Eva and I were both looking forward to getting to know her, but we saw precious little of her outside of school. After several school days had passed, Sis told me that Charlene didn't seem to have been assigned to one of the mandatory physical ed classes — nobody that Sis knew had her during their period. That made Charlene something of a mystery, but since she remained aloof from everyone pretty much all the time, there wasn't a whole lot more we could learn about her, other than she got damn good grades in all her classes.

It wasn't until several weeks after school had let out that Sis finally got the chance to meet Charlene through the simple expedient of simply walking up to their door, introducing herself, and asking if Charlene would like to come over. Sis later told me that she could see that Charlene wasn't exactly thrilled at the invitation, but didn't have a polite way of declining.

The two of them didn't spend much more than a couple of hours together at first, but as the rest of the summer passed, the frequency and duration of their time together gradually increased. That continued after school started again, as well; Charlene gradually got somewhat friendlier with the other girls at school, but Eva was by far her closest friend. From the amount of time Charlene spent at our house, she and I also got to know each other better and get comfortable with each other. Sis informed me that Charlene and her parents had moved from several states away during the school year because of some unspecified event that happened at her previous school. Both of us wondered what possibly could have happened, but couldn't figure out what it might have been.