Archive of Our Own

The kindergarten room smelled like paste and pencil shavings and the warm, sweet dust that rose when the radiator clicked on and the class didn’t quite notice. Plano sunlight came in hard through the high windows, laying bright rectangles across the floor tiles like someone had measured them with a ruler.

Mrs. Camilla arrived that morning with her arms full.

Not books. Not construction paper. A cardboard box—ordinary, bowed a little in the middle, its flaps loosely taped as if whoever had done it had been in a hurry or simply didn’t care how neat it looked. The edges were softened from being carried. One corner was dented.

She set it down on the reading rug with the quiet importance of placing something fragile.

“All right,” she said, voice low and steady, the kind that made the room lean in without realizing it. Horn-rimmed glasses caught the light when she looked up at them. “Someone dropped this off for us. You may look—”

She lifted one finger, not stern, just exact.

“—but you will turn the pages gently.”

That was all. No speech. No warning about sharing, no lecture about taking turns. Just that simple allowance, spoken like a spell.

Glenda Robinson didn’t move right away.

She stood beside her little table with her hands at her sides, watching the box the way she watched a stray dog at the edge of a yard—interested, cautious, ready to bolt forward or back depending on what it did next. Her curls were slightly flattened on one side from the nap she’d fought that morning. Her shoes were scuffed at the toes. She blinked once, slow, like she was making room inside herself.

Around her, chairs scraped. A boy near the back immediately made the sound of a siren—“Ooooh!”—as if the box contained candy. Someone else said, too loud, “Is it toys?” and another voice answered, “Maybe it’s books!” with the faint disappointment of a kid who had hoped for something else.

Glenda watched all of them surge toward the rug and felt something rise in her chest that wasn’t quite jealousy and wasn’t quite fear. It was closer to purpose.

She took one careful step forward.

Then another.

She didn’t run. Running was what you did on the playground when you wanted to show off. This was different. This was the way you approached a thing that might vanish if you startled it.

Mrs. Camilla’s attention flicked to her for half a second—taking her in, the set of her mouth, the way she carried her small body like it had an opinion—and then away again, trusting her without making a show of it.

Glenda lowered herself onto the edge of the reading rug, knees creaking in her tights, and leaned toward the box.

A glossy cover winked at her from inside.

Color—loud, impossible color—hiding beneath the box’s brown plainness. Reds that felt like candy. Yellows like the inside of a buttercup. A blue so deep it reminded her, without her knowing why, of evening when the sun finally stopped pressing down.

Her fingers hovered.

Then she put both hands in, the way she’d been taught to do with a Bible at Phoebe’s table—careful, respectful, like you were touching something that had a right to be treated kindly.

Her fingertips slid over staples and paper edges. Some covers were smooth; some were rough where they’d been bent and rubbed too many times. There were faces on them. Capes. Masks. Big block letters that shouted names she couldn’t read yet but could feel.

A boy to her left grabbed something with a bat on it and immediately began making punching noises.

Another kid fished out a green one and said, “This guy’s boring,” and tossed it back like it had offended him.

Glenda’s hands kept moving through the pile—slow, searching—not random. Not greedy.

Then her fingers brushed a cover that felt different.

Not because the paper was thicker. Because the picture on it made something inside her tilt, like a compass needle.

She pulled it up.

A woman stared out from the cover.

Not smiling. Not coy. Not asking permission to be there. Her hair fell in dark waves, and her eyes were calm in a way grown-ups never were when they were trying to make you behave. She stood with her boots planted like she’d decided the ground belonged to her. In one hand there was a rope—shining and coiled, like something alive. Behind her, danger looked small.

Glenda’s mouth opened a little.

The room noise receded.

She didn’t know the name yet. Not the whole thing. But she knew the first word because it was the kind of word that got said in church stories and cartoons and the grown-up radio: wonder.

“Wuh—” she tried, the sound getting caught on her tongue.

Her finger tapped the title.

“W… wun…”

Mrs. Camilla’s voice floated over, gentle as a hand on a shoulder. “Wonder,” she supplied.

Glenda looked up at her teacher, then back down, and tried again, mouth shaping itself around the sound as if it were a piece of candy she was learning how to chew.

“Won-der,” she whispered, and then, with a small hitch of triumph: “Woman.”

It came out like one word.

Wonderwoman.

She held the comic closer to her chest, instinctive, protective, and for a moment she didn’t even open it. She just stared at the cover as if staring long enough would teach her everything she needed to know.

Somewhere behind her, another child laughed. A chair leg screeched against tile. The world kept being kindergarten.

But Glenda was suddenly elsewhere—somewhere bright and brave and impossible.

—

Quiet reading time came later, after phonics and glue and the lesson Mrs. Camilla delivered with the fervor of a woman who genuinely believed in the power of “th” to change a life.

The box lived on the reading rug now, part of the room like the coat hooks and the alphabet strip.

It called to the kids the way anything new did.

They treated it like a buffet.

They dug through for things that looked loud: a man in a cape lifting a car; a masked face with a fist cocked; a robot with a laser. They made their own sound effects. They acted out explosions with their hands.

Glenda sat at her table with her workbook open and her crayon poised, pretending to listen with the solemn expression she used when she was trying to be good. Mrs. Camilla’s back was turned at the board. The class was meant to be quiet, which, in kindergarten, meant it was only half quiet—whispers and stifled giggles and the occasional shushing that did absolutely nothing.

Glenda’s eyes kept sliding toward the rug.

She didn’t go straight there. Not yet.

She waited.

It wasn’t patience like grown-ups meant when they told you to be patient. It was strategy, the kind that lives in the bones before it ever becomes a thought. She watched which comics got snatched first. She watched which ones made the boys’ voices rise. She watched the ones that were read for five seconds and then dropped, abandoned on the rug like toys kids got bored of.

Every time a comic hit the rug with a soft slap, her whole body leaned toward it without her choosing.

She kept her hands still.

She waited for her moment.

A boy with a freckled nose picked up the same comic Glenda had tucked under her elbow earlier—the one with Wonder Woman standing in the middle of the cover like a promise. He flipped it open, frowned, and then his face twisted in the specific disappointment of someone who wanted a dinosaur and got a hymn.

“Where’s the fight?” he whispered to the kid beside him.

The other kid shrugged. “That’s a girl one.”

Freckle-Nose made a face and tossed it aside, as if the paper itself had embarrassed him.

It landed near the edge of the rug, half under a picture book, its cover still visible—Wonder Woman’s eyes steady and unbothered by being discarded.

Glenda’s chair scraped.

It was quiet, but in that room everything was quiet-loud.

She slid off her seat like she was made of springs. Her hands clenched once at her sides, then opened.

She wasn’t running.

She was pouncing.

Small body, sudden speed—four-year-old determination with no brakes. She skidded onto the rug on her knees, the way she did outside when she chased a leaf, and grabbed the comic with both hands before anybody else could decide they wanted it after all.

Her fingers curled around the paper.

Mine, her whole posture said, though her mouth didn’t.

She pressed it to her chest so hard the cover bent slightly, and then, realizing what she’d done, she froze—eyes widening in alarm as if she’d hurt it.

A breath held in.

Then she smoothed the crease with her palm, careful, apologetic.

Around her, the other kids barely noticed. They were busy with capes and villains and pretending to fly.

But not everyone missed it.

Across the rug, a little girl sat very still, legs tucked under her, watching.

She didn’t look like the others when they watched something. They watched with their faces. She watched with her whole body, as if her skin had ears.

Dark hair, neat. A quiet intensity. Not fidgeting. Not performing. Just… there.

Glenda’s gaze snagged on her for a second—recognition without words. A flicker of something like yes.

The girl didn’t smile. She simply lifted her chin the tiniest amount, the smallest signal of acknowledgment.

Then Glenda looked back down at what she’d rescued.

She scooted into the corner of the rug, away from swinging elbows and loud whispers, and sat cross-legged the way Mrs. Camilla liked. She held the comic close, then opened it slowly, page by page, as if the story might spill out and run away if she rushed.

The paper smelled faintly of dust and someone else’s house.

Glenda traced the first speech bubble with her finger.

Her lips moved soundlessly.

Beside her, that quiet girl shifted just enough for Glenda to feel her presence like warmth. Not crowding. Not taking. Just close.

Glenda glanced sideways and finally, softly, said the name she only used when she meant it.

“Scar…”

It wasn’t a full sentence. It was barely a sound.

But Scarlett’s eyes flicked to her, and the corner of her mouth lifted, almost invisible.

Glenda went back to the page.

—

The words on the page were too big for her sometimes.

Not the letters—those were shapes she was learning, pieces she could name if Mrs. Camilla pointed at them on the board. But the way the letters lined up in long strings and expected her to pull meaning out like it was easy. That part still felt like trying to lift something heavy with small arms.

At home, Phoebe—her Ima—made words into games. Phoebe’s hands were quick and sure; she’d tap the table with her knuckles and say, “Sound it out,” and she’d wait, patient as a saint, while Glenda wrestled the sounds into place. Phoebe never snatched the word away from her. She let Glenda own it.

So here, in the corner of the rug, Glenda did what Phoebe had taught her.

She traced.

Slow finger under each word. A tiny pause between syllables. Her mouth forming shapes quietly, lips rounding, tongue pressing against her teeth in concentration.

“Las…” she mouthed, brows pinched. She tried again. “Lass…”

The next letter was an O. She knew O. O was a circle you could fall into. O was “oh!” when you saw something good.

“Lasso,” she whispered, the satisfaction of it making her shoulders relax.

The word tasted strange and good at once, like a new kind of fruit.

She turned the page.

Wonder Woman stood in panel after panel like she belonged there. Sometimes she smiled, but it wasn’t a smile that asked anyone to like her. Sometimes she looked angry, but it wasn’t the messy anger of grown-ups arguing. It was clean. Directed. Useful.

Glenda didn’t see a princess.

She saw someone who never got told to hush.

Someone who didn’t shrink to make room for anybody else.

Scarlett’s presence stayed beside her—silent, a steady weight. When Glenda’s finger stalled on a word, Scarlett didn’t help. She didn’t correct. She simply watched Glenda fight through it, and there was a kindness in that restraint that Glenda felt in her bones even if she couldn’t name it.

A few feet away, a boy made “pow pow” noises loud enough that Mrs. Camilla lifted her head and gave him a look that could cut paper.

He quieted, but only for a minute.

Glenda barely heard him.

Her whole world was ink and color and the shape of a woman’s stance.

The comic’s dialogue bubbles were full of phrases she didn’t fully understand, but she understood the rhythm of them. The boldness. The certainty.

When Wonder Woman spoke, Glenda heard a voice in her head that didn’t sound like her teacher and didn’t sound like her Ima and didn’t sound like any grown-up she knew.

It sounded like an answer.

She turned another page.

Her finger found a longer word.

“Ama…” she tried, and stopped.

She squinted as if squinting could coax it into being simpler.

Scarlett’s hand lifted, hovered for a second as if she might point, and then settled back into her lap. She didn’t steal the struggle.

Glenda tried again, more stubborn.

“Am… a… zon.”

“Amaz-on,” she breathed, pleased with the way it felt—round and strong, like a drumbeat.

She didn’t know what an Amazon was. She pictured a jungle because the word sounded like vines. She pictured women with spears because Wonder Woman looked like she’d be friends with women who carried spears. That was enough.

Her shoulders loosened. Her small spine straightened, unconsciously mirroring the posture on the page.

Across the room, Mrs. Camilla’s voice moved through the air. “Good job, Jeremy. That’s a very neat J.”

Glenda didn’t look up.

She turned the page as carefully as if she were turning a hymnbook.

—

The box became a daily presence.

It sat on the reading rug like it belonged to the classroom more than the globe and the blocks did. It was always slightly crooked, because the kids never put it back the same way. The flaps grew looser. The corners frayed more. The comics inside shifted and thinned as some got taken home and never returned, or got ripped, or got folded into paper airplanes by children who didn’t understand what they were destroying.

Glenda noticed everything.

She learned, quickly, which covers to grab before a certain boy’s sticky fingers got them. She learned which comics were safe to leave in the box because nobody wanted them. She learned, with the ruthless efficiency of a kid who wants something badly, the pattern of quiet reading time: when Mrs. Camilla’s attention drifted; when the other kids’ interest faded; when the room’s noise rose and fell.

She also learned the way boys discarded Wonder Woman.

Not always with cruelty. Sometimes with plain disinterest, the way you put down peas because you wanted cake. But there was often a wrinkle of disdain, a little grimace, a muttered, “That’s for girls,” like being for girls made it lesser.

Glenda didn’t have the words for sexism any more than she had the words for multiplication.

But she had eyes. And she had a deep, animal certainty that if they didn’t want her, then she was hers.

So Glenda waited and watched like a hawk.

The moment an issue was set aside—abandoned, ignored, left half-open on the rug—she moved.

Sometimes it was a gentle scoot and a quick hand.

Sometimes it was a full-body launch, knees on the rug, curls flying, a soft “Oof” sound as she landed.

Her hands always came down protective.

There was a physicality to it, this devotion. She didn’t just like the comic; she claimed it. She hugged it before she opened it. She held it close like a secret. When she turned the pages, she did it with the seriousness of someone handling something sacred.

Once, a boy reached toward the same issue at the same time and his fingers brushed hers.

He paused, surprised by the force of her grip.

Glenda didn’t glare. She didn’t shout. She simply held on and looked at him with wide, steady eyes.

Not pleading.

Not apologizing.

The boy blinked, then pulled his hand back as if he’d touched a hot stove. He muttered something about “whatever” and went to grab a Batman instead.

Glenda watched him go, then looked down at the cover again.

Wonder Woman stared out, unbothered.

Glenda’s small mouth lifted, just a touch, as if sharing a private joke.

Scarlett, always nearby in one way or another—quiet at the table, quiet on the rug, quiet in the corner—watched Glenda with that same unreadable intensity. She didn’t take the comic. She didn’t demand a turn. But she stayed close enough that Glenda could feel her like a shadow that chose to be kind.

Sometimes, when Glenda got too absorbed and the room shifted around her, Scarlett would nudge her knee lightly with her own—just a small contact, a reminder: I’m here. Don’t get lost.

Glenda never said thank you. She didn’t have to.

She just leaned in a fraction, shoulder brushing Scarlett’s, and kept reading.

—

One afternoon, the Texas heat had finally eased enough that the classroom didn’t feel like it was holding its breath. The windows were cracked a hair, and outside, a cicada screamed like a tiny engine.

The kids were restless. Quiet reading time was more like medium-noise reading time.

Mrs. Camilla moved between tables, adjusting posture, tapping a paper here and there, her skirt swishing softly. She paused behind Glenda once and watched for a moment, not interfering.

Glenda sat in the rug corner, comic open on her lap, finger sliding under the words like a train on a track.

Her lips moved.

“Par…” she whispered, then stopped. The word was big. Too many letters. Too long.

Her finger tapped each syllable with determination.

“Par… a… dise.”

She said it slowly, tasting it.

Paradise.

It made her think of the church paintings—angels, clouds, gold. But this paradise had no men in it, the comic said—Glenda didn’t understand that part, only the shape of it, the way Wonder Woman came from somewhere that sounded like it belonged to women.

Glenda’s eyes widened as if she’d discovered a rule nobody had told her.

She turned her head slightly toward Scarlett without lifting the comic.

“Scar,” she breathed, and then, because the thought pressed against her chest and needed out: “No… boys.”

It was the smallest sentence. Half a statement, half a wonder.

Scarlett’s gaze dropped to the panel, then back to Glenda. The tiniest crease formed between Scarlett’s brows, not confusion—consideration. Like she was filing the idea away.

Scarlett didn’t answer in words. She didn’t need to. She just nodded once, slow, as if to say: I see it too.

Glenda looked back down, satisfied.

She traced the next speech bubble with her finger.

When she reached a line where Wonder Woman spoke the truth and made everyone else tell it too, Glenda’s finger paused.

“Truf,” she whispered, sloppy, then corrected herself with grim seriousness. “Truth.”

She didn’t know why the word felt heavy. She only knew it did.

Mrs. Camilla moved on, her shoes tapping softly. At another table, a boy giggled and got shushed. At the window, dust floated in the sunbeam like tiny, drifting planets.

In the corner, Glenda kept reading as if the room didn’t exist.

As if all that mattered was the shape of a woman on a page, standing tall, boots planted, daring the whole world to blink first.

Glenda blinked only when her eyes watered from staring too long.

Then she turned the page again, gentle as a promise.

The front door shut with the soft, hollow thump of a house that kept its cool inside even when Texas heat still clung to the evening like a wet shirt. Glenda came in like she’d been wound up all day and finally someone had taken the hand off her mouth.

Her little shoes skidded on the entry tile. Her backpack swung, thumping her hip. She didn’t take it off properly—just shrugged out of one strap and let it slide to the floor like it was already finished being important.

Phoebe looked up from the kitchen table where she’d been sorting mail into neat piles. She had a pencil tucked behind one ear. The light from the window caught the soft shine of her hair and the gold ring on her finger.

