A Submission to the April 16 Archives (A Short Story)

This story was originally published in Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.

They met amid unimaginable devastation. On the morning of April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho opened fire on his fellow students at Virginia Tech, killing thirty-two people and inflicting immeasurable pain on countless others.

In those terrible moments, a college junior cowers in the school’s hallways, where she meets the confident and egotistical Harley Grover. The two become romantically involved, drawn together by the shared trauma and its aftermath. In an attempt to leave the horror behind, the couple escapes to Paris for a summer sojourn, where the young woman discovers her new boyfriend’s tendency to distort the truth—not only in his claims of fidelity but also in his recounting of the tragic day’s events and the part he played. As her grief grows, she struggles to understand life’s fragility—finding hope in unlikely circumstances.