“Charles” tells the story of a young boy named Laurie who has started kindergarten. He immediately begins telling stories to his mother and father about another boy named Charles who misbehaves frequently. He hits his teacher, says crude things to girls, and makes other students bleed. Charles becomes a staple of conversation within the household; the mother and father talk frequently about Charles’s mother and what she must be like. The mother anticipates a meeting at an upcoming PTA meeting, but when she asks the teacher about Charles at said meeting, the teacher replies, “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.”