“Well,” Phoebe said, smiling because she could hear it in Glenda’s breath—something had happened. “You look like you’re about to explode.”

Glenda’s hands fluttered in front of her chest, palms opening and closing as if trying to catch the story before it got away.

“She—” Glenda began, and stopped, her brow furrowing with the strain of finding the right words. “She’s… big.”

Phoebe’s face shifted into attentive seriousness, the kind she wore when Glenda tried to explain dreams. “Big how?”

Glenda hopped once, as if the hop would help the sentence come out.

“Like—” She threw her arms wide, nearly knocking the mail pile. “Like this.”

Phoebe reached out and caught the envelopes before they fell, but her eyes stayed on Glenda. “Uh-huh.”

Glenda nodded hard, curls bouncing. “And she got a rope.”

“A rope,” Phoebe repeated, amused.

Glenda’s lips pursed with intensity. She held up one finger, as if the rope was not the main point but the proof. “A magic rope.”

Phoebe leaned back a fraction, giving the word room. “Magic.”

Glenda nodded again, fierce. “Make you tell.”

“Tell what?” Phoebe asked, softly coaxing.

Glenda’s voice dropped, almost reverent, as if she’d learned something adults were always forgetting. “Truth.”

Phoebe’s smile softened into something else—something that looked like she was storing that away.

From the hallway, Lucille’s voice drifted in, calling from the living room where she’d been straightening cushions with the tidy, restless energy she carried even off the clock. “Is this another story about that cartoon cat?”

“It’s not cat!” Glenda snapped, then immediately recalibrated when she saw Phoebe’s eyebrows lift. Her small hand patted the air like she was smoothing something down. “No. It’s… lady.”

Phoebe’s eyes brightened. “A lady.”

Glenda nodded, satisfied. “Wonder… woman.”

The way she said it—one breath, one word—made it sound like a title carved into stone.

Lucille appeared at the doorway a moment later, wiping her hands on a dish towel even though her hands were dry. She looked down at Glenda, then at Phoebe, and something like a grin started at one corner of her mouth.

“A wonder woman, hm?” Lucille said, as if she’d met a few in her time and maybe raised one. “And what does this wonder woman do?”

Glenda’s shoulders lifted. For a second she seemed to be trying to put the whole comic book into her mouth at once.

“She… fights,” Glenda said finally, then corrected herself, because that word felt too blunt, too much like playground scuffles. “But… not mean.”

Phoebe’s gaze flicked to Lucille—quiet acknowledgement. Not mean. Not cruel. Not for fun.

Lucille crossed her arms, leaning her hip into the doorframe. “So what, she fights politely?”

Glenda frowned, offended on Wonder Woman’s behalf. “No,” she said, very seriously, as if Lucille had misunderstood something sacred. “She fights… right.”

Lucille’s grin widened. “All right then.”

Phoebe reached out and smoothed the hair off Glenda’s forehead with her thumb, a gesture so small and habitual it barely registered as affection until you saw Glenda lean into it like a cat. “You’re gonna have to tell us everything.”

Glenda’s eyes went round with happiness and strain. “Everything,” she echoed, and then—because she couldn’t help herself—she started right away, talking with her whole body, hands slicing the air, legs bouncing, the story tumbling out in bright, imperfect fragments that were more feeling than plot.

Phoebe didn’t interrupt. Lucille didn’t either. They let it pour.

—

At dinner, the overhead light made the Formica table shine. The air was thick with the smell of meat and onions and whatever Lucille had decided was easiest to make without surrendering her whole evening to the stove.

Glenda sat with her feet swinging, socks peeking from under the cuffs of her little pants. She had taken two bites, then forgotten that food existed.

Her mashed potatoes had been pushed into a round mound on the plate, edges smoothed with the back of her spoon until it looked, to her, like something you could lift and hide behind.

She held her fork upright like a weapon. Or a wand. Or a microphone. It kept changing.

Phoebe watched her with the mild, affectionate patience of a woman who knew better than to fight a child’s momentum. She reached out and tipped Glenda’s glass of milk a hair farther from the edge. “Tell me again about the island,” she prompted.

Glenda’s fork froze in midair. Her eyes brightened as if the word island had pulled a string inside her.

“No men,” Glenda said promptly.

Lucille, mid-chew, paused. “No men at all?”

Glenda shook her head so firmly her curls bounced. “No.”

Phoebe’s mouth twitched. “Not even little boys?”

Glenda narrowed her eyes, thinking, and then decided. “No boys,” she pronounced, satisfied. “Just… women.”

“Sounds peaceful,” Lucille said, dry.

Glenda ignored the tone, because she didn’t understand sarcasm yet and because she was busy building a world at the table. She lifted her mashed potato “shield” with her free hand and held it up in front of her face, peeking around it.

“She got bracelets,” Glenda said.

Phoebe leaned forward. “Bracelets?”

Glenda slapped the fork down and crossed her wrists in front of her face, metal clinking. “Like bing bing,” she added, making the sound with her mouth because her imagination needed noise.

Lucille’s eyes flicked to Glenda’s thin wrists and then away, as if she’d pictured the moment too clearly—this small child already practicing how to block.

“And the rope,” Phoebe said, gently steering the story back to what had hooked Glenda deepest.

Glenda uncrossed her arms, then mimed pulling something invisible out of the air, looping it wide in a circle. She made a soft whooo sound.

“She say,” Glenda began, then stopped, searching for the exact line she’d remembered. Her face tightened with effort. “She say… you tell.”

Lucille set her fork down. “And people just… tell?”

Glenda nodded solemnly. “They can’t lie.”

Phoebe’s gaze softened again, the way it did when Glenda said something that wasn’t just a kid’s detail but an entire philosophy by accident. She reached for her own water glass, let the condensation wet her fingertips, and said quietly, “That sounds like a very good rope.”

Glenda beamed, relieved—yes, Phoebe understood.

Lucille took another bite, then pointed her fork toward Glenda’s potato shield. “Does the wonder woman eat mashed potatoes?”

Glenda made a face of deep consideration. “Maybe,” she allowed, magnanimous. “Maybe… after.”

“After what?” Lucille asked.

Glenda lifted her chin, eyes widening as she reached for the grandest word she knew.

“After… saving.”

She said it like a fact of nature.

Phoebe laughed, low and warm, the way she laughed when something made her both proud and tender at the same time. “Well, you’d better eat then,” she said. “You can’t save anybody if you’re hungry.”

Glenda looked down at her plate as if the mashed potatoes had betrayed her by not already being part of the mission. Then, with a reluctant sigh, she stabbed a bite and ate it—chewing with exaggerated seriousness, like fuel intake.

Lucille watched her, and for a second her expression went strangely soft, as if she saw the whole long line of Glenda’s life stretching out in front of her—tiny now, but already stubbornly pointed toward something.

—

The next day, Glenda sat on the rug again with the comic open in her lap, the classroom noise like a distant ocean. Her finger slid along the lines, her mouth shaping syllables in a whisper only she could hear.

Mrs. Camilla’s heels clicked softly as she moved between the children. She paused near Glenda, watching her for a moment.

Glenda didn’t look up.

Her eyes were narrowed, focused. A curl had fallen into her face, and she didn’t push it away. She turned a page carefully. Her fingertip stopped at a speech bubble as if she’d hit a rock in a stream.

She made a small frustrated sound in her throat. Not a tantrum. Just the sound of a kid bumping into something hard.

Mrs. Camilla crouched down beside her, skirt folding neatly, and tilted her head to see the panel. “Which one?” she asked quietly.

Glenda’s finger tapped the word once, then again, like she was trying to wake it up.

Mrs. Camilla leaned closer. “That says ‘principle,’” she murmured, as if it were no more dramatic than “pencil.”

Glenda’s brow furrowed. “Pr…in,” she attempted.

Mrs. Camilla nodded, patient. “You’ve got the beginning.”

Glenda tried again, stubborn. “Prin…sip.”

“Good,” Mrs. Camilla said. “It’s like… doing what’s right even when it’s hard.”

Glenda blinked, absorbing it. Her eyes drifted to the panel—Wonder Woman standing in the center of it, steady and unflinching.

“Like her,” Glenda said, very small.

Mrs. Camilla’s face shifted in the faintest way—something like surprise, then recognition. She didn’t smile broadly; she simply gave Glenda a tiny nod, as if they had just agreed on something important.

Glenda looked back down and traced the word again, quieter now, as if the word had weight.

Mrs. Camilla stayed crouched for a moment longer, eyes on the comic, then looked at Glenda’s careful hands, the way she treated the paper like it was alive.

“Glenda,” she said softly.

Glenda looked up, startled—as if being pulled out of the story felt like being pulled out of water.

Mrs. Camilla’s voice remained gentle. “Would you like to take one of these home? For keeps?”

Glenda’s eyes went huge. She didn’t speak right away—her whole body went still, like a deer hearing a branch snap.

Then, very carefully, she said, “Home?”

Mrs. Camilla nodded. “One,” she emphasized. “Not the whole box.”

Glenda’s mouth opened and closed once. Her small hands tightened on the comic in her lap as if she might accidentally squeeze it into dust.

“Which one?” Mrs. Camilla asked.

Glenda’s gaze dropped immediately to the pile beside the box. She didn’t choose the cleanest. She didn’t choose the prettiest.

She chose the one that looked like it had already been loved.

It didn’t have a cover anymore. The first page was loose, edges chewed slightly as if some other child had worried it with their fingers. Three paper clips bit into the spine, and a strip of Scotch tape ran across the middle like a bandage.

Glenda lifted it with both hands, solemn as an offering.

“This,” she whispered.

Mrs. Camilla’s expression softened. “All right.”

Glenda’s breath came out in a little rush, as if she’d been holding it since yesterday.

Mrs. Camilla rose, smoothing her skirt. “Put it in your bag,” she instructed, “and keep it safe.”

Glenda nodded so hard it almost looked like her head would come loose. She didn’t say thank you—she was too young for that kind of social polish when something mattered this much. Gratitude came out of her as pure action.

She slid off the rug, moved to her table, opened her backpack, and put the tattered comic inside with a reverence usually reserved for church pews and newborn kittens. She patted it once—gentle, reassuring—then zipped the bag closed as if sealing a secret.

Across the room, in the periphery of Glenda’s vision, a small, still figure sat watching with dark, attentive eyes; Glenda felt that watchfulness like a quiet hand at her back, but she didn’t turn. She only held her backpack strap with both hands for the rest of the day, knuckles pale, as if someone might try to take the world away from her again.

—

That night, at home, Glenda didn’t even make it to her room before she pulled the comic out.

Phoebe was at the kitchen sink, sleeves rolled, hands in suds. Lucille was at the table with a cup of coffee, reading something and pretending she wasn’t eavesdropping on the way the house breathed.

Glenda laid the comic on the table as if she were laying down a certificate.

Phoebe turned, wiped her hands on a towel, and leaned in. “Oh,” she said softly, because she could see the state of it. “That one’s been through it.”

Glenda touched the paper clips with one finger, careful. “Mine,” she said, almost inaudible.

Lucille glanced up over her coffee. “How’d you swing that?”

Glenda’s shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug—half pride, half mystery. “Mrs’ Camilla,” she said, as if Mrs. Camilla were a kind of weather that had simply happened.

Phoebe ran her fingertip lightly along the Scotch tape, then pulled her hand back quickly before she could snag anything. “You’re going to have to be very careful with it.”

Glenda nodded, solemn as a tiny soldier. “Careful,” she echoed.

Lucille leaned forward, peering at the missing cover and the battered spine. “It’s held together with paper clips,” she observed, tone half amused, half admiring. “That’s basically a miracle.”

Glenda looked up at her, and something fierce sparked there. “Not miracle,” she corrected, small voice very certain. “Wonder.”

Lucille blinked, then laughed once, short and surprised. “All right,” she conceded. “Wonder.”

Phoebe slid into the chair, turning the comic so it faced Glenda. “Show me,” she said.

Glenda climbed up onto her chair, knees on the seat for leverage, and opened to the first page with careful fingers.

The ink was slightly faded in places. Some panels were smeared faintly, as if moisture had once kissed them. A few pages didn’t line up perfectly. Glenda didn’t care.

She began to read.

Not smoothly. Not with confidence.

But with devotion.

She traced each line with her finger, sounding out what she could, filling in what she couldn’t with the sure instinct of a child who understood the feeling even when the words were still slippery.

When she reached something she liked—something Wonder Woman said that felt strong—Glenda sat up straighter and tried to imitate the tone, chin lifted, voice pitched a little lower, as if she believed heroism lived in the shape of a sentence.

Then she giggled—sudden, delighted—because she was still a little girl sitting at a kitchen table in Texas with mashed potato dreams and a comic held together by office supplies.

Phoebe watched her with an expression so tender it was almost painful, like she was witnessing a seed split open.

Lucille watched too, eyes narrowed in quiet appraisal, as if she were sizing up the kind of adult this child might become.

Glenda kept reading until her finger started slipping, until her eyes watered, until the black lines in the panels began to blur.

Phoebe finally reached out and touched Glenda’s wrist lightly. “Sweetheart,” she said, soft, “it’ll be there tomorrow.”

Glenda hesitated, torn, then closed the comic with a careful sigh. She pressed it to her chest.

“Bed,” Phoebe reminded her gently.

Glenda slid off the chair, comic clutched in both arms like a stuffed animal, and padded down the hallway.

—

In her room, the night was full of small sounds: the hush of the house settling, the faint scrape of a tree branch against the window, the distant hum of a neighbor’s television. A cicada screamed outside, then went quiet, as if someone had switched it off.

Glenda stood beside her bed, staring at her pillow.

The pillow was ordinary. White case. Slightly lumpy from being washed too often. It smelled faintly of soap and warm cotton.

Glenda lifted the pillow with both hands, strain visible in her arms, and placed the comic beneath it as if she were hiding treasure.

Then she put the pillow back down and patted it once, carefully, to make sure it lay flat and didn’t bend the paper too much.

She slid under the blanket and lay very still for a moment, eyes open, listening.

She reached a hand under the pillow and touched the corner of the comic, just enough to reassure herself it was real.

Her fingers found the edge of the Scotch tape, smooth and cool.

A small satisfied sound escaped her—half sigh, half hum.

She pulled her hand back, tucked it under her chin, and stared into the dim.

In the dark, the story continued anyway, bright as a lamp behind her eyes: an island with no men, bracelets that went bing bing, a rope that demanded truth, a woman who stood in the center of every panel like an answer.

Glenda’s eyelids fluttered.

Just before sleep took her, she wriggled one more time and pressed her cheek closer to the pillow, as if she could feel the comic through the fabric.

Safe.

Here.

Mine.

And then, finally, she slept—guarded by paper clips, Scotch tape, and a wonder she hadn’t yet learned how to outgrow.

The summer she was three, Glenda began stealing scraps.

Not in a sneaky way—just the way toddlers took what they loved and assumed the world would make room for it. Phoebe would find a strip of red fabric missing from the sewing basket, or a bit of blue ribbon gone from a gift wrap spool, and then, later, there Glenda would be in the yard, turning in circles until she fell into the grass laughing.

Phoebe watched from the kitchen window with a dish towel in her hands. Every time Glenda spun, the fabric flared, and the cheap costume jewelry—little plastic beads that caught the sun—clicked and glittered like applause.

In the shade near the azaleas, Scarlett sat cross-legged with a concentration that seemed too old for her face. Two braids, always two, tied at the ends; her fingers worried at a piece of paper in her lap, folding it and unfolding it again as if it were important work. She’d brought her own “tiara,” cut from a cereal box and colored with a stubby yellow crayon. It didn’t fit right. She didn’t complain. She simply held it on with the seriousness of a child holding a crown in place for a queen.

Glenda’s paper tiara came later—carefully traced, scalloped edges cut with tongue poking out, then painted gold with Phoebe’s nail polish while Phoebe sighed theatrically and said, “If this stains my table, Lieutenant, you’re on dish duty,” and Glenda, solemn as any officer, promised, “I will be good.”

She didn’t wear any of it to impress.

She wore it to feel.

She’d leap from the porch step like it was a cliff, arms out wide, chin tipped up to catch the imagined wind. She’d land in the grass with a soft thump and then look immediately to Scarlett, as if to confirm the landing had been seen.

Scarlett would nod once. Quiet. Certain.

Glenda’s shoulders would lift with satisfaction, and off she’d go again, invisible plane parked somewhere in the azaleas—always in the azaleas, because that was where the air felt secret.

—

By four, she’d learned the delicious power of a prop.

Yarn became a lasso.

She’d drag it behind her through the yard, trailing a bright line through grass that needed mowing, and when neighborhood boys wandered too close—curious, half-mocking, half-wanting to be included—Glenda’s eyes would sharpen.

“Stop!” she’d command, voice small but absolute.

She’d cast the yarn in a clumsy loop that rarely caught anything on the first try. It didn’t matter. She’d try again, patient and relentless, the way she was when she wanted a word to behave on a page.

