History

Gifted

Riley was born on March 15, 1999, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Byron, was an electrical engineer and her mother, Lourdes, a computer programmer. These were lucrative careers at the turn of the millennium, and the Marras did well for themselves, with Riley attending a top elementary school, where she was promptly sorted into the Gifted program.

Though she distinguished herself academically, Riley had a hard time making friends. Her school was exclusive, and most of her peers were the children of high-level government and military types from affluent, white backgrounds. Even when she wasn’t being teased, Riley never felt included and tended to stick to the background, cultivating a reputation as a wallflower.

The summer before Riley was to start high school, the Marras left Virginia behind. Byron had been offered a position at a tech firm in New Orleans, and leaped at the opportunity. Wary of the big city, however, the family opted for the nearby, upwardly mobile suburb of Lakewood to put down their roots. They settled down in a pleasant neighborhood, just down the block from Sam Henderson, an executive at Byron’s new firm, who’d recommended Lakewood to him after a site visit. Sam had a son, Zach, who was Riley’s age and would be starting at George Washington High School at the same time as her. Zach was naturally friendly and outgoing and made overtures to Riley the summer she arrived, but the naturally shy Riley didn’t return his attentions at first, much as she wanted to.

Making Friends and Influencing People

Meeting new people at school wasn’t as challenging as Riley had anticipated, though not because she was looking for new friends. On her very first day at GW High, Riley caught the attention of Brooke Maddox, the vivacious, outgoing daughter of Lakewood’s mayor. Brooke was determined to carve out a new identity for herself in high school, and part of that meant attracting a clique of friends who complemented her…and, presumably, complimented her as well.

Brooke got chummy with Riley at once, seizing on her newness as an excuse to show her the ins and outs of the local teen scene. Once she got over Brooke’s more excessive qualities, Riley found herself quite liking her company. Their friend group expanded, with Riley’s neighbor Zach (by now an up-and-comer on the school’s football team) and Brooke’s childhood best friends Jake Fitzgerald and Will Belmont, and Will’s new girlfriend Emma Duval.

Brooke had set her sights higher, though: as far as she was concerned, she hadn’t ‘made it’ until she’d snagged the favor of GW High’s Queen Bee: Nina Patterson. Riley didn’t much care for Nina’s personality, which was aloof and cold-blooded, but Brooke had made up her mind. Over the course of the year, the friend groups merged, with Brooke, Riley, and Emma becoming part of Nina’s clique in the school’s in-crowd. It wasn’t a role Riley asked for but, with Brooke’s help, she’d adapted to the position, upgrading her style, if not her personality.

So she hoped.

Girl Meets Boy

On the afternoon of October 17, 2015, Riley was hanging out with the rest of the in-crowd on the Wren Lake Overlook. Riley was helping Tyler troubleshoot some code he was writing¹ when Emma recognized a car pulling up at the other side of the summit. The others watched as Audrey Jensen, Emma’s childhood best friend, made out with another girl.

Nina took special pleasure in this bit of gossip, whipping out her phone to record the girls’ intimate moment. Emma, offended on her old friend’s behalf, told Nina to delete the video. Nina promised to “take it off her phone”, and honored this exact words defense by deleting it from her phone, after uploading it to YouTube the next day, where it rapidly went locally viral.²

Riley and Emma were together when they learned about the video, attending Brooke’s Big Beautiful Bash, a house party Brooke was throwing, ostensibly to celebrate the Harvest Moon but really because she couldn’t compete with Nina’s traditional end of summer party.³ Emma was promptly confronted by Audrey herself, who crashed the party, having already put two and two together that Emma’s new friends had a hand in her and her girlfriend’s humiliation.⁴

The confrontation was broken up by Brooke, with some surprising help from Audrey’s friends Amanda Steele and Noah Foster, who’d also seen the video and anticipated Audrey’s next moves. By the time Riley came on the scene, Audrey and Amanda had taken off, Amanda using a salacious rumor about Nina’s fidelity to incite a fight between Tyler and Jake that had the guys grappling in Brooke’s swimming pool.⁵

The furious Brooke ordered Jake and Tyler out of her party and abruptly called off the festivities, telling her guests to book it. Noah, alone of his friends, had stuck around, distracted by the drama. Guilty over her own part as a bystander to the video being recorded, Riley intervened to spare him Brooke’s wrath, offering to show him out. As they walked around to the front of the house, they chatted, realizing that, despite both being in Honors classes their whole time in high school, they’d never had a real conversation, and found they enjoyed each others’ company, bantering over Noah’s Skeletor shirt, which led to a discussion of the Fabulous Secret Powers meme. After an errant comment on Riley being better specimen of popular kid than Tyler, Riley felt compelled to defend her friend, noting Tyler wasn’t as bad as he seemed, despite everything, admitting it may not be so bad if Nina was cheating on him.⁶

After seeing Noah off, Riley stuck around to help Brooke clear up, along with Emma and Zach. Before she and Zach could head back together, Zach got word from his mother that something terrible had happened: Stacy Winters, who lived across the street from Zach and Riley, had been murdered, along with her boyfriend, Brock Carmichael. Zach’s Mom had found the bodies.⁷

Appearance

Riley was a petite young woman, the shortest of her friends at just over five feet tall. She had a tawny complexion, brown eyes, and long straight black hair.

Personality

Riley was an upright, decent girl with a soft-spoken and naturally introverted personality. Her shyness led to her being mistaken as demure, but she was intelligent and opinionated, and more willing to go against the grain than her friends.

Riley was an empath and possessed a great faith in the goodness of people, remaining convinced in the decency of her friend Tyler even when the rest of the in-crowd was ready to write him off as a murderer.

Skills

Riley was proficient in computer science and had aspirations of attending MIT. Among other things, she was adept enough at coding for Tyler, no slouch himself, to consult her for help.⁸

Development

Riley was part of the 2015 Season 1 AU, where she was portrayed by Fate. She was by far the least utilized of Fate’s characters (Fate also portrayed canon protagonist Emma, and two OCs: Deanna Wilcox and Gemma O’Neil), and appeared sporadically over the forum’s two completed “episodes”, barely even interacting with her love interest Noah, much less anyone else in the ensemble.

Riley’s canon counterpart was killed in the third episode of Scream the TV Series, but the forum’s AU nature meant she could well have outlived her TV equivalent. Of course, the forum went defunct shortly after the start of its third “episode”, and all later forums took Riley’s canonical murder for granted, with Noah directly alluding to her death on the roof of the sheriff’s station in the May 2016 Season 2 AU.

A version of Riley’s death was adapted to the The Story so Far in 2019, with Riley outliving her canon counterpart by two episodes/chapters. Riley remains an active character in the SRU as part of the Lakewood: Year One ensemble, where she is portrayed by AbedFan.

When the original Story so Far Appendix was compiled in 2020/21, Riley’s birthday was placed on March 31, 1999. When AbedFan created Riley’s yearbook page ahead of the launch of Lakewood: Year One in 2023, her birthday was shown as March 15th, which it has remained.

Trivia

Riley wanted to attend MIT. She shared this ambition with Noah and Tyler.⁹

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 2 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 1 ↩︎
5. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 4 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
7. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 7 ↩︎
8. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
9. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