By most definitions, Charlie was not normal.

He didn’t speak until the age of two, which made his parents wonder, at first, if he was mentally retarded. When he started, though, what came out were complete sentences. No “mama” or “dada” or “duck,” but full, coherent phrases.

And at three he read, understood and memorized every Dr. Suess book in the house. And at four his parents began home-schooling him because the public school wouldn’t let him start first grade so young. And at five he completed the curriculum set out for fifth graders.

He didn’t mind it, spending so much time at home with his parents. He preferred it, actually. Charlie couldn’t stand to be around kids his own age. He would’ve gone to school, he said, if only the teachers were there, no students but him.

Spending twelve hours a day, six days a week on schoolwork, Charlie completed high school at the age of eleven. Specialist after specialist had given him IQ tests, each proclaiming him to be exceptionally gifted. Each wanted him to speak at their next lecture or be the focus of their next book. Charlie had an IQ that was matched by only three hundred other people in the country.

Charlie rarely participated in anything that didn’t involve the words “special” or “gifted.” Everything else, his parents thought, was just a waste of his time and talents. It was at one of the special summer camps for gifted children that Charlie met June. He was fourteen and had never before even had the desire to spend time around a girl.

June was an equal who shared his interests in Japanese history, Vladimir Nabokov, and even comic books. On the last night of camp, Charlie kissed June and took off her shirt, but he was done as soon as she started to unzip his jeans. He apologized and June kissed his eyelids and said it was okay.

He kept in touch with June after that. He sent her mix tapes and beaded bracelets that he’d made himself. She knit him a scarf and wrote a letter on pink stationary saying she loved him.

When Charlie got back home, he started piano lessons. He had always written and recorded his own songs, but his parents wanted him to have a more structured understanding of music. He didn’t take many lessons because he liked his own way better. He had no use for music notes or sheet music or music theory. He would rather write the songs in his head and keep them there.

In the fall, Charlie started taking a biology class at the community college. He planned to start premed when he was sixteen and eventually become a doctor. He liked the salary and the thought of helping sick people.

Two weeks before his fifteenth birthday, Charlie’s parents left to visit one of his aunts who was in the hospital after having a bad fall. Charlie made his bed, vacuumed the floor of his room, and got the black trunk out of his closet. In the trunk, beneath his camouflage jacket, was his hunting rifle. Charlie loaded the gun, steadied the barrel between his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

For a while afterwards, even after Charlie’s dad had stopped sleeping in his son’s room, his mom insisted that it had been an accident. He was cleaning the gun and it accidentally went off.

But his dad knew better. He knew Charlie could handle a gun. He’d been hunting plenty of times. There was just no way he could have made that mistake.

He was too damn smart.