When the loop finally snagged an ankle or a wrist, she’d plant her feet and pull, face scrunched with effort, dragging the boy a few inches across the grass like she was hauling in a fish.

“Now tell!” she’d insist.

The boys usually ran screaming the moment the yarn brushed them, shrieking as if it were a snake. They’d tear down the sidewalk, arms flailing, and Glenda would stand in the yard watching them go with a pleased, almost peaceful expression.

Scarlett, hovering at her shoulder like a shadow that had decided to be loyal, would pick up the end of the yarn and wind it neatly around her hand, careful not to tangle it.

“Again?” Scarlett would ask, quiet.

Glenda would nod, breathless, cheeks flushed. “Again.”

And Scarlett would hand the lasso back as if presenting a sacred tool.

—

At five, when someone complained she was being bossy, Glenda blinked at them.

It happened on the playground, of course—where rules were always being invented and enforced by children who didn’t know they were practicing for the rest of their lives. A boy wanted the top of the jungle gym. Another wanted to decide the game. Glenda wanted the story to make sense.

“You can’t tell us,” the boy said, scowling, as if leadership were a theft. “You’re bossy.”

Glenda’s face went very still. She didn’t wilt. She didn’t scramble to be liked. She looked at him the way Wonder Woman looked at villains on a page—calm, unimpressed, patient with nonsense.

“I’m leading,” Glenda said.

Then she vaulted down the slide as if emerging victorious from a skirmish, hair flying, palms slapping the warm plastic at the bottom. She landed and immediately pointed toward the swing set like it was a battlefield map.

Scarlett followed without question, not rushing, not lagging. Just there—close enough that Glenda could feel her agreement like a hand at her back.

The boy watched them go, uncertain whether to be angry or impressed.

Glenda didn’t look back.

—

Inside the house, Lucille’s long metallic serving spoons became bracelets the first time Glenda discovered they made the right sound.

She stood in the hallway, arms crossed in front of her chest, the spoons cold against her wrists. She whispered, “Bing! Bing!” and then, louder, because it was funnier that way, “BING! BING!” as she pretended bullets ricocheted off her arms.

Phoebe came around the corner with a basket of laundry and stopped short, eyes widening in theatrical alarm. “Oh no,” she said. “We’re under attack.”

Glenda’s eyes went enormous with delight. She raised her spoon-wrapped wrists higher, chin lifting with solemn bravery.

Scarlett appeared behind Phoebe, silent as ever, holding a folded dish towel like it was a cape. Her gaze moved over the spoons, then to Glenda’s face, absorbing the performance with the intensity of someone watching a ritual.

Lucille’s voice drifted in from the kitchen, dry and affectionate. “Just don’t dent ’em, Lieutenant Diana.”

Glenda, satisfied by being addressed properly, crossed her wrists tighter and hissed, “Bing. Bing,” under her breath again—smaller now, more serious, as if the imaginary gunfire had moved closer.

Phoebe stepped carefully around her, as though the hallway truly were filled with danger, and Glenda’s chest expanded with the pride of being trusted with everybody’s safety.

—

By six, she’d started walking the backyard fence like it was a tightrope stretched over a canyon.

Barefoot. Always barefoot. She liked the way wood warmed under her feet in summer and cooled under her soles in the evenings. She’d lift her arms out wide, eyes fixed on an invisible point ahead, lips parted in concentration.

Scarlett followed along the grass beside her, head tilted up, ready to catch her if she fell without making a big show of it. Scarlett didn’t like falling. She didn’t like chaos. But she liked Glenda, and she trusted Glenda’s sense of where the edge was.

At the far end of the fence, Glenda would stop, toes curled around the last plank, and stare up at the sky as if she could see the invisible plane circling overhead.

“Now,” Glenda would whisper, as if speaking to a pilot.

Scarlett would hold her breath.

Glenda would leap off the fence into the grass with a dramatic bend of knees, landing hard, then straightening with the satisfaction of someone who had been caught—by air, by faith, by story.

Phoebe would call from inside, “Wash your feet before you come back in, Wonder Woman,” and Glenda would shout back, “Okay!” as if even hygiene were part of a mission.

Lucille, passing the window, would pause long enough to watch them—her daughter and that quiet, braided child—moving through the yard as if the world already belonged to them.

—

When Glenda began drawing her own comics, she did it anywhere she could find paper.

The backs of church bulletins. Old letters Phoebe saved for scrap. The margins of grocery lists. The blank spaces on envelopes. Anything that would hold a story.

She’d lie on her stomach on the living room floor, hair falling into her eyes, tongue pressed to the corner of her mouth. Scarlett would sit beside her with a careful posture, legs folded under, holding the box of colored pencils like a supply officer.

Glenda’s Diana went to space. She visited towns that resembled Huntsville—though Glenda had never been there yet, she just liked the sound of it—places with rocket shapes and strange streetlights and mayors who smiled too much. Her villains were wicked in ways only a child could invent: a mind-controlling cat with jeweled eyes; a mayor who stole everyone’s voices; a cloud that followed people and whispered mean thoughts into their ears.

She invented sidekicks, too, because she never liked the idea of being brave alone. A girl with green hair who could talk to frogs. A very smart horse who wore glasses and solved riddles. An Amazon cousin who carried snacks and bandages and always knew where the exits were.

Scarlett would point at one panel and murmur, “This one’s me.”

Glenda would glance up, grin quick and bright, and scribble an extra braid on the sidekick’s head without being asked.

Phoebe found the drawings the way Phoebe found everything—quietly, like a collector. One evening Glenda came into the kitchen and discovered Phoebe at the table with glue and a thick scrapbook open, her hands moving with patient care.

Phoebe didn’t look guilty. She looked proud.

“This is important,” Phoebe said simply.

Glenda crept closer, eyes wide.

Phoebe had titled the page in neat letters: Glenda’s Hero Book Vol. 1.

Glenda stared at it as if she’d been knighted.

Scarlett leaned over Glenda’s shoulder, silent, and for once the corner of her mouth lifted in something like a smile.

Phoebe turned the next page. More drawings. Smoothed flat. Preserved.

Glenda’s throat worked like she might cry, but she didn’t. She just placed both hands on the edge of the table like she needed to steady herself.

Phoebe reached out and squeezed her fingers. “Someday,” Phoebe said, voice soft, “you’ll be glad we kept them.”

Glenda whispered, reverent, “Vol… two,” already dreaming ahead.

—

Lucille didn’t just tolerate it.

She made room.

She didn’t understand every detail of the new pantheon—the spandex, the secret identities, the fantastical science—but she understood the shape of what was happening to her daughter. She understood devotion when she saw it.

When Glenda stomped through the house in red boots and a hand-sewn cape, Lucille didn’t tell her to settle down. She called her “my brave girl” and stepped aside as if the hallway were a runway.

When Glenda drew comics of her own, Lucille praised the stories, not just the art. She’d hold up a crayon-drawn panel like it was a museum piece, squinting at it with mock seriousness.

“You’ve got your own mythology in there,” Lucille would murmur. “The old ones would be proud.”

Glenda would stand taller, absorbing that praise like sunlight.

Scarlett, watching from the couch, would look from Lucille’s face back to Glenda’s, quietly registering that this house was a place where big feelings didn’t get stamped down.

One evening, while the girls put on a backyard play with swords made from sticks and shields of painted cardboard, Lucille sat on the front porch steps with a cup of coffee cooling in her hands. Phoebe leaned against the railing beside her, arms folded, smiling so hard it hurt.

In the yard, Glenda shouted, “This is the way of the Amazons!” and charged forward, cape flapping, shield high.

Scarlett followed her without hesitation, stick-sword raised, expression serene and determined—less loud, but no less committed. In Glenda’s world, Scarlett was always there. Not as a side character. As the one who made it real.

Lucille watched them race and clash and fall dramatically into the grass, then sit up laughing with scraped knees like battle scars.

“It’s not so different, really,” Lucille said after a moment, voice quiet as if she didn’t want to break the spell. “Wonder Woman, Cú Chulainn, the ancient Fenians—they all came to fight for something bigger than themselves. It’s just the colors that change.”

Phoebe’s eyes crinkled. “Well,” she said, fond, “ours came in red, blue, and gold—and look how she shines.”

Lucille’s mouth twitched into a smile, and the coffee in her cup went cold without her noticing.

—

The red rain boots arrived like an offering.

Lucille came home one afternoon carrying a paper bag from the thrift store. She set it on Glenda’s bed like a surprise in a storybook, then stepped back with her arms crossed.

Glenda came barreling into the room, paused, and then approached with ceremonial caution.

She reached into the bag and pulled out two bright red boots—two sizes too big, smelling faintly of dust and someone else’s closet.

Her face lit up as if she’d been handed armor.

“They’re… mine?” she breathed.

Lucille nodded once. “They’re yours.”

Glenda jammed her feet into them immediately. They slopped around her ankles. She didn’t care. She stomped once, just to hear the rubber thud on the floorboards.

“Boots,” she announced, eyes shining.

Phoebe appeared in the doorway, amused. “Boots for what?”

Glenda lifted her chin, serious. “Boots of truth.”

Scarlett, already in the room because she always seemed to be in whatever room Glenda was in, leaned down and tugged one boot straight so it didn’t twist. Her fingers were careful, practiced even then.

Glenda didn’t thank her out loud. She just let her hand rest briefly on Scarlett’s shoulder—a small, unconscious gesture that said you’re with me—and then marched out into the hallway like a general.

That night, Glenda refused to take them off.

She ate dinner in them. She brushed her teeth in them. She climbed into bed in them, cape tangled around her legs, tiara askew.

Lucille stood at the edge of the bed, hands on hips, trying to look stern and failing. “You’re going to wake up sweaty,” she warned.

Glenda, already half asleep, mumbled, “Truth… never… sleeps.”

Lucille stared for a second, then snorted softly and tugged the blanket up to Glenda’s chest.

Scarlett, sitting on the floor beside the bed, watched Lucille tuck Glenda in and looked, for a moment, like she was memorizing the kindness. Like she was filing it away somewhere safe.

Lucille turned the light off, and in the dark the boots glowed faintly red in the moonlight like two small beacons.

—

As they got older, the games got sharper.

Not less joyful—just more precise. More aware.

By eight, Glenda could already sense the way “nice” was used like a leash. Teachers praised girls for being quiet, for being agreeable, for smoothing over boys’ roughness with their own softness. Glenda learned how to smile politely when she needed to, but she also learned to plant her feet.

At school assemblies, when everyone was meant to sit still and listen, Glenda’s jump rope would sometimes become a lasso.

She’d wrap it around the leg of a classmate’s chair—gently, not to trap, just to declare—and then fold her hands and say, with all the gravity of a judge, “You are in the Lasso of Truth.”

The classmate would giggle, embarrassed.

Glenda didn’t do it to shame anyone. Her face was always earnest, eyes wide, as if she truly believed truth was a gift you offered, not a punishment you delivered.

One teacher tried to scold her once and then stopped mid-sentence because Glenda was so sincere it felt like scolding a hymn.

Scarlett, sitting nearby, would reach down and quietly unwind the rope when the moment passed, making sure it didn’t snag or fray. She handled Glenda’s theatrics the way she handled everything of Glenda’s: with steady hands.

At home, Phoebe would hear about these moments and—after the initial “Please don’t tie up your classmates”—she’d laugh, low and proud, and say, “All right. But remember: truth is for helping, not hurting.”

Glenda would nod, solemn. “Helping.”

Scarlett would be there, leaning against the counter, listening like she always listened—not loudly participating, but absorbing the rules of goodness as if they were survival skills.

—

The first time Glenda saw someone steal, she didn’t know what to do with the knowledge.

It happened in a classroom, late afternoon, when the light turned honey-colored and children got looser-limbed with the nearness of home. A boy reached into another kid’s lunchbox and took a snack—quick, furtive, like a small animal.

Glenda saw.

Scarlett saw too. Scarlett’s eyes flicked to Glenda’s face, waiting.

The boy denied it immediately when the other child began to cry.

“I didn’t,” he insisted, mouth twisted. “I didn’t!”

The teacher’s voice rose. The room became tense. Everyone started talking at once.

Glenda stood up.

Her chair legs scraped loudly, and the sound cut through the noise like a knife. All heads turned.

She walked over to the boy, not angry, not dramatic. Just calm. Just sure.

Hands on hips, like she was bracing herself against a wind.

“If you tell the truth now,” Glenda said, voice steady, “that’s what makes you strong. Not lying.”

The boy blinked.

He looked at her as if he expected her to be cruel. As if he expected her to take pleasure in his fear.

Glenda didn’t.

She waited.

Scarlett held her breath, watching the boy’s face the way she watched storms on the horizon—quietly, attentively, ready to move if it got ugly.

After a long second, the boy’s shoulders slumped.

“I… did,” he muttered.

The room went silent, then exhaled.

The teacher’s mouth twitched, half-smile hidden behind her hand. Later, when Lucille came to pick Glenda up and the teacher pulled her aside, she spoke in a tone that made Lucille’s spine straighten with alertness.

“Your daughter,” the teacher said, shaking her head with wonder, “has an internal compass like I’ve never seen.”

Lucille looked down at Glenda—at the red boots, the slightly crooked tiara, the calm face that didn’t understand she’d done anything unusual—and something fierce and tender crossed her expression.

“That’s my girl,” Lucille said quietly.

Glenda, hearing her mother’s pride, puffed up like a small bird.

Scarlett stood close enough to brush Glenda’s elbow with her own, a silent yes.

—

At nine, songs began threading themselves into the devotion.

Phoebe taught Glenda to hum old Yiddish lullabies at the sink while they washed dishes, the melody soft and looping like a ribbon. She taught her Appalachian ballads while folding laundry, the words worn smooth by generations. Glenda absorbed them the way she absorbed everything—body first, mind following later.

But sometimes, mid-hum, Glenda would interrupt with the impatience of a child who knew exactly what she wanted.

“Can we sing the Wonder Woman song instead?” she’d ask, eyes bright.

Phoebe would pause, hands in a stack of towels, and blink. “The Wonder Woman song?”

Glenda nodded, as if it were obvious everyone had one. “Yes.”

Phoebe didn’t know the real theme song—not yet—so she made one up with Glenda, right there in the kitchen, clapping to keep time while Glenda bounced on her toes like she was ready to launch into flight.

They invented it together, half-melody and half-call-to-arms, silly and sincere in the way only a homemade anthem could be:

She’s the one with the golden light,
She’ll make the world be brave and right—
It’s Wonder Woman, flying high,
She’ll never let a good heart die!

Phoebe clapped every time. Glenda sang it while she jumped from furniture, while she brushed her teeth, while she marched down the hallway in boots that thumped like a drumline.

Scarlett learned it too—not with the same volume, but with the same faith. She’d hum it under her breath while she braided her hair in the morning, the tune soft as a secret.

When Glenda grew tired and sprawled on the couch, Scarlett would sit on the floor with her back against the cushions and keep humming, steady as a heartbeat, until Glenda’s eyes fluttered and her breathing evened out.

Phoebe would watch the two of them—one loud, one quiet, both anchored—and feel something like awe.

—

By ten, Glenda’s body had started changing in ways she didn’t understand yet.

She got taller. Her limbs looked longer, like she was growing into herself too quickly. Her arms, already sturdy, began to look strong in a way that drew comment.

A girl in Sunday school teased her once in that sharp, careless tone children used when they were testing out cruelty like a new language.

“You’ve got big arms,” the girl said, wrinkling her nose.

Glenda looked down at her own arms. For a heartbeat, something flickered in her face—an old, instinctive vulnerability.

Scarlett, standing beside her with her hands folded, went very still. Her eyes sharpened, watchful.

Glenda lifted her gaze again, and the vulnerability hardened into something cleaner.

“So I can lift more people if they fall,” Glenda said simply.

The girl blinked, thrown off. There was nothing to hook into—no shame, no apology. Just a statement of purpose.

Scarlett’s shoulders relaxed, the smallest release.

Later, in the car, Glenda repeated it to Lucille as if reporting a fact.

Lucille’s hands tightened on the steering wheel for a second. Then she nodded, once, as if sealing it.

“That’s right,” Lucille said. “That’s exactly right.”

Phoebe, hearing it when they got home, put her hand on Glenda’s shoulder and squeezed with quiet pride.

Glenda stood a little straighter.

That night, she drew herself with arms like Wonder Woman’s—bigger than life, wrapped in bracelets, lifting someone out of a river. Scarlett sat beside her and colored the water carefully, making sure it looked like it was moving.

—

At eleven and twelve, the rituals began to look less like play and more like practice.

Scarlett’s braids became a morning constant, and some days—when Scarlett’s hands were tired or her mind was restless—she’d sit on Glenda’s bed with her back straight and simply tilt her head forward.

Glenda would stand behind her with a brush and a seriousness that made her look older than she was. She’d part the hair cleanly, fingers working tight but not harsh, firm but full of tenderness. She’d learned the method from watching, from doing, from the quiet permission of being needed.

Scarlett’s eyes would close as Glenda braided, not sleeping—listening.

