Introducing "Daddy's Girl"

Caucasian girl, 12 or 13, fuzzy hair pulled back, wearing a purple ski jacket and green corduroy pants, cuffs tucked into winter boots. She doesn't read to pass the time, to avoid contact with others. She's a lifer, focused: an important distinction.

Magic Street, Orson Scott Card (Del Rey)

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Quon said she was in competitions all the time, and she outswam and outdived girls two years older than her and people said she was so natural and quick in the water. "She just lives to swim."

In grade 5 she moved. In her old hometown, her old elementary friends learned the new ways, the new rules, of grade 6, 7 and 8. She spent the summer alone, thinking the rules would stay the same. She looked away from the girls in the street, ignored their attempts to befriend her. She would have new friends soon enough. She spent the months sitting in a woven sun chair under a new-old maple tree in her new-old backyard, outside her new-old house in a new-old town. Sitting in the locker room, two days into new-school, she changed into her shorts and two-toned cap sleeve tee, canary-yellow and pistachio-green, enough to cover her shoulders. But as the other girls stood in their bras she missed her old elementary friends more than ever before. They would have told her it was the summer they'd all started shaving.

Meet her again, for the first time.