LITERARY: "A Reason To Save"

By: Immanuel Floyd Lim

Riley is a studious teenager. He is one of the top students, and he is selfless because he is concerned more with the important needs and vague wishes of others. A day before the classes start, he joins the school’s drama club for early admission. Luckily, he gets the best part! Being the main character in the school play gives him so much confidence. So he really practices until he sees himself improve. It has nearly two weeks until the play starts, so his co-actors and actresses tell him to meet up in an unknown place. Riley is very skeptical about this, so he asks permission from his mom if he could join them outside the school grounds. Before he spits out what he’s going to say, he utterly predicts what his mother will respond. A second later, he changes the true details of his unsure response. His mother allows him to join the fake place knowing that it is just near them and because she is very familiar with the place. Riley is not happy about this, he knows that he has just recently lied, but he continued to accept it. He has a bad feeling about the place but his passion prevails him to trust his instincts.

He parks his car on the side of the road. It is 6:00pm when he arrives. At first, he does not seem to see the cast, but when he walks further, he sees an enormous amount of people enjoying themselves at a noisy party, lively gathering, doing lots of drinking and shouting too loud music. When he come to the place, he is shocked. He thinks that they are preparing something for the play, but instead, he sees his theater-mates having a rave, and it is continued to be attended by large numbers of young people, using drugs and dancing and singing loudly. So he decides to go back to his house regretting his decision to come. Suddenly, he hears a vibrant scream. He knew it was one of his friends, Stacy. He quickly runs towards the unfortunate incident. When he sees Stacy from the edge of the cliff, he did not think twice to quickly rescue her.

“Riley, help please!” she shouts.

Riley quickly grabs her hand and carries her up to