Glenda would talk sometimes, voice low, words more thoughtful now. About a story she’d read. About a girl at school who got teased. About how unfair it felt when teachers praised the quiet girls and scolded the loud ones.

Scarlett would open her eyes and glance at Glenda in the mirror, expression steady.

“You’re loud,” Scarlett would say sometimes—not as a criticism, as a fact, as a kind of admiration.

Glenda would huff, half laugh. “I’m not loud,” she’d protest automatically, then pause, reconsider, and add with a reluctant grin, “Okay. I’m loud.”

Scarlett’s mouth would twitch, almost a smile.

Glenda would tie off the braid ends and pat them into place like she was setting armor.

Down the hall, Phoebe would be humming—maybe one of her old lullabies, maybe their made-up Wonder Woman song—and Lucille would be moving through the kitchen with her steady, competent energy, setting plates out, making space for whatever the day would demand.

In the living room later, Glenda would sprawl on the carpet with her Hero Book open beside her, adding a new page, her stories a little less silly now, villains a little more like the ones she could almost sense in the real world—cruelty, lies, fear.

Scarlett would sit nearby with her knees pulled to her chest, watching Glenda draw as if watching a fire being tended.

And when Glenda paused—pencil hovering, brow pinched—Scarlett would say quietly, like she was reminding her of something they both believed:

“Make her good.”

Glenda would nod, eyes intent.

Then she’d put pencil to paper again, and the wonder in their house—red, blue, and gold—would continue to grow up with her.

The first thing that changed was how she held it.

Not the love—never that. The love was still there, hot as the Texas sun on her shoulders, bright as a struck match. But the way she carried it stopped being loud.

When Glenda was little, her Wonder Woman lived in the air: leaping, shouting, making Lucille’s kitchen utensils ring like bullets in a hallway. Now, as her body lengthened and the world began to ask more complicated questions with sharper teeth, the Wonder Woman in her life migrated into quieter places.

Into paper. Into shelves. Into margins.

On a late afternoon that smelled like dust and warm glue—new school supplies, cheap notebooks, the faint chemical tang of fresh plastic—Glenda sat cross-legged on the carpet in her room with a stack of comics beside her. They weren’t the ragged classroom ones anymore, not all of them. These were the ones she’d saved, traded for, begged for; reprints, graphic novels with thicker spines, a few issues that looked almost too clean to touch.

Beside her, Scarlett sat with her legs folded under her, shoulders loose, dark eyes attentive in that way that made it hard to tell if she was relaxed or ready.

Glenda slid one comic into a clear sleeve with careful thumbs, smoothing the plastic so it lay flat, no trapped air bubbles, no wrinkles.

Scarlett watched her for a long moment before she said, “You’re doing that like it’s… church.”

Glenda’s mouth pulled into a small smile without showing teeth—half pleased, half embarrassed.

“It’s not church,” she said, but her voice was gentle, the way people spoke about things they didn’t want stepped on.

Scarlett lifted an eyebrow. “It’s not not church.”

Glenda huffed a laugh, then kept working. The plastic made a quiet shhk sound as it slid over glossy ink.

“It’s just—” Glenda started, and stopped, because explaining it always made it smaller. “If I keep them nice, they last.”

Scarlett reached over, tapped the corner of the sleeve with one finger. “You know you don’t have to earn it. You’re allowed to have it even if it gets bent.”

“I know,” Glenda said—too quick, too automatic, like she was answering a teacher.

Scarlett’s finger lingered a second longer. Then she let it go, and the moment passed the way so many moments did between them: acknowledged, not forced into a speech.

Glenda lined the sleeved comics up like a parade along the bottom of her bookcase, spines facing out, straight as she could make them. Her bookshelf had become a kind of altar without ever deciding to be one: Wonder Woman reprints shoulder-to-shoulder with mythology paperbacks, library-hardcover biographies of women whose names weren’t in most textbooks, and, tucked between two thicker volumes, a little gold tiara she’d made years ago—cereal box and nail polish and stubbornness—kept because she couldn’t bear to throw it away.

In the doorway, Lucille paused. She didn’t come in right away. She leaned on the frame, arms crossed, her gaze moving over the floor and shelves with a quiet, assessing affection.

“You’re nestin’,” Lucille said.

Glenda looked up. “No I’m not.”

“You are,” Phoebe called from somewhere down the hall—her voice bright, amused. “Leave her be. It’s a ritual.”

Glenda rolled her eyes, but there was a softness in it, a surrender. Scarlett’s mouth twitched at the corner, like she was laughing without making a sound.

Lucille stepped in then, crossing to the bookshelf, looking closely at the spines as if they were titles in a library.

“You’ve more of her than the city does,” Lucille said, and she sounded faintly proud.

Glenda’s chest warmed in a way that made her want to pretend she didn’t care. “It’s not that much.”

Lucille reached out, not touching, just hovering a hand near the books as if warmth might transfer through air. “It’s enough,” she said. “Enough’s a fine thing.”

Glenda looked back down at her pile and pulled another sleeve open, the plastic catching the light.

Scarlett, without being asked, picked up the next comic and held it steady so Glenda could slide it in.

They did that for the rest of the afternoon, quiet as a pact.

—

Her journal was where she hid the parts that didn’t fit anywhere else.

It wasn’t fancy—just a spiral-bound notebook with a cover that had once been bright but was now smudged at the corners from her hands. The inside pages were a mess of math problems, song fragments, lists, and, threaded through it all like a secret stitch, lines she copied down when she needed them.

Not because she thought Wonder Woman had written them for her. Glenda understood fiction. She understood ink and writers and actors and studios. She understood that Diana lived on paper and screen and in the minds of people who needed her.

But understanding it was fictional didn’t make it less useful. Glenda had never believed that truth only came in documentary form.

One evening, after dinner—after Lucille’s plates were stacked, after Phoebe’s hands had wiped the counter with brisk little swipes—Glenda was sprawled on her stomach on the living room floor, chin in her palm, journal open. The lamp beside the couch threw a circle of light over the page, leaving the corners of the room soft and dim.

Scarlett sat on the couch with her legs tucked up, reading something thicker and older—history, probably. She read the way she did everything: steadily, without wasted motion.

Glenda stared at her journal page so hard her eyes hurt.

Phoebe passed behind her and paused, peering down. “Homework?”

Glenda made a sound that could have meant yes or could have meant don’t ask.

Phoebe didn’t press. She just lowered herself onto the couch beside Scarlett, shoulder brushing shoulder.

Glenda’s pencil hovered.

Finally she wrote, in blocky careful letters that were beginning to sharpen as her hand matured:

“Truth is not punishment. It’s freedom.”

She read it once, then underlined it twice, heavy.

Scarlett’s eyes flicked up from her book. “That one?”

Glenda nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek. “It… helps.”

“With what?” Phoebe asked softly.

Glenda’s first instinct was to shrug, to make it nothing. She wanted to say, with everything, but that sounded dramatic, and the world punished girls for being dramatic.

So she said, “With… people.”

Scarlett snorted quietly. “People are exhausting.”

Phoebe gave Scarlett a look that was half reprimand and half agreement. “People are people,” she said. “What did they do?”

Glenda’s pencil tapped the paper once, twice. “It’s not—” She swallowed. “Sometimes they say stuff. Like… like I’m too much.”

Phoebe’s face softened so fast it almost hurt to see. Lucille, in her chair by the window, didn’t turn around, but her hand tightened slightly around her mug.

Scarlett’s gaze sharpened. “Who said that?”

Glenda’s shoulders tensed. “Nobody. Just—some girls.”

Scarlett closed her book with a quiet thump. “Name them.”

Glenda felt heat rise in her face. “Scar—”

“No,” Scarlett said, not loud, but firm. “Name them.”

Phoebe’s hand landed lightly on Scarlett’s knee. “Not like that,” she murmured. “We’re not doing a trial in the living room.”

Scarlett’s jaw worked. She looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. She respected Phoebe in a way that was almost sacred. She turned her attention back to Glenda, the sharpness easing into something steadier.

Glenda stared at the journal line she’d written.

“It’s just…,” she said, and her voice finally cracked into honesty. “Sometimes I don’t know how to be… normal.”

Phoebe’s mouth curved, tired and kind. “Normal is overrated.”

Lucille spoke then without turning. “Normal’s a coffin,” she said, as if she’d been holding the sentence in her mouth for years. “Don’t you crawl into it for anyone.”

Glenda blinked, startled by the bluntness.

Scarlett leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You’re not too much,” she said, and the simplicity of it made Glenda’s throat sting. “They’re too small.”

Glenda made a helpless noise—half laugh, half sob, all embarrassed. “That’s—”

“That’s true,” Scarlett said, like she was stating a fact from a textbook.

Phoebe reached down and gently turned Glenda’s journal so she could see the line. She tapped it once. “You wrote this,” she said. “You already know.”

Glenda swallowed hard and nodded, and her pencil moved again—another quote in the margin, smaller this time, like a whisper to herself:

Be strong. Be kind. Be true.

Scarlett watched her write it as if it mattered.

It did.

—

At school, her devotion became strategy.

Not overt—Glenda had learned, by then, that loving anything too openly gave other people permission to stomp on it. She didn’t wear tiaras to class anymore. She didn’t shout about Amazons in the hallway.

But when teachers gave assignments with open-ended choices, Glenda’s mind snapped to the same direction every time, like a compass needle to north.

Mythology unit? Women warriors.

Book report? A heroine, not a hero.

History paper? A battle told from the perspective of the people who weren’t supposed to survive it.

And if she was asked to choose any topic at all, she found a way to bring it back to Wonder Woman—not as a cartoonish fandom, but as a framework. An argument. A lens.

In English class, when the teacher announced an essay assignment—Write about a figure, real or fictional, who represents courage—Glenda’s hand shot up before she could stop it. She wasn’t trying to be annoying. She just had a fire in her chest that didn’t know how to wait.

“Yes, Glenda?” the teacher said—Mrs. Abernathy, a woman with tired eyes and a pencil tucked behind her ear.

“Can it be—” Glenda paused, recalibrating, because she could hear the snickers already starting in her imagination. “Can it be a fictional person?”

Mrs. Abernathy’s eyebrows lifted. “It can.”

Glenda nodded once, satisfied. “Okay.”

The boy behind her muttered something under his breath—something about comics. There was a quiet ripple of laughter.

Glenda turned in her seat. Not all the way—just enough to look over her shoulder with calm, practiced steadiness.

“Say it again,” she said.

The boy blinked, startled that she’d heard him. “I said—” He looked around for backup and found none he could count on. “I said it’s dumb.”

Glenda held his gaze. The room seemed to tilt, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead.

“It’s only dumb if you don’t know how to read,” she said, and her voice was level—no shriek, no wobble. It landed like a slap precisely because it wasn’t emotional.

A few kids gasped. A few laughed—different laughter this time, unsure which side to land on.

Mrs. Abernathy cleared her throat sharply, but there was the ghost of a smile in her eyes. “Glenda,” she warned.

Glenda turned back around, heart pounding, face hot. Scarlett would have been proud. Lucille would have been proud. Phoebe would have told her she didn’t need to pick a fight. Glenda didn’t even know if she’d needed to.

But she couldn’t stand the idea of shrinking.

When she turned in the essay a week later, the pages were clean and tight—her handwriting careful, her arguments structured. She didn’t write about Wonder Woman as an escapist fantasy. She wrote about her as an ideal: a figure whose power was tied to restraint, whose strength was married to compassion, whose weapon wasn’t just force but truth.

When Mrs. Abernathy handed the essays back, she paused at Glenda’s desk, held Glenda’s paper a fraction longer than the others.

“This is…” Mrs. Abernathy began, then stopped like she was searching for the right word. Her voice lowered. “This is smarter than half the things adults write.”

Glenda’s stomach flipped. “Is it… okay?”

“It’s more than okay.” Mrs. Abernathy tapped the paper lightly with her fingernail. “Don’t let anybody make you feel silly for caring about something deeply. That’s rare.”

Glenda swallowed, nodded, and looked down at the red ink at the top: an A, sharp and undeniable.

In the margin, Mrs. Abernathy had written one line:

Your voice is strong. Keep using it.

Glenda stared at it so long her eyes blurred.

That afternoon, she copied it into her journal next to a Diana quote, the two lines sitting side-by-side like sisters.

—

Home economics class was supposed to make girls into something manageable.

That was how it felt, anyway—the teacher’s cheerful insistence on potholders and stuffed animals, the bright, sanitized patterns that suggested the world was simple if you stitched it neatly enough.

Glenda’s hands were good at the work. She could thread a needle fast, could hem a seam straight, could make fabric obey. But she refused to let the class decide what her hands were for.

The day the teacher set a box of patterns on the table and told them to “pick something fun,” Glenda walked right past the teddy bear templates and the apron cutouts. She grabbed a length of fabric—bright red—and another—deep navy—and carried them to her table like she was hauling a flag.

The girl beside her frowned. “What are you making?”

Glenda didn’t look up from the scissors. “A cape.”

The girl blinked. “Why?”

Glenda shrugged, like it was obvious. “Because I want one.”

The teacher approached, peering down with her practical smile. “Glenda, sweetie, capes aren’t on the curriculum.”

Glenda kept cutting. “I can still sew it.”

The teacher hesitated. “It’s… a little theatrical.”

Glenda finally looked up, meeting the woman’s eyes with a calm that felt older than her age. “It’s reversible.”

That seemed to disarm the teacher, the way practicality often did. The teacher exhaled, half laugh. “Reversible,” she repeated. “Well. All right. If you can finish it properly.”

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “I can.”

She worked with ferocious focus, tongue poking slightly at the corner of her mouth as she pinned the fabric. Her stitches were not delicate, but they held. She reinforced the edges. She added a collar that sat against her neck the way armor might. She sewed the ties extra long so she could knot them secure.

Scarlett appeared at the classroom door after school to pick her up—silent, looming in the hallway like a shadow with a spine.

When Glenda emerged clutching the folded cape, Scarlett’s eyes narrowed, assessing. “What’s that?”

Glenda’s grin flashed sudden and bright. “Look.”

She stepped into the hallway, unfolded it with a snap, and swung it around her shoulders. Red on the outside, navy on the inside. She tied it tight.

Scarlett stared for a beat.

Then she said, “That’s ridiculous.”

Glenda’s grin faltered, stung—

—and then Scarlett’s mouth softened into something almost like a smile. “It’s perfect,” she added, so quietly only Glenda could hear.

Glenda’s shoulders relaxed. “Right?”

Scarlett reached out and tugged the collar slightly, adjusting it with precise fingers, like she was helping fit a uniform. “You can flip it depending on your mood,” Scarlett observed.

Glenda nodded. “Or the weather.”

Scarlett’s eyes flicked to her face. “Or the world.”

Glenda swallowed, caught off guard by the accuracy. “Yeah,” she said, softer now. “Or that.”

—

She wore it on stormy days.

Not because she believed fabric could stop lightning. Glenda wasn’t a child anymore. She understood physics. She understood weather patterns. She understood the indifferent mechanics of wind and water.

But she also understood that some days the world felt too sharp—voices too loud, expectations too heavy, people too eager to cut girls into shapes that pleased them.

On those days, she tied the cape around her shoulders before she left the house, like a quiet act of defiance.

Lucille never told her to take it off.

Phoebe never asked if she was being embarrassed.

They’d both learned, early, that what Glenda needed wasn’t correction. It was room.

The first time she wore it outside and the sky looked like bruised metal, Phoebe paused at the front door, watching Glenda tug the knot tight.

“You’re really wearing that?” Phoebe asked, tone light, like she was asking about a sweater.

Glenda’s cheeks heated. She braced for teasing.

Phoebe only smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Then bring an umbrella too. Diana isn’t immune to pneumonia.”

Glenda laughed, relief spilling out of her. “Yes, Ima.”

Outside, the air smelled like ozone and hot pavement. The wind caught the cape and lifted it slightly behind her, making it billow.

Scarlett fell into step beside her without comment, hands in her pockets, shoulders set.

A car passed too fast through a puddle, spraying water. Glenda flinched back instinctively. The cold splash hit her calf anyway.

Scarlett’s hand shot out—fast, sure—catching Glenda’s elbow, steadying her without making a show of it.

Glenda looked at her, grateful and slightly embarrassed.

Scarlett didn’t look back. She just kept walking, grip firm for a second, then released like nothing had happened.

The first drop of rain hit Glenda’s forehead. Then another.

Glenda tilted her face up, eyes half closed, letting it fall.

“I hate storms,” she said suddenly, surprising herself.

Scarlett’s voice was flat. “You don’t.”

Glenda blinked rain out of her lashes. “I do.”

Scarlett finally looked at her, gaze sharp but not unkind. “You hate what storms remind you of.”

Glenda’s throat tightened. She didn’t answer.

Scarlett’s eyes flicked to the cape, the red fabric darkening as it soaked. “That’s why you wear it,” Scarlett said.

Glenda’s breath caught. “Maybe.”

