Riley
—
J.D. Strunk
WE PARK ON THE STREET, beneath a line of budding sycamores. Our Midwestern town is full of boulevards so serene they could pass as movie sets; the American dream, block after block, complete with the white picket fences.
“You’ll find this interesting,” says my wife as we wait at the Woodridge’s front door, Riley’s graduation gift in my hands (dorm room bedsheet set). “They diagnosed Riley with obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
I guffaw. “Why would I find that interesting?”
“Because you have OCD, Matt.”
Kate is a therapist, so despite my reaction, I do understand why this might interest her, on a professional level. Still, the implication bothers me.
The door opens, revealing Jessica Woodridge, trim and smiling. My first instinct is to scan the house for Riley, but I don’t see him in the kitchen, and so I follow Kate into the house, feeling a tightness in my chest all the while.
Seeing Kate enjoying herself—and having been (mercifully) excluded from a gaggle of husbands talking sports—I meander into the living room. I have just taken a seat on one of the sofas when he appears. He is a lean kid, Riley, and has grown about a foot since he appeared on the local news. Today he wears a red and black gingham flannel over a plain white t-shirt. A silver chain hangs from his neck, culminating in a small silver cross. To my relief, he avoids eye contact, preferring instead to stare at his fingertips where they trace the wainscoting.
A sudden thought: My wife held this boy as a baby.
Just a little over two years before, on a beautiful day in late April, Riley—a high school sophomore at the time—donned a pair of black cargo pants, a black long-sleeve t-shirt, and a Kevlar vest. He then drove his father’s Lexus to his high school, where he removed an internet-procured semi-automatic rifle from the trunk, all with the intent to “lay waste to the liars and hypocries (sic)” at his school. This according to a two-page manifesto that would be seized from his bedroom later that day.
No one died. Within five minutes, Riley lay face down on the hallway floor, his nose broken and bleeding, a police officer’s knee pushing deep into his back. Riley had shot three bullets; two became imbedded in the steel of a locker, while the last passed through the leg of a classmate—a boy Riley had never even spoken to before that day. Following his three-round volley, Riley had collapsed to the ground in tears, at which point the school’s resource officer had intervened.
By sheer luck, the bullet that hit the kid’s thigh missed every major artery, and the child was out of the hospital within a week. Riley, however, spent the next four months in juvenile detention, before being released on home arrest by a judge who happened to have known him since he was a toddler. As part of his plea deal, he’d been homeschooled ever since.
A sudden thought: I could go punch Riley in the face right now.
A sudden thought: I could punch anyone in the face, at any time.
Within a minute, I am rescued by the appearance of the kitchen crowd; a dozen men and women holding wine glasses and beer bottles, all friends of Jessica. If Riley has friends, none have attended his graduation party.
“Riley, could you cut the cake?” Jessica Woodridge asks her son.
I wait for a pall to spread about the room at the question, but everyone keeps talking, as if a woman has not just requested her felon of a son to wield a deadly weapon inside a crowded house. Riley must feel my unease, as he looks me in the eye, then hesitates.
“Would you do it?” he asks me.
An image of me grabbing the kitchen knife and running it through Riley’s stomach. These things we think, but never speak of, because thoughts have no power.
Smiling awkwardly, I approach the huge rectangular cake, pick up the knife, then push it gently through the “C” of “Congratulations Riley!” Several more cuts, and the cake is a checkerboard of perfectly spaced pieces.
Following my culinary dissection, Riley takes a metal spatula and places a piece of cake on a paper plate. He hands the plate to me, and I thank him. Riley smiles, as if relieved—as if, in this very moment, he has become suddenly aware of our unspoken bond.
Leaving the house an hour later, the world seems lighter. Partly because I have realized that Riley is not a monster I imagined him to be—in the same way most people are not, and never will be. And partly because Kate and I decided long ago we would never have children. •
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J.D. Strunk's fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Vestal Review, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, Fictive Dream, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Bellingham Review's Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and his stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories and Best of the Net. He grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, and lives in Denver, Colorado.
