face in her hands. It was a better pose.
    She had called Scott a jerk, and her mother told her to apologize. But she didn’t apologize: She said she hated him—he’d been saying her feet were too big for her body