Scarlett shrugged, as if admitting the truth didn’t cost her anything. “It helps,” she said simply.

The rain strengthened. The wind tugged at the cape again, pulling it behind Glenda like a banner.

They kept walking.

—

In the years when other girls learned to soften themselves—learned to say sorry for taking up space, learned to laugh off insults so boys wouldn’t call them “sensitive”—Glenda learned something else.

She learned that Wonder Woman wasn’t a costume.

The bracelets weren’t just shiny props. They were boundaries.

The tiara wasn’t just a crown. It was self-respect sharpened into a line.

The lasso wasn’t just a trick rope. It was the concept of truth made visible.

It all started to live in her as metaphor—the way a hymn lives in someone long after they stop going to church, the way a proverb sinks into bone.

She didn’t talk about it much. She didn’t have the vocabulary yet to explain the way fiction could be foundation instead of escape.

But it came out in the way she moved through the world.

In the hallway at school, when a teacher talked down to a girl for “talking back” when she was only asking a question, Glenda’s jaw tightened. Her eyes went hard. She wrote the incident down in her journal later with furious neatness, then wrote a Wonder Woman quote in the margin like a balm.

In a crowded classroom where boys’ elbows were too casual, too entitled, Glenda shifted her body—not shrinking, not fleeing, just moving with deliberate ownership of space. She learned to plant her feet like Diana did on those covers: boots grounded, posture unflinching.

Sometimes, at night, when the house was quiet and her brain refused to stop moving, she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and felt the world’s pressure gather in her chest like a weight.

In those moments, she would hear a line in her mind—something she’d read in a speech bubble years ago, something that had lodged in her like a splinter of gold.

Be strong. Be kind. Be true.

She’d breathe in and out until the words stopped being a slogan and became a rhythm.

Scarlett would sometimes roll over in the other bed—because by then Scarlett was there more often than not, a constant presence in Glenda’s orbit—and murmur, half asleep, “You’re doing it again.”

Glenda, staring at the ceiling, would whisper, “Doing what?”

Scarlett’s voice was thick with sleep but certain. “Thinking like you can solve the whole world tonight.”

Glenda’s mouth twisted. “Somebody has to.”

Scarlett made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Not at two a.m.”

Glenda’s throat tightened. “It’s loud in my head.”

Scarlett’s sheets rustled. Then Scarlett’s hand appeared over the edge of the bed, palm open in the dark—an offering without words.

Glenda reached out and took it. Their fingers laced, strong and warm.

In the dark, Scarlett said, “You don’t have to be everything.”

Glenda swallowed. “Diana is.”

Scarlett’s grip tightened slightly. “Diana has a whole island behind her,” she said. “You have us.”

Glenda’s eyes stung. She turned her face slightly so the darkness could hide it.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

And somewhere deep in her bones, the metaphors settled into place like armor.

—

One afternoon, when the sky was clear and the day seemed ordinary enough to trust, Glenda sat at the kitchen table with her journal open while Phoebe kneaded dough nearby.

Phoebe’s hands were sure and practiced, flour dusting her knuckles. The radio hummed soft in the background, some song half-heard.

Glenda was writing fast—lines of an essay, maybe, or the beginning of something that wanted to be a story. Every so often she paused and pressed her pencil harder as if she could force the right sentence into existence.

Lucille moved through the room quietly, making tea, her footsteps measured.

Scarlett sat on the floor leaning against the cabinet, reading. She looked like she belonged there the way a cat belongs on a windowsill: not ornamental, just… inevitable.

Phoebe glanced at Glenda’s page. “You writing about her again?” she asked.

Glenda didn’t look up. “Maybe.”

Phoebe smiled. “You know you can write about other things.”

Glenda’s pencil froze. Her shoulders tensed. For a second it felt like criticism, like the world trying to pry her fingers off what she loved.

Then Phoebe added, “But you don’t have to stop writing about her either.”

Glenda looked up then, eyes wide. “I’m not—stuck?”

Phoebe’s expression softened. “Baby, if you’re stuck on something that makes you brave, then let yourself be stuck.”

Lucille, pouring tea, murmured, “A good myth’s meant to get in your blood.”

Glenda’s throat tightened again—this happened too much lately, emotions arriving without warning, inconvenient and insistent.

She blinked fast, looked down, and wrote in the margin of her essay draft:

Fiction is foundation.

She didn’t know where the sentence came from exactly. It felt like her own thought, but it also felt like something older and bigger than her—something passed down through stories and mothers and girls refusing to be reduced.

Scarlett watched the pencil move. Then, without looking away from her book, she said, “Put that on the first page.”

Glenda’s laugh came out watery. “Why?”

Scarlett’s voice was calm. “Because it’s true.”

Glenda stared at the line for a long moment, the graphite dark against the paper.

Then she nodded, once, like she was accepting an oath.

“Okay,” she said softly.

Phoebe’s hands kept kneading. Lucille’s tea steamed. The radio kept humming.

And Glenda, in the middle of her ordinary kitchen, felt the quiet, stubborn certainty of it all settle into her chest:

The world might not know what to do with girls like her—big-hearted, big-bodied, tender and opinionated, too much and not enough all at once.

But she did.

And somewhere in the ink and plastic sleeves, in the cape and the quotes and the way Scarlett’s hand always found hers in the dark, Wonder Woman stayed—not as a phase, not as a childish game, but as a language.

A way to understand how to stand.

The next day, Taylor kept hearing the truck’s cassette in her head.

Not even the song itself—she couldn’t have named it if someone put a quarter in her palm and told her to bet on it—but the shape of it: the faint hiss underneath, the way the guitar slid in like somebody pulling a chair back, the older voice rough as denim. It had filled the cab without asking permission, and somehow that had been the comfort of it. Nothing in her house filled a space that way unless it was duty.

She sat cross-legged on the floor beside Sharon while her little sister shoved a plastic cup into the toy basket and then immediately tried to get it back out again, furious at the laws of physics. Taylor watched the small hands, the concentration, the snort-breath of effort. She could feel Sadie in the kitchen moving fast, making supper and making the numbers work and making the world hold.

On the coffee table, a school flyer sat face-down. Taylor flipped it, then flipped it back. Her pencil was already in her hand, almost without her choosing it.

She drew a “W” without thinking.

It came out crooked. She erased it. Drew it again, this time sharper, the two points like wings. She didn’t know why she did it—only that it felt like tucking a coin into a pocket: something small you could close your fingers around later.

From the stairs, DeWanda leaned down enough that her braids brushed her cheek. Her eyes darted to the paper, then to Taylor.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Taylor’s throat did the thing where it tightened before a word could climb out. She shrugged instead, too hard.

DeWanda’s gaze narrowed, not mean—just curious in that older-sister way that meant she’d be curious until the end of time.

Taylor pushed the paper half under a magazine. “Nothin’.”

DeWanda snorted softly. “Uh-huh.”

Sharon squealed as the cup finally came loose. Sadie’s voice floated from the kitchen, tired but steady: “Dee, wash your hands. Dinner in ten.”

Taylor nodded to herself like she’d been given an assignment, and pressed her pencil tip into the paper again, dotting the center of the “W” until the page almost tore.

Outside, somewhere on Cherry, a car door slammed. Somewhere else, a television laughed too loud.

Taylor looked at the clock. It was the time she usually started thinking about how far the school was, and how far the bus stop was, and whether Sadie would have to come looking for her if she got stuck behind the slow kids leaving.

Today, she kept thinking about Willow.

And about the way Glenda had said, We can be cousins, like it was a law of the city.

Like Huntsville was full of them.

---

The track didn’t look like the same place in the morning.

In the afternoon it had been a furnace and a stage and a cage; now, early, it was just an oval of red and a field gone pale under light that hadn’t heated up yet. Taylor stood outside the fence with her fingers looped through the metal out of habit, even though nobody was there yet to trap her.

She didn’t tell Sadie she was coming.

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. She’d said she was going to the library. The library was in the school. The track was in the school. If anyone wanted to be technical, she could be technical right back. Taylor didn’t like being technical, but she could do it.

Her stomach fluttered anyway.

She heard the footfalls before she saw her: that particular rhythm, quick and controlled, like a metronome that had feelings. Glenda came around the curve with her hair tied back and her face set in the quiet focus of motion. She didn’t look up at first. She was inside whatever world she went to when she ran, a place where the air was the only thing that could argue with her.

Taylor held her breath.

Glenda slowed on the straightaway, breath coming easy, then shifted into a walk like flipping a switch. When she finally looked over, her eyes caught Taylor at the fence and stayed there.

Her mouth hitched up. Not a big smile, not a show, just that quick tilt that made Taylor’s chest do the warm-stone thing again.

“Well, look who’s haunting my fence,” Glenda called, voice carrying across the track without straining.

Taylor’s hands tightened on the metal. “Hi.”

Glenda angled toward the gate like it had been waiting for her. She reached over, fingers on the latch, then paused and looked at Taylor—really looked, like she was checking for bruises you couldn’t see.

“They bother you again?” she asked, tone casual but the question pointed.

Taylor shook her head fast. “No.”

“Good,” Glenda said, and the word sounded like a promise. She unlatched the gate and pushed it open with her hip. “Come on.”

Taylor didn’t move.

Glenda leaned on the open gate, elbows resting on the top bar like it was a porch rail. “You gonna make me beg?”

Taylor’s face heated. “No.”

“Then come on.” Glenda tipped her chin toward the track. “One lap. That’s all. You can hate it if you want. You can tell me I’m full of it. I’ll survive.”

Taylor’s feet felt glued to the ground. She stared at the red surface like it belonged to people with lungs bigger than hers.

“I don’t run good,” she mumbled, the words small as dust.

Glenda’s snort was immediate. “Not yet. That’s what practice is for.” She straightened, stepped back, and held the gate wider with one hand. “Ain’t asking you to beat anybody. Just asking if you wanna see what it feels like from inside the fence.”

Inside the fence.

Taylor’s fingers loosened, one by one, like they were letting go of something that had kept her upright for years. She stepped through the gate, and her sneakers hit the track.

The surface wasn’t hot yet. It felt springy under her soles, like it gave a little instead of biting back.

Glenda fell into a jog so slow it almost felt silly. “Right here,” she said, patting the air beside her. “You can shuffle. You can walk. You can do a weird hop. I don’t care.”

Taylor shuffled.

Her first breath came too fast. Her shoulders crept up like they were trying to crawl into her ears.

Glenda flicked a glance at her. “Relax your shoulders,” she said, dry. “You look like you’re trying to hold up the sky.”

Taylor’s lips twitched, almost against her will.

“Look ahead, not at your feet,” Glenda went on. “Your body’ll follow your eyes.”

Taylor forced her gaze up. The curve of the track opened in front of her like a path instead of a trap. Her feet started finding a rhythm without her telling them how.

The sound of her own footfalls surprised her—lighter than she expected, a pattern she could maybe learn to trust.

They rounded the first corner.

Glenda’s voice stayed even, practical, like she was teaching a kid how to braid hair. “Breathe where it’s easy,” she said. “Not where you think you’re supposed to.”

Taylor tried. Air in, air out. Her chest loosened a little.

By the time they hit the straightaway again, Taylor wasn’t thinking about the fence.

She was thinking about the next step. And the next.

Glenda glanced over, and her grin flashed quick. “See?” she said. “Ain’t a stage. It’s just dirt with rules.”

Taylor’s throat ached with something like a laugh that didn’t know how to come out.

They finished the lap without Taylor stopping.

When they slowed to a walk, Taylor’s face was flushed and her breath was messy, but she was still on her feet.

Glenda bumped her shoulder lightly—barely a touch, but enough to land like a stamp. “You like how that feels?”

Taylor stared down at the track as if it might answer for her.

Then, very quietly, she nodded.

Glenda’s eyes softened in a way Taylor didn’t see often on people older than her. “Okay,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “We’ll do another sometime. You want.”

Taylor’s mouth opened, and for once a word came out without wrestling. “Okay.”

Glenda’s smile deepened. “All right then, cousin.”

The word hit Taylor’s ribs like a drum.

Cousin.

She didn’t correct it. She didn’t shrink from it.

She let it sit there, warm and solid, like a stone you could carry.

---

The used-book shop looked smaller up close.

Taylor had passed it a hundred times on the bus and never gone in because the windows glowed like another life, and another life felt expensive. Today, Glenda turned the truck toward it like it was obvious.

The little token on the mirror tapped against the glass as they took the curve. The guitar-pick charm swung in a lazy arc, catching the last of the afternoon sun. The cassette clicked in, and that faint hiss came back, sweet and steady.

Taylor sat in the passenger seat this time without curling in on herself so hard. The seatbelt lay across her chest like a line she didn’t have to fight.

Glenda kept one hand on the wheel, the other drumming lightly on the rim as the song rolled. “You ever been in there?” she asked, flicking her chin toward the glowing windows.

Taylor shook her head. “No.”

“You want to?”

Taylor blinked. Wanting things was dangerous; it made people look at you like you were asking for too much. Her instinct was to say no and swallow it.

Glenda didn’t give her time to build the wall. She pulled into the spot by the curb and cut the engine like the decision had already been made.

“We’re going,” she said, climbing out. “I need strings. Or a book. Or somethin’. And you need to see the wonderland.”

Taylor hovered a second, fingers on the door handle.

Glenda came around to her side and held the door open with the casual patience of someone who didn’t mistake hesitation for refusal. “Come on,” she said again, quieter. “Ain’t no trap. I promise.”

Taylor slid out, her sneakers hitting the sidewalk. The air smelled like hot dust and old magnolia leaves and the faint sweetness from somewhere—maybe a bakery down the block, maybe just the memory of summer.

The bell above the shop door jingled when Glenda pushed it open. Inside, the light was dimmer, and the air had that paper smell that felt like breathing in time.

Taylor stood just inside the entrance, hands tucked close to her sides. Books towered on shelves, on tables, on the floor in stacks that looked ready to fall but somehow didn’t. A fan turned in the corner, pushing warm air around.

Glenda moved like she belonged. She ran her fingers along spines as she passed, reading titles without slowing. “You like comics?” she asked over her shoulder, like she was asking if Taylor liked breathing.

Taylor’s eyes darted to Glenda, then away. “I—” Her voice caught, then found a thin path through. “Sometimes.”

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “Sometimes is enough.”

She turned down an aisle and stopped in front of a low shelf where the paperbacks were bent and soft from too many hands. There, mixed in with romance covers and war stories, were stacks of comics in plastic sleeves, their colors faded but still bright.

Glenda crouched without hesitation, curls falling forward. “There she is,” she murmured, like a prayer.

Taylor stepped closer, drawn despite herself. The cover showed a woman with dark hair and a body that looked like it knew what it was doing, bracelets up, chin lifted, eyes forward like the world didn’t get to tell her no.

Taylor’s breath snagged.

Glenda glanced up and caught it. “You know her?”

Taylor nodded, small. “Wonder Woman.”

“That’s right.” Glenda slid the comic out carefully, like it was fragile and holy. She held it up for Taylor to see better. “She don’t apologize for taking up space.”

Taylor stared at the bracelets. The bright, clean arc of them.

Glenda’s voice softened. “You ever feel like you gotta make yourself smaller so people don’t get mad at you?”

Taylor’s hands clenched. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

Glenda hummed like she’d heard the answer anyway. “She don’t do that,” she said. “She ain’t mean. She ain’t cruel. She just… won’t shrink.”

Taylor swallowed. The “W” she’d drawn at home felt like it burned through her pocket, even though the paper wasn’t there.

Glenda stood and handed the comic to Taylor without ceremony. “You wanna hold it?”

Taylor took it with both hands, careful. The plastic sleeve crackled softly. The cover art was warm beneath her fingers, like holding a secret.

Glenda leaned in, pointing with one finger. “See that? Bracelets. She blocks bullets with ’em.” Her eyes sparkled with something fierce and delighted. “Makes a sound like—”

She clapped her hands once, sharp.

Taylor flinched, then laughed by accident, a tiny burst that surprised them both.

Glenda’s grin went wide. “Like that,” she said, pleased. “Best sound in the world.”

Taylor stared down at the comic. “Does it… hurt?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could stop it.

Glenda blinked, then her face shifted into something thoughtful. “Probably,” she admitted. “But she keeps movin’. And she ain’t alone when she doesn’t have to be.”

Taylor’s throat tightened in that familiar way, but the feeling wasn’t just fear this time. It was something else. Something like recognition.

Glenda reached into her back pocket and pulled out a couple crumpled bills. She didn’t ask the price. She walked to the counter like it was settled.

Taylor followed, still holding the comic like it might evaporate.

The shopkeeper, an older man with glasses low on his nose, glanced at the cover and then at Glenda. “That for you?” he asked, half-smiling.

Glenda didn’t miss a beat. “Nah,” she said. “It’s for my cousin.”

Taylor’s heart jumped.

The man nodded like that explained everything. “Good taste,” he said, ringing it up.

Outside, the sun had dipped lower, turning the edges of everything gold. Glenda shoved the comic into a brown paper bag and handed it to Taylor like it was a sandwich.