Website | @jdstrunkwriter
“You’ll find this interesting,” says my wife as we wait at the Woodridge’s front door, Riley’s graduation gift in my hands (dorm room bedsheet set). “They diagnosed Riley with obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
I guffaw. “Why would I find that interesting?”
“Because you have OCD, Matt.”
Kate is a therapist, so despite my reaction, I do understand why this might interest her, on a professional level. Still, the implication bothers me.
The door opens, revealing Jessica Woodridge, trim and smiling. My first instinct is to scan the house for Riley, but I don’t see him in the kitchen, and so I follow Kate into the house, feeling a tightness in my chest all the while.
Seeing Kate enjoying herself—and having been (mercifully) excluded from a gaggle of husbands talking sports—I meander into the living room. I have just taken a seat on one of the sofas when he appears. He is a lean kid, Riley, and has grown about a foot since he appeared on the local news. Today he wears a red and black gingham flannel over a plain white t-shirt. A silver chain hangs from his neck, culminating in a small silver cross. To my relief, he avoids eye contact, preferring instead to stare at his fingertips where they trace the wainscoting.
A sudden thought: My wife held this boy as a baby.
Just a little over two years before, on a beautiful day in late April, Riley—a high school sophomore at the time—donned a pair of black cargo pants, a black long-sleeve t-shirt, and a Kevlar vest. He then drove his father’s Lexus to his high school, where he removed an internet-procured semi-automatic rifle from the trunk, all with the intent to “lay waste to the liars and hypocries (sic)” at his school. This according to a two-page manifesto that would be seized from his bedroom later that day.
No one died. Within five minutes, Riley lay face down on the hallway floor, his nose broken and bleeding, a police officer’s knee pushing deep into his back. Riley had shot three bullets; two became imbedded in the steel of a locker, while the last passed through the leg of a classmate—a boy Riley had never even spoken to before that day. Following his three-round volley, Riley had collapsed to the ground in tears, at which point the school’s resource officer had intervened.
By sheer luck, the bullet that hit the kid’s thigh missed every major artery, and the child was out of the hospital within a week. Riley, however, spent the next four months in juvenile detention, before being released on home arrest by a judge who happened to have known him since he was a toddler. As part of his plea deal, he’d been homeschooled ever since.
A sudden thought: I could go punch Riley in the face right now.
A sudden thought: I could punch anyone in the face, at any time.
Within a minute, I am rescued by the appearance of the kitchen crowd; a dozen men and women holding wine glasses and beer bottles, all friends of Jessica. If Riley has friends, none have attended his graduation party.
“Riley, could you cut the cake?” Jessica Woodridge asks her son.
I wait for a pall to spread about the room at the question, but everyone keeps talking, as if a woman has not just requested her felon of a son to wield a deadly weapon inside a crowded house. Riley must feel my unease, as he looks me in the eye, then hesitates.
“Would you do it?” he asks me.
An image of me grabbing the kitchen knife and running it through Riley’s stomach. These things we think, but never speak of, because thoughts have no power.
Smiling awkwardly, I approach the huge rectangular cake, pick up the knife, then push it gently through the “C” of “Congratulations Riley!” Several more cuts, and the cake is a checkerboard of perfectly spaced pieces.
Following my culinary dissection, Riley takes a metal spatula and places a piece of cake on a paper plate. He hands the plate to me, and I thank him. Riley smiles, as if relieved—as if, in this very moment, he has become suddenly aware of our unspoken bond.
Leaving the house an hour later, the world seems lighter. Partly because I have realized that Riley is not a monster I imagined him to be—in the same way most people are not, and never will be. And partly because Kate and I decided long ago we would never have children. •
J.D. Strunk's fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Vestal Review, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, Fictive Dream, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Bellingham Review's Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and his stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories and Best of the Net. He grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, and lives in Denver, Colorado.
Website | @jdstrunkwriter