Her Christian name was Charlotte, but David and Hunter called her Charlie. Everyone did. As a child, she was as wild and loud as any of the little boys, and for many years, David and Hunter saw her as one of them.
Charlie was slow to develop. Even as the other girls blossomed into womanhood, her scrawny body seemed to hesitate, uncertain. She hid the changes as they appeared. When her mother grew self-conscious about the things the neighbors were beginning to say and forced Charlie to stop cutting her hair short, she tucked up her ponytail under a baseball cap. When her shape began to change at last, she took to wearing a large hooded sweatshirt and avoided the swimming pool.
David and Hunter were aware that Charlie was a girl, but that designation seemed almost like a technicality until the summer of her 18th year, when they caught a glimpse of her alone in her parents' backyard. Engrossed in a comic book, she never saw them, but for the first time, they noticed her. With the shape of her body in just a tank top and shorts, and her long, golden hair soft and loose around her shoulders, Charlie's womanhood was suddenly, overwhelmingly real.
The next time she came over to David's house to play video games, she was the same as ever, but it was impossible for the boys to forget what she was hiding under her cap and baggy hoodie.
David's older brother Matt, home after graduating college, spotted it right away.
"Are you fucking her?" He asked, after she left.
"We're just friends," David shrugged, and Matt wondered, not for the first time, if his little brother was a queer. A guy would have to be a little fruity to spend hours alone with a tasty little morsel like that without making a move. The next time Charlie emerged unmolested from his brother's company in his parents' basement, Matt was waiting.
"You want a ride home?" he offered, and that was all it took to get pretty little Charlie in his passenger seat. Bopping her head along to the radio as she gazed out the window, she was oblivious to the way Matt was looking at her. Even when he parked the car outside of the abandoned mill, she only seemed confused, not scared.
"I want to show you something," Matt told her.
"Cool," Charlie said, always down for adventure. Matt suppressed a smile.