Taylor hugged it to her chest.

In the truck, the cassette hissed back to life as Glenda turned the key. The guitar-pick charm swung. The token tapped the glass.

Glenda glanced over. “You can keep it,” she said, simple.

Taylor’s fingers tightened around the bag. “I—I can bring it back.”

Glenda snorted. “Why?” Her eyes cut to Taylor’s, steady. “That’s yours. You ain’t borrowin’ courage. You’re buildin’ it.”

Taylor stared at her, stunned by the way Glenda said things like that without making it sound like a speech.

Glenda turned back to the road, one hand on the wheel. “Now,” she said, like a new subject, “you gonna tell me what you like best about her.”

Taylor’s mouth opened.

For once, her brain didn’t go blank.

The answer was already there, waiting like it had been waiting all her life for someone to ask the right question.

“She… don’t look scared,” Taylor said, voice quiet but sure.

Glenda nodded like she understood the difference between looking and being. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s the trick.”

---

At Willow, the house smelled like detergent and music and whatever Glenda had burned in the oven the night before.

Taylor let herself in behind Glenda without stopping on the threshold this time. The screen door thunked shut, familiar already. The living room looked the same—amp shoved far enough from the wall so the neighbors wouldn’t complain, cables coiled like sleeping snakes, guitar leaning in the corner like it was listening.

Scarlett was on the couch, legs tucked under her, a zine open in her lap. She looked up, eyes moving first to Glenda like she always did, checking, then sliding to Taylor.

The nod she gave Taylor was small, but it landed heavy with meaning: you’re allowed here.

“Hey,” Scarlett said, voice low.

Taylor’s fingers tightened around the paper bag. “Hi.”

Scarlett’s gaze flicked to the bag. “You rob a bank?”

Glenda barked a laugh. “Book store,” she said. “Same thing.”

Scarlett’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”

Glenda tossed her keys onto the table where papers were spread like a half-built nest—some in Bennett’s neat, forceful handwriting, some in Scarlett’s sketches, some in Glenda’s messy song lyrics. She pointed at the kitchen. “Juice?”

Taylor nodded, and Scarlett—without making it a big deal—closed her zine and moved first, angling her body sideways like she always did so Taylor didn’t feel cornered.

In the kitchen, the fridge hummed. The magnets were still there: bright red apple, chipped smiley face, small plastic rocket. Under them, paper scraps and a doodle of a rabbit.

Scarlett tugged the fridge open and glanced back over her shoulder. “Orange or grape?”

Taylor didn’t hesitate this time. “Orange.”

“Good,” Scarlett said, deadpan. “Grape’s nasty.”

Taylor laughed, small and quick, then covered it with her hand out of reflex. Scarlett’s eyes softened like she’d meant to do that.

Taylor poured her own juice without spilling. It felt like a victory no one had to clap for.

Back in the living room, Glenda flopped onto the carpet in front of the TV like gravity had decided she belonged there. “All right,” she said, patting the floor beside her. “Show ’em.”

Taylor pulled the comic out of the bag slowly.

Scarlett leaned forward, interest sharpening in her eyes. “Oh,” she said, like she’d just recognized an old friend. “Her.”

Glenda’s grin turned feral with joy. “Told you,” she said to Taylor. “Wonderland.”

Taylor sat, knees tucked under her, comic on her lap like a plate.

Glenda scooted closer until their shoulders almost touched. She pointed at the cover again. “This one’s good,” she said. “She does this thing where—”

She mimed crossing her wrists in front of her face. The motion was so practiced it looked like muscle memory.

Scarlett, from the couch, lifted her own wrists in lazy imitation. “Don’t knock over the juice,” she warned, dry.

Glenda flipped her off without looking. “You hush, Scar.”

Taylor watched them, the easy way they moved around each other, the way the house held their noise without scolding it.

Glenda tapped a panel with her finger. “See? She’s in the middle of a mess and she still has time to be kind. That’s what I like. People think strong means loud. But she listens.”

Taylor’s eyes flicked up. “She listens?” she repeated, like that was a concept she wanted to turn over.

Glenda nodded. “Yeah.” Her voice dropped a little, less showy. “She hears people who don’t get heard.”

Taylor’s throat tightened.

Scarlett’s gaze stayed on her a beat longer than usual, like she’d caught something in Taylor’s face and was holding it quietly for safekeeping.

Glenda leaned back on her hands. “We’re gonna make you bracelets,” she announced, sudden as weather.

Taylor blinked. “What?”

Scarlett lifted an eyebrow. “With what. Hope and a dream?”

Glenda’s eyes gleamed. “Tin foil,” she said, triumphant. “And tape.”

Scarlett sighed like she was suffering. “God help us.”

Glenda shot Taylor a grin. “You ever deflect bullets with kitchen trash?” she asked.

Taylor’s mouth opened, and then—before she could stop herself—she smiled.

A real one, careful but there.

“No,” she said.

Glenda clapped her hands once, sharp and delighted. “Well,” she declared, “today’s your education.”

---

The tin foil crackled like a secret language.

Glenda tore off strips at the kitchen table, folding them over and over until they were thick enough to hold shape. Scarlett slid a roll of tape across the table without comment, then went back to her zine like she hadn’t just volunteered.

Taylor watched Glenda’s hands. They were quick, sure. The same hands that had unlatched the track gate. The same hands that had held the wheel like the road belonged to her.

Glenda glanced up. “You can do yours,” she said, and pushed a strip of foil toward Taylor. “Just fold it tight.”

Taylor’s fingers fumbled at first. She’d spent years making herself precise—homework neat, chores exact, sister hair smoothed and parted—because mistakes cost more in her house. Here, with Glenda, the air felt like it forgave you.

Her second fold was better.

Her third was tight.

Glenda watched without hovering. “See?” she said. “You got it.”

Taylor’s cheeks warmed.

Scarlett looked over the top of her zine. “If you cut off circulation, don’t bleed on the carpet,” she said, tone flat.

Glenda snorted. “She ain’t dumb.”

Taylor’s fingers kept folding, the crackle steady. Tin foil, tape, a kitchen table with magnets on the fridge and a rabbit doodle pinned up for no reason other than joy.

When Taylor finished, Glenda helped wrap tape around the ends so it wouldn’t scratch. Then she held the bracelet out like she was crowning someone.

“All right,” she said, solemn as a judge. “Put it on.”

Taylor slid it over her hand. It fit loose, but it gleamed in the light.

Glenda lifted her own wrists, where she’d made two thicker ones, and crossed them in front of her face. “Okay,” she said. “Now you gotta practice the sound.”

Taylor blinked. “The sound?”

Glenda clacked her bracelets together once. Snap.

Scarlett flinched and then immediately pretended she hadn’t. “Jesus,” she muttered.

Glenda’s grin was shameless. “That,” she said, eyes bright. “That’s the sound of no.”

Taylor stared at the bracelets on her own wrists. They looked ridiculous. They looked perfect.

Glenda tipped her head. “Go on,” she urged. “Say no.”

Taylor’s throat seized.

The word sat behind her teeth like it didn’t belong to her. Like it belonged to Sadie when she told bills to wait. Like it belonged to DeWanda when she told boys to shut up. Like it belonged to people with volume.

Glenda didn’t push. She didn’t fill the silence with pep talk. She just lifted her own wrists again, steady, waiting.

Taylor swallowed.

Her voice came out small. “No.”

Glenda nodded like she’d just heard a bell ring. “Again.”

Taylor’s fingers tightened on the table edge. “No.”

Glenda smiled slow. “Louder.”

Taylor flinched at the request, but then—she didn’t know why, maybe because the tin foil was on her arms, maybe because Scarlett was watching like still water, maybe because nobody in this house looked at her like she was too much—she tried.

“No.”

The sound didn’t crack. It held.

Glenda clacked her bracelets once, like applause that wasn’t humiliating. “There,” she said, satisfied. “That’s a good sound.”

Taylor stared down at her wrists, the tape edges rough under her thumb.

It was such a small thing. Trash turned into armor.

But when she lifted her arms, crossing them in front of her face the way Glenda had shown her, she felt—just for a heartbeat—like the world might bounce off.

---

A week later, the boys were back by the fence.

Taylor saw them before they saw her. She slowed instinctively, heart already trying to run without her. She could feel the track’s heat rising, the sun making the metal of the fence too bright.

They leaned against it like they owned it, laughter sharp.

Taylor’s fingers curled, searching for something to hook into—metal, air, anything.

Then she saw Glenda on the far side of the oval, jogging easy, head tipped back like she was tasting the sky.

Taylor’s breath caught.

One of the boys spotted her and nudged the other. Their mouths moved. Taylor couldn’t hear the words from here, but she didn’t need to. The shape of meanness was familiar.

Taylor’s shoulders crept up.

Then she remembered Glenda’s voice: Relax your shoulders. You look like you’re trying to hold up the sky.

She let them drop.

Her hands went to her wrists out of habit—and there, under her sleeves, were the tin-foil bracelets she’d worn all week even though they made her feel silly. She’d hidden them under long cuffs when she had to. She’d touched them in class when the teacher asked her a question and her brain went blank.

Trash armor.

Taylor stepped toward the gate.

The boys looked surprised. Like prey had walked toward them.

“Hey,” one of them called, grin nasty. “Where’s your cousin at today? She run off?”

Taylor’s throat tightened.

Behind the fence, Glenda’s footfalls kept their rhythm.

Taylor lifted her arms, crossing them in front of her face. It felt stupid and sacred.

The boys barked laughter. “What you doin’? You gonna fight us?”

Taylor’s heart pounded so hard she could taste metal.

Then she dropped her wrists, looked straight at them, and found the word in her mouth the way she’d found her footfalls on the track.

“No,” she said.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a scream.

It was clear.

The boy’s grin faltered for half a second, like he hadn’t expected the quiet one to have an edge.

Taylor held his gaze anyway.

Behind her, the gate clicked.

Glenda’s hand landed on the top rail beside Taylor’s, casual and terrifying. “Problem?” Glenda asked, voice mild.

The boys backed up like the fence had suddenly turned electric.

“Nothin’,” one muttered, and they drifted away, embarrassed by their own retreat.

Glenda waited until they were out of earshot, then looked down at Taylor. Her eyes flicked to Taylor’s sleeves like she knew what was under there.

Glenda’s mouth hitched up, pleased. “That was a good sound,” she said.

Taylor’s breath shook. She didn’t know if she was going to cry or laugh or throw up.

Glenda didn’t touch her. She didn’t crowd her.

She just leaned in a fraction and said, softer, like it was between them, “You did that.”

Taylor’s chest tightened in a different way than fear.

“Yeah,” she whispered, like she was testing the shape of the truth.

Glenda’s grin flashed. “Yeah,” she echoed. “Now,” she added, jerking her chin toward the track, “you wanna do your lap?”

Taylor looked at the oval.

Inside the fence.

She nodded.

And stepped through.

---

When Wonder Woman III hit the theater, Glenda treated it like a holiday.

Taylor didn’t find out from the newspaper. She found out because Glenda burst into Willow’s kitchen with a flyer in her hand and the kind of joy that made the room tilt.

“Farrah,” Glenda said, like the name itself was a firework. “In armor.”

Scarlett, leaning against the counter, didn’t look up right away. “Is this about your girlfriend again?”

Glenda’s eyes widened in theatrical offense. “She ain’t my girlfriend. She’s—” She stopped, searching for a word big enough. “She’s the standard.”

Scarlett finally glanced up, one eyebrow lifted. “Uh-huh.”

Taylor sat at the table with her homework spread neat, pencil sharp. She looked up slowly, heart already jumping because Glenda’s excitement was contagious like laughter.

Glenda slapped the flyer down in front of her. It showed Wonder Woman in a new suit—metallic, fierce, hair wind-tossed like battle had given up trying to tame it.

Taylor stared.

Farrah’s face on the page was fearless.

Glenda leaned in, hands braced on the table. “We’re going,” she said, like there was no universe where that wasn’t true.

Taylor’s mouth opened, reflexively ready to say she couldn’t, she shouldn’t, it cost money, Sadie needed her—

Scarlett cut in, voice calm. “We should tell Sadie.”

Glenda rolled her eyes like Scarlett had suggested eating rocks. “Obviously.”

Scarlett’s gaze slid to Taylor. “You want to go?”

Taylor hesitated. Wanting was still a risky language.

Glenda’s eyes softened just a fraction. “It’s okay if you don’t,” she said, quieter. “But it’d be fun. And I… I want you there.”

Taylor’s throat tightened.

Nobody said I want you like it was an uncomplicated fact.

She nodded, small at first, then bigger when she realized nobody was going to punish her for it. “Okay,” she said.

Glenda’s grin blew open like sunrise. “Yes,” she breathed, triumphant. Then she pointed at Taylor’s math sheet like the dictator of joy. “Finish that. We go Saturday.”

Saturday came bright and cruelly hot, the kind of day that stuck to you. Glenda picked Taylor up in the truck, cassette already in, the faint hiss a comfort. Scarlett sat in the passenger seat this time, legs crossed, chewing gum like she was unbothered by everything.

Taylor climbed into the back, hands smoothing her skirt out of nerves. She’d worn her best shirt, the one without stains. She’d tucked her tin-foil bracelets into her pocket like a talisman.

When they pulled up in front of Cherry and Ninth, Sadie was on the porch, arms folded. Her eyes tracked the truck like she was counting exits.

Glenda climbed out first, respectful as always. “Ma’am,” she called, steady.

Sadie’s gaze flicked over her, assessing, then landed on Scarlett. Scarlett lifted a hand in a small, almost sheepish wave.

DeWanda appeared behind Sadie, peering around her shoulder like a lookout. Sharon toddled out after, clutching something sticky.

Taylor stepped onto the porch, heart thudding.

Sadie’s eyes softened when she saw her. “You got money?” she asked, practical.

Taylor blinked. “I—”

Glenda reached into her pocket and held out a couple bills. “I got it,” she said, simple. “She’s with us.”

Sadie’s gaze sharpened at the offer, but it didn’t harden. She looked at Taylor, then at Glenda again, then—after a beat—stepped aside.

“Be back before dark,” she said, like a rule and a blessing wrapped together.

Glenda nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

As Taylor stepped off the porch, DeWanda caught her eye and lifted her chin in silent approval.

Taylor’s chest warmed.

In the theater, the air-conditioning hit Taylor like cold water. The carpet smelled like popcorn and old soda. Posters lined the walls, bright worlds promising escape.

Glenda moved through the lobby like she was marching into a cathedral. Scarlett stayed half a step behind, quiet guard.

They bought popcorn, and Glenda—without thinking—bought Taylor a cherry soda. Taylor held it with both hands like it was expensive joy.

Inside the dark, they chose seats near the middle. Glenda sat on Taylor’s left; Scarlett on Taylor’s right, anchoring her without crowding.

When the lights dimmed, Taylor’s heart raced.

The screen lit up.

Wonder Woman stepped into frame, armor catching light like a blade. Farrah’s face was set, eyes forward.

Glenda made a sound in her throat—half laugh, half reverent sigh.

Scarlett leaned back, but Taylor could feel her attention sharpen, drawn despite herself.

Then the bracelets flashed.

The bullets hit.

Clack.

The sound filled the theater, metallic and bright.

Taylor’s breath caught. Her fingers found the tin-foil bracelets in her pocket without her meaning to. She held them tight, matching the sound in her head.

Beside her, Glenda whispered, barely audible, “Hear that?”

Taylor nodded, eyes glued to the screen. “Yeah,” she breathed.

Glenda’s voice dropped to something fierce and tender. “That’s the sound of no,” she murmured again, like a prayer she kept teaching Taylor until it stuck.

Taylor swallowed hard.

On screen, Wonder Woman didn’t flinch. She moved like she trusted her own body. She fought, and she listened, and she pulled people up instead of stepping over them.

Taylor’s eyes stung. She blinked hard, not wanting the tears to spill where anyone could see.

Scarlett’s hand slid over the armrest and rested near Taylor’s elbow—not touching, just there. A quiet offer. An anchor.

Taylor leaned the smallest fraction toward it.

When the movie ended and the lights came up, Glenda stood like she’d been shot out of a cannon, buzzing.

“Farrah,” she said again, voice full of awe.

Scarlett rubbed her eyes like she’d secretly enjoyed herself and hated that fact. “Okay,” she admitted, grudging. “That was… cool.”

Glenda whipped her head around, delighted. “You liked it!”

Scarlett scowled. “Don’t make it weird.”

Taylor stayed seated a moment longer, staring at the empty screen as if it might show her something else if she waited.

Glenda turned to her, excitement softening at the edges. “You good?” she asked, gentler now.

Taylor nodded, but her voice came out rough. “Yeah.”

Glenda squinted like she didn’t believe in easy answers. “You sure?”

Taylor’s fingers unclenched from her pocket. She pulled out the tin-foil bracelets and slid them onto her wrists right there in the theater, in the light, not hiding them.

Glenda’s grin went wide and bright and proud.

Taylor lifted her arms, crossed her wrists, and clacked them together once—quiet, but real.

Snap.

Scarlett startled and then laughed under her breath like she couldn’t help it.

Taylor looked at Glenda.

“I like that sound,” Taylor said, and her voice didn’t disappear. It stayed.

Glenda’s eyes softened, and for a second she didn’t look like the unstoppable runner or the sharp-tongued teen genius or the girl who could chase bullies off with a glance.

She looked like someone who understood exactly how big a small sentence could be.

“Me too,” Glenda said.

They walked out into the Alabama heat together, the sun too bright after the dark, the world loud again.

But Taylor had armor on her wrists.

And cousins on either side.

And, in her pocket, the crumpled movie stub like proof that she had been somewhere other than obligation—somewhere she’d chosen.

Somewhere she’d belonged.

---

After that, the rituals multiplied.

Some afternoons it was the track—Glenda unlatching the gate like it was a door into a better version of yourself, Taylor’s feet finding rhythm while Glenda called out adjustments like she was teaching her to breathe. Some afternoons it was Willow’s kitchen—orange juice bright as a cartoon sunrise, Scarlett muttering about grape, Glenda making “signature” pizza that came out half-burned and still tasted like safety.

And sometimes it was quieter: Taylor at the kitchen table, homework neat, Scarlett sliding a glass of juice in front of her without interrupting her concentration, Glenda across the room strumming the guitar softly, the notes loose and searching like she was talking to herself in sound.

One evening, Taylor arrived with her comic hugged to her chest, the brown paper bag worn soft from being carried everywhere.

Glenda saw it and lit up. “You read it?”

Taylor nodded.

“What part?” Glenda asked, flopping into the chair backwards, chin propped on her arms like she was hungry for the answer.

Taylor hesitated only a second. “When she… when she tells the girl to stop sayin’ sorry,” she said. Her voice got steadier as she went, like the words had been waiting. “She says—” Taylor’s brow furrowed, remembering. “She says sorry is for when you did wrong. Not for… bein’ in the way.”

Glenda went still. The room felt like it held its breath with her.

Scarlett, from the couch, looked over, eyes sharp with interest.

Glenda’s voice came out low. “Yeah,” she said, like the sentence had landed somewhere deep. “That’s right.”

Taylor’s fingers worried the edge of the comic sleeve. “I didn’t know you could… do that,” she admitted. “Just… not say it.”

Glenda’s gaze stayed on her, steady as a hand on the small of your back. “You can,” she said. “You just gotta practice.”

Taylor looked down at her wrists, where the tin-foil bracelets had been replaced by a sturdier pair Glenda had made from thrift-store bangles wrapped in gold tape. They weren’t real, but they looked real enough if you squinted.

Practice.

Taylor lifted her arms and crossed her wrists. She didn’t clack them this time. She just held them there, feeling the posture settle into her bones.

Scarlett’s voice, quiet but certain, floated in. “You don’t gotta be loud to be solid,” she said, like she was offering a sentence she’d carried a long time.

Taylor glanced at her. Scarlett’s expression didn’t change much, but her eyes were warm.

Glenda nodded fiercely. “Exactly,” she said.

Taylor swallowed, and the word came out without being dragged. “Okay.”

Glenda grinned. “Okay,” she echoed. “Good.”

Outside, dusk slid over Huntsville, softening the edges of the street, turning telephone wires orange.

Inside, the fridge hummed.

The amp waited in the corner.

The house held three girls—one loud, one quiet, one learning how to be seen—and their small inventions: armor from tin foil, courage from comics, family from a word like cousin said out loud and meant.

Glenda didn’t fall out of love with Wonder Woman so much as she learned how to love her with her eyes open.

It happened in small, almost embarrassing moments—like the first time she sat cross-legged on her living room floor in her twenties, surrounded by old issues she’d hunted down and newer reprints that smelled like fresh ink, and she actually winced.

Not because Diana had changed, not really. Because the world had.

Glenda turned a page and felt her mouth tighten.

“Mm,” she muttered.

Scarlett, sprawled on the couch with her feet up, looked over the top of a book. “That bad?”

Glenda stared at the panel a beat longer, then tapped it with her finger like she was pointing out a bruise. “It’s… dated,” she said finally, and there was a particular kind of grief in her voice—soft, irritated, protective all at once.

Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “Like ‘bad writing’ dated, or ‘men had ideas about women’ dated?”

Glenda let out a breath through her nose—half laugh, half surrender. “Both.”

Scarlett hummed like that was information she could file away. “So you’re done?”

Glenda’s head snapped up, almost offended.

“No,” she said, immediate. Then she softened, because Scarlett wasn’t mocking her—Scarlett was checking for the edge of the truth. “No,” Glenda repeated, quieter. “She’s still… her.”

She flipped forward, skimming until she found a moment that made her chest go warm instead of tight—Diana stepping between someone small and something cruel, not with spectacle, just with steadiness. The way she always did.

Glenda’s shoulders loosened.

Scarlett watched her face change and said, dry, “There she is.”

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “There she is.”

She didn’t love Wonder Woman because every story was perfect. She loved her because Diana tried. Because even when the writing stumbled, the spine of her stayed upright—softness welded to strength, mercy tied to justice like a knot you couldn’t pull apart.

Glenda pushed the “dated” issue into a sleeve anyway, careful, not excusing it—just keeping it, the way you kept family photos even when you hated the haircut.

“See?” Scarlett said, watching the way Glenda smoothed the plastic. “You’re still nesting.”

Glenda didn’t look up. “Shut up.”

Scarlett’s grin was quiet. “Never.”

—

When the film series came back around in the 2000s—at first with cautious little steps, and then with a sweep that felt like thunder rolling in—Glenda treated it like something holy without ever calling it holy.

She didn’t announce it as a tradition. She didn’t make a chart on the fridge. She just… started doing it.

On release nights, she moved through the house with that keyed-up focus she used to get as a kid before a backyard “battle,” except now she was in overalls and sandals, hair pulled back, checking pockets for keys and folding dollar bills like she was packing rations.

Dana was the first to notice.

Dana was old enough by then to be half-amused by her mother’s enthusiasm and half-touched by it, which made her expression a constant tug-of-war between eye-rolling and smiling.

“You’re doing the thing,” Dana said, leaning in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed.

Glenda paused with the car keys in her hand. “What thing.”

Dana’s eyes flicked over her. “The… pilgrim thing,” she said, like she couldn’t believe she was saying it out loud. “The movie’s not even for another two hours.”

Glenda lifted her chin a fraction, already defensive on Diana’s behalf. “We need good seats.”

Holly, quieter, slipped around Dana and opened the pantry like she was searching for something practical to do with her hands. “Do we have enough money for popcorn?” she asked, voice careful, because Holly always asked questions like she was trying not to take up space.

Glenda’s eyes softened immediately. “Yes,” she said. “We’ve got popcorn money.”

Dana raised her eyebrows. “That’s new.”

Glenda gave her a look. “Don’t make it weird.”

Dana barked a laugh. “I’m not making it weird. You’re the one acting like the theater is church.”

From the table, little Jess—still small enough that her legs didn’t reach the floor—swung her feet and said with absolute certainty, “It is church.”

Glenda’s face went still for one beat, the way it did when something hit her in the ribs unexpectedly. Then she snorted, trying not to smile.

Scarlett, who had been half-asleep on the couch and pretending she wasn’t listening, lifted her head. “If it’s church,” she said, voice rough with a nap, “I want communion.”

Glenda tossed a dish towel at her without looking. “You can have communion in the form of nachos.”

Scarlett caught the towel lazily and smiled like she’d been paid.

Holly found the cocoa tin in the pantry and set it on the counter, as if already preparing for what always came after.

Glenda saw her do it and didn’t comment. She just reached out and brushed Holly’s shoulder lightly as she passed—a quiet thank you that didn’t need words.

—

The theater lobby smelled like butter and sugar and carpet cleaner trying to cover the smell of old soda.

Glenda held the tickets in one hand like they were passports. Dana walked a step behind her, pretending she didn’t like being seen with her mother and also staying close enough that she could bump shoulders if she felt like it. Holly hovered on Glenda’s other side, eyes bright with nerves and anticipation. Jess bounced, nearly vibrating out of her own skin.

Glenda bought the popcorn like she was committing a small sin.

“Large,” she said, without flinching, and Dana’s eyebrows shot up again.

Glenda didn’t care. Tonight was not a night for half measures.

When they found their seats—middle row, just high enough to see over heads, just close enough that the screen filled your vision—Glenda sat down and exhaled like she’d been holding her breath all day. She set the popcorn in Dana’s lap like an offering and tucked the drinks into the cup holders with careful precision.

Jess climbed onto her knees and peered over the seat in front of them. “When does she come,” she whispered, voice huge in the hushed dark.

“Soon,” Glenda whispered back, and her tone wasn’t just soothing—it was reverent.

The lights dimmed. The previews rolled. Glenda didn’t watch them. She stared at the screen as if willing Diana into existence through sheer attention.

Dana leaned toward Holly and muttered, “She’s gonna cry.”

Holly whispered back, “No she’s not.”

Dana’s mouth quirked. “Yes she is.”

Glenda heard them both and ignored it.

Then the score swelled—big, full-bodied, the kind of music that made your skin prickle—and Wonder Woman stepped into frame.

Glenda’s breath caught like she’d been punched gently in the chest.

“She’s so cool,” she whispered, the same way she’d whispered it when she was little, except now the words were threaded with everything she’d survived and everything she still hoped for.

Dana smiled without meaning to. Not at the movie—at her mother.

Holly leaned in closer, shoulder pressing into Glenda’s arm like she was returning to shore.

Jess made a tiny sound, half gasp, half squeal, and Glenda’s hand shot out automatically, finding Jess’s small fingers and holding them.

On screen, Diana crossed her wrists.

The metallic clack hit the theater like a bell.

Jess whispered, awed, “That’s the sound.”

Glenda nodded, eyes shining. “That’s the sound,” she agreed, and squeezed Jess’s hand once, like punctuation.

Later—when Diana stepped forward alone, when the camera held on her face for that long, steady second that always felt like a vow—Glenda felt Dana’s hand slide into hers on the shared armrest, casual and quick, like Dana would deny it later.

Glenda didn’t look at her. She just held on.

When the tank shell hit, when the bracelets flashed, when Diana didn’t flinch—Glenda laughed, sharp and joyful, the way she laughed when she’d leapt off porch steps as a kid and landed safe.

Dana whispered, “Mom—” half embarrassed, half delighted.

Glenda didn’t apologize. She leaned in and whispered back, “Watch this part.”

Dana groaned softly. “I’m watching.”

“No,” Glenda insisted, voice low and urgent, and her fingers tightened around Dana’s. “Watch. This is where she chooses truth even when it’s hard.”

Dana went still.

Holly’s eyes flicked to Glenda’s face and then back to the screen, as if trying to see it through her mother’s gaze too.

Jess stared, unblinking, like she was trying to memorize it into her bones.

In the dark, Lucille’s absence was a quiet ache—because Lucille would have loved seeing Glenda like this, undone in the best way. But Lucille lived in the moment anyway, in Glenda’s grip, in the way her daughters leaned toward her like gravity.

—

At home, the devotion was never loud.

It was the way the old posters stayed on the walls long after other décor shifted—edges soft, corners curling, Diana’s silhouette still upright and unbothered by time. It was the way the VHS tapes were rewound with care, even when streaming made rewinding obsolete—because Glenda still believed in returning things to readiness. It was the gold lasso coiled gently atop a shelf like a relic, not displayed like a trophy, just kept—present, quiet, unquestioned.

Dana grew up thinking every house had a sacred shelf.

Holly grew up thinking every mother had a myth she lived by.

Jess grew up thinking it was normal for bravery to be discussed at the dinner table the same way other families discussed weather.

Glenda never sat them down and lectured them. She never demanded they wear tiaras, never forced comics into their hands like medicine.

She simply lived with that quiet awe stitched into her spirit like thread.

And the girls took to it like ducks to water.

Dana, at three, stomped around the living room with a jump rope slung across her chest like a sash, declaring in a voice too big for her body that she had to rescue her stuffed animals from “the island.”

Glenda watched from the couch, one leg tucked under her, amused and fond, and called out, “Which island?”

Dana planted her feet, serious. “The bad island,” she said, as if there was only one.

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “Then you better bring snacks.”

Dana frowned, deeply offended by the practicality. “Heroes don’t snack.”

Glenda lifted her eyebrows. “Heroes absolutely snack.”

From the doorway, Phoebe—older now, softer around the eyes, still sharp—laughed under her breath and said, “Listen to your mother. Even saints eat.”

Dana stared at Phoebe, then at Glenda, and finally—begrudging—grabbed a handful of crackers from a bowl and marched off to save her animals with crumbs on her lip.

Holly, a year younger, didn’t stomp.

Holly hovered.

She’d sit at the table with her chin in her hands and trace the W-symbol on Glenda’s coffee mug with one careful finger, like the shape itself could steady her. She’d ask questions that were really feelings wearing question-clothes.

“Does Wonder Woman ever get tired?” she asked once, voice so quiet Glenda had to lean in to hear it.

Glenda paused with her mug halfway to her mouth. She looked at Holly for a long moment—not just hearing the question, but hearing what was underneath it.

“Yes,” Glenda said gently. “She does.”

Holly’s brow furrowed, anxious. “Then what does she do.”

Glenda set the mug down and reached out, smoothing Holly’s hair back from her forehead the way she used to do when Holly was very small. “She rests,” Glenda said simply. “And she lets people help her.”

Holly’s mouth trembled like she might cry, then steadied. “Okay,” she whispered, as if filing away permission.

Jess, born years later, arrived with fire already lit.

Jess leapt off porch steps shouting, “Justice for the world!” in a voice too big for her lungs, landing in the grass with scraped knees she wore like medals. She tied towels around her neck as capes and insisted everyone call her “Diana” for entire afternoons, correcting anyone who got it wrong with the sternness of a tiny judge.

Scarlett, watching from the porch with a drink in her hand, muttered, “This is your fault.”

Glenda, hands on hips, eyes shining, replied, “Thank you.”

Scarlett snorted. “That wasn’t a compliment.”

Glenda’s grin stayed. “It still counts.”

—

Glenda had a way of knowing when they were lying.

Not because she was strict. Not because she was suspicious. Because she listened with her whole body the way Diana seemed to—like the truth had a texture.

Dana came in once at thirteen with her backpack held too tight, eyes too bright. Holly was in her room with the door half closed, pretending she wasn’t listening. Jess was on the floor with dolls arranged in a dramatic courtroom.

Glenda looked up from the kitchen counter where she was chopping onions, and she knew.

“Where’d you go,” she asked, tone light, as if the answer didn’t matter at all.

Dana shrugged too fast. “Nowhere.”

Glenda’s knife kept its rhythm. Chop. Chop. Chop. “Nowhere’s a long way,” she said mildly.

Dana’s shoulders crept up.

Glenda set the knife down and wiped her hands on a towel, then leaned her hip against the counter. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t corner Dana. She just watched her the way she watched film scenes—patient, attentive, waiting for the moment the character chose truth.

Dana’s eyes flicked away. “We just—went to the creek.”

Glenda nodded once, calm. “Okay.”

Dana blinked, thrown off by the lack of punishment.

Glenda tilted her head. “Were you safe?”

Dana hesitated. “Yeah.”

Glenda’s eyes narrowed slightly—not suspicious, precise. “Were you kind?”

Dana’s mouth tightened. “Yeah.”

Glenda kept watching. Dana’s breathing hitched.

Dana exhaled hard. “We weren’t supposed to,” she blurted, all at once. “We went without telling. And—Holly slipped. And I yelled at her.”

From down the hallway, Holly’s door creaked a fraction wider.

Glenda didn’t react like a siren. She just nodded, slow, as if receiving something precious.

“Thank you for telling the truth,” Glenda said, and Dana’s face crumpled with relief at being met with steadiness instead of thunder.

Glenda’s voice softened. “Come here.”

Dana approached like she was bracing for impact. Glenda didn’t scold. She pulled her into a hug—firm, brief, real—and said into Dana’s hair, “Next time, tell me first. I’m not your enemy.”

Dana’s voice came muffled, stubborn. “I know.”

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “Do you.”

Holly appeared in the doorway then, eyes wet, cheeks flushed with shame.

Glenda held out one hand without looking away from Dana. “Come here too,” she said.

Holly hesitated.

Glenda’s voice stayed gentle, unyielding. “Holly.”

Holly crossed the kitchen and slid into Glenda’s side, and Glenda wrapped an arm around her too, anchoring both girls at once.

Jess, on the floor, watched with solemn fascination.

Afterward, Glenda made hot cocoa like she always did when feelings ran high—kettle whistling, chocolate melting, milk swirling, the smell thick and comforting. Dana and Holly sat at the table, shoulders touching now, the worst of it burned off.

Glenda set the mugs down and said, lightly, “Invisible lasso.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Oh my God.”

Holly laughed, small and watery.

Glenda smiled into her own mug. “Works every time,” she murmured.

Scarlett, passing through the kitchen, tapped the lasso coil on the shelf with one finger like she was acknowledging an old friend and said, “She’s insufferable.”

Glenda didn’t look up. “You love me.”

Scarlett’s mouth twitched. “Unfortunately.”

—

Even into her sixties, Glenda was the household expert.

It wasn’t showy. She didn’t perform trivia for strangers. She just… knew.

At family gatherings, someone would mention a film and Glenda would immediately say, “That one gets her moral code wrong,” with the calm certainty of someone commenting on weather. Or she’d pause a scene mid-rewatch, remote in hand, and say, “No, wait—listen to the phrasing,” as if everyone in the room had signed up for a seminar.

Dana would groan. Holly would smile. Jess would lean forward, actually listening.

One afternoon, Jess—grown now, hair pulled back, sleeves rolled—came into the kitchen and found Glenda at the table with a battered paperback open, glasses perched on her nose.

Jess peered over her shoulder. “What’re you reading?”

Glenda tapped the page. “The Hiketeia.”

Jess blinked. “You’ve read that a hundred times.”

Glenda’s eyes didn’t leave the text. “Not like this.”

Jess pulled out a chair. “What does that mean.”

Glenda finally looked up, and her gaze was sharp with the particular joy of deep nerd-devotion. “It means,” she said, “I’m older now. So it hits different. The writing’s better than people give it credit for.”

Jess grinned. “You sound like you’re defending a cousin.”

Glenda’s mouth softened. “She is my cousin.”

From the doorway, Lucille—older, slower in her steps now but still carrying herself like a woman who’d survived—paused and watched them for a moment.

Glenda’s hands, strong and capable even now, turned the page with care.

Jess’s face, so much like Glenda’s at certain angles it made your chest ache, leaned in close.

Lucille didn’t interrupt. She just stood there with that special grandmotherly delight—part amusement, part pride, part ache—watching devotion translate itself into tenderness.

—

What moved Lucille most was never the play.

It was the bond.

The way the girls looked at their mother when she talked about Diana—not like she was silly, not like she was embarrassing, but like she was revealing a part of herself that had always been true. The way they leaned on her shoulder during films, not even noticing they were doing it. The way Glenda’s hand always found theirs at certain scenes, her grip steady, her whisper low and urgent like a prayer.

“Watch this part,” she’d say, every time, as if it was the first time. “This is where she chooses truth even when it’s hard.”

Lucille, who had spent a lifetime watching women carry too much and get too little, saw something sacred in that.

The torch being passed—not just the fandom, but the belief.

The sense that being a girl didn’t mean being delicate, or passive, or agreeable. It meant being capable. It meant having fire.

She watched her granddaughters grow taller, louder, more confident with every year. In quiet moments, Lucille would catch herself smiling at their squabbles and games—capes made of old towels, bracelets made of taped-up bangles, a jump rope lasso looping through the air like a sunbeam—and think, without even meaning to:

This is what mythology is supposed to do.

This is how it lives on.

Not on a page.

In posture. In choices. In the way girls learn to stand.

—

Once, when the whole family was gathered in the living room—popcorn bowls on laps, the opening theme music beginning to swell—Lucille sat close enough to Glenda to feel her daughter’s anticipation like heat.

Glenda’s eyes were already glassy, ridiculous with joy. She didn’t try to hide it. She didn’t iron it flat to appear “mature.” She let herself be moved.

Dana, on Glenda’s left, nudged her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” Dana muttered, already smiling.

Glenda whispered back, “I’m not—” and then immediately blinked too hard, betraying herself.

Holly tucked her feet under her and leaned against Glenda’s other shoulder like it was a habit older than language.

Jess tossed a handful of popcorn into her mouth and said, shamelessly, “I’m gonna cry.”

Glenda’s laugh came out soft and full.

Lucille leaned in, voice low so it wouldn’t cut through the music. “She’s yours, that one,” she whispered, eyes on the screen as if addressing Diana herself. Then she added, softer still, “But now she’s theirs, too.”

Glenda smiled without looking away. “She always was,” she whispered back.

Lucille watched the three younger women around her—her blood, her legacy—glowing in the screen light, and felt something settle in her chest with simple, profound clarity.

Wonder Woman wasn’t a break from tradition at all.

She was a continuation.

A new face for an old, eternal story.

One that now had new tellers in the making.

The afternoon light in Miami came in like honey—thick, bright, unapologetic—slanting through the blinds in clean stripes that cut across the carpet and the foot of the bed. Dust motes drifted through the beams as if they were slow, glittering fish. Outside, somewhere beyond the window, a palm frond scraped lazily against a screen, and far-off traffic made a soft, constant hiss, like the city breathing.

JJ’s bedroom looked lived-in in the way only a child’s room did—everything in motion, nothing entirely finished. A pile of stuffed animals lounged at the head of the bed in a sleepy heap, a plush dolphin half on its side like it had washed ashore. Plastic beads and hair ties glinted in a shallow dish on the dresser. A crayon drawing—bold, chaotic, joyous—was taped crooked to the wall, curling at one corner where the tape had lost its grip.

On the floor by the bed, a cape lay abandoned: red fabric, a little too long, the tie-knots frayed from being pulled and yanked by hands still learning gentleness. Nearby, a jump rope snaked across the carpet, one handle tucked under a pillow as if it had been hidden in a hurry.

Glenda sat on the bed with her back against the headboard, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. She wore a soft cotton shirt that had once been white and was now the color of sun-bleached paper, and she had her reading glasses perched low on her nose. The comic lay open on her lap, the glossy pages catching the sun in brief flashes when she shifted it.

JJ sat right beside her, so close their shoulders touched, knees folded under her in a little knot. Her hair was in a half-pony that had begun to slip loose, short strands sticking up at the crown like antennae. She had a serious face when she listened—lips parted slightly, eyebrows knitted with the kind of concentration adults rarely gave anything they weren’t paid to do.

Glenda turned the page slowly, thumb careful along the edge. The paper made a soft fuff sound as it lifted and settled.

JJ’s finger immediately shot out—not touching the page, hovering just above it, hovering as if touching might make the picture smear or disappear.

“There,” JJ said, breathy with urgency. “There she is.”

Glenda’s mouth softened. “There she is,” she agreed, voice low, as if they were in church or a library or the middle of a spell.

On the page, Wonder Woman stood in the center of a panel, bracelets up, hair blown back like the wind had decided to work for her.

JJ made a tiny sound in her throat. It could’ve been a gasp. It could’ve been a squeal swallowed down.

“She’s not scared,” JJ said.

Glenda’s eyes stayed on the art, but her attention shifted—like a lamp turning in its socket—toward the child pressed against her. “No,” she said gently. “She’s not.”

JJ’s gaze narrowed, suspicious. “But… if there’s bad guys—” She paused, as if the idea required careful handling. “—your tummy gets like… brrr.”

She wiggled her fingers over her own stomach to demonstrate the feeling, mouth puckered in displeasure.

Glenda’s lips twitched. “Mm-hm.”

JJ looked up sharply, brown eyes huge. “Does Wonder Woman get tummy brrr?”

Glenda’s answer came without hesitation, not preachy, not dramatic—just true. “Yes.”

JJ stared, startled by the honesty. “She does?”

“She does,” Glenda repeated. She reached up and gently nudged JJ’s slipping ponytail back into place with her knuckles, a mothering motion worn smooth by decades. “Bravery isn’t not being scared.”

JJ blinked. Her lips moved silently, chewing on that sentence like a piece of candy.

Glenda glanced down at the panel again. “Bravery is doing what you gotta do even when your tummy says ‘brrr.’”

JJ’s eyebrows lifted, impressed. “JJ can do that,” she declared.

Then, as if remembering her own rules, she corrected herself with stern precision: “JJ can do that. JJ is brave.”

Glenda’s chest warmed. She didn’t laugh at the third-person quirk. She didn’t tease. She simply nodded, solemn as if accepting a vow. “JJ is brave,” she agreed.

JJ’s shoulders rose with pride.

Glenda turned the page again.

This one had Diana holding a golden rope—looped, shining, almost alive. In the panel, someone was caught in it, face scrunched with discomfort.

JJ leaned in so close her nose almost touched the paper. “That’s the lasso,” she whispered, like she was naming a creature.

Glenda’s thumb stilled. “That’s the lasso.”

JJ’s finger hovered over it again. “It makes ‘em tell,” she said, voice low, as if sharing dangerous information.

Glenda’s eyes crinkled. “It makes ’em tell.”

JJ’s mouth twisted. “Even if they don’t want.”

“Especially if they don’t want,” Glenda murmured.

JJ sat back, suddenly thoughtful. The sunlight striped her face, making one cheek bright and the other half in shadow. She sucked her bottom lip.

Then, very quietly, as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed to ask, she said, “Do you have one?”

Glenda looked at her.

Not at the comic. Not at the window. At JJ.

She let the question sit between them for a heartbeat, heavy in a child’s hands.

Then she lifted her own hand and tapped JJ gently on the center of her chest, right above where a heart beat fast with attention.

“Yeah,” Glenda said softly. “Right there.”

JJ froze, wide-eyed.

“In JJ?” she whispered, scandalized.

Glenda nodded. “In you.”

JJ’s face went solemn, as if she had just been given a responsibility. “JJ will not lose it,” she promised immediately.

Glenda laughed then, just a little, warm and surprised. “Good plan,” she said. “Try not to set it down and forget it behind the couch.”

JJ’s mouth fell open in outrage. “JJ would never.”

Glenda’s smile stayed, and she turned the page.

The next panel had Wonder Woman stepping forward, one hand out—not a punch, not a threat. A stop. A boundary. A refusal.

JJ pointed. “That’s the hand,” she said, intense. “That’s the ‘no’ hand.”

Glenda’s eyebrows rose. “The ‘no’ hand.”

JJ nodded hard. “When the grown-ups say ‘stop that,’ but they say it like a laugh.” She mimed a giggle, then immediately frowned, unsatisfied. “But she says it like—” JJ’s small voice dropped deeper, trying on weight. “Like it’s real.”

Glenda felt something in her chest pinch, not pain exactly—recognition.

“Yeah,” Glenda said, quiet. “She means it.”

JJ’s eyes narrowed, like she was looking for the trick. “Can JJ say it like it’s real?”

Glenda didn’t answer right away. She set the comic down carefully on her lap, palms flattening the open pages so they wouldn’t crease. Then she turned toward JJ fully, her shoulder still touching JJ’s. The closeness didn’t change—only the focus did.

“Yes,” Glenda said.

JJ sat up straighter, suddenly nervous. She tucked her feet under her more tightly, toes curling.

Glenda held up her own hand, palm outward, fingers relaxed. Not aggressive. Just clear.

“Try it,” she said softly. “Not loud. Just… solid.”

JJ swallowed. Her little hand rose, palm out, wobbling slightly like a young branch in wind.

Her voice came out small. “No.”

Glenda’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t clap. She didn’t gush. She simply nodded like JJ had done something serious and correct.

“Again,” Glenda said, gentle.

JJ’s eyebrows pulled together. She tried again, a tiny bit steadier. “No.”

Glenda nodded once more. “Good.”

JJ blinked fast, surprised by how the word felt. Like it didn’t break her. Like it didn’t set off alarms.

JJ’s mouth tightened, determined. “No,” she said again, and this time it held.

Glenda’s eyes softened. “There,” she whispered. “That’s the sound.”

JJ’s gaze flicked down to the comic, then back to Glenda. “It doesn’t make lightning,” she said, slightly disappointed.

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “No.”

JJ sighed dramatically, the kind of sigh only children could produce. “JJ thought it might make lightning.”

Glenda lifted an eyebrow. “Lightning’s flashy,” she said. “No is… useful.”

JJ considered that with a seriousness that didn’t belong on such a small face. Then she nodded, once, like she had made peace with reality.

“Useful,” JJ repeated, as if storing it in a pocket.

Glenda picked the comic back up and resumed reading. The quiet returned, threaded through with the soft rasp of paper and the distant hiss of Miami outside.

JJ leaned into Glenda again, shoulder warm.

A few pages later, there was a scene where someone was crying—small in the frame, hunched, face hidden. Wonder Woman knelt, her big warrior body folding down so she could be at eye level. Her hand was gentle on the person’s shoulder.

JJ stared at that panel so hard she forgot to blink.

“She’s… nice,” JJ murmured, voice very small.

Glenda’s thumb paused mid-turn. “She is.”

“But she’s—” JJ’s words tangled, frustrated by their own limits. “She’s… strong and nice.”

Glenda smiled, a slow curve that held years in it. “Yes.”

JJ frowned. “People say you can’t be both.”

Glenda’s gaze shifted to JJ again. The room seemed to quiet a fraction more, as if listening.

“People say a lot,” Glenda said softly.

JJ’s brow furrowed deeper. “Is that a lie?”

Glenda blinked once—slow, like she was deciding how to answer without breaking anything delicate.

“Yes,” she said.

JJ’s eyes widened. “A big lie?”

Glenda’s mouth went firm, but her voice stayed gentle. “A big one.”

JJ sat back like she’d been handed a problem to solve. Then she leaned forward again, pointing at Wonder Woman’s face. “She’s both,” JJ declared, fierce. “So it’s a lie.”

Glenda’s throat tightened unexpectedly. She cleared it quietly and turned the page, pretending it was just dust.

“Mhm,” she managed. “That’s right.”

JJ went on reading the panels with her eyes—following the action, tracking the speech bubbles even when she couldn’t read all the words yet, catching the shapes of meaning the way Glenda used to.

Every so often JJ would stop Glenda with a little tap on her forearm—not grabbing, not interrupting harshly. A signal.

“What does that word say?” JJ asked once, pointing at a bubble.

Glenda leaned in, squinting over her glasses. “That says… ‘courage.’”

JJ’s face lit. “Courage,” she repeated carefully, tasting it. “That’s when you do it anyway.”

Glenda’s smile softened. “That’s when you do it anyway.”

JJ nodded, satisfied, then glanced at the striped sunlight on the carpet and, abruptly, dropped onto all fours, crawling to the edge of the bed.

Glenda paused, comic held open, watching without scolding. The interruption wasn’t rude. It was just JJ being JJ—mind darting, body following.

JJ snatched up the abandoned red cape from the floor, dragged it back like a prize, and climbed onto the bed with it, panting slightly as if she’d rescued it from danger.

She draped it over her shoulders, tangled it around her neck, and tied it in a knot that was too tight and uneven.

Glenda’s hand shot out, not to stop her, but to loosen it gently so it wouldn’t choke. “Not stranglin’ yourself for justice,” Glenda murmured.

JJ’s eyes went wide in mock innocence. “JJ was not strangling,” she protested.

Glenda’s mouth twitched. “Sure.”

JJ settled back against Glenda, cape now spread behind her like a bright spill. She pointed at Wonder Woman again. “She has one too,” JJ said.

“A better one,” Glenda agreed.

JJ sniffed. “JJ’s is still good.”

“It is,” Glenda said, and her voice made it true.

They read on.

The afternoon shifted, sunlight sliding lower, the stripes on the carpet moving like slow clock hands. Outside, a distant siren wailed and faded. Somewhere in the house, a door closed softly. A faint smell of laundry soap drifted in—fresh fabric warming in the sun.

JJ’s head gradually grew heavier against Glenda’s shoulder. Her questions came slower.

“What… happens,” JJ mumbled at one point, eyelids drooping, “if Wonder Woman… gets sad.”

Glenda’s hand paused on the page. She looked down at JJ’s face—soft now, unguarded, the fierce intensity melting into sleepiness.

“She… lets herself be sad,” Glenda said quietly. “And then she keeps going.”

JJ’s mouth opened in a small yawn. “JJ… can do that,” she murmured, words thick.

Glenda’s fingers curled gently around the edge of the comic so it wouldn’t slide. “Yes,” she whispered. “You can.”

JJ blinked slowly, then, half-asleep, lifted her arms and crossed her wrists over her chest—cape bunching at her shoulders.

Her bracelets weren’t there. No foil. No bangles. Just small wrists and a gesture that meant no and stop and I’m here.

JJ’s lips moved.

“No,” she whispered, barely audible.

Glenda’s chest went warm and tight all at once. She didn’t correct the softness. She didn’t ask for louder. This wasn’t practice now. This was instinct. A seed taking root.

“Good,” Glenda whispered back.

JJ’s eyes fluttered closed. Her body relaxed into Glenda’s side, heavy and trusting.

Glenda turned the next page with her free hand—slow, careful, keeping the comic open like a lamp.

In the panel, Wonder Woman stood tall, bracelets catching light, lasso coiled at her hip, gaze steady.

Glenda looked at her.

Then she looked down at the child asleep against her shoulder—cape tangled, mouth slightly open, hand still resting near her chest as if guarding something invisible.

Glenda’s thumb brushed the edge of the page.

Outside, Miami kept hissing, warm and alive.

Inside, in the striped honey light of a granddaughter’s room, the myth did what it had always done.

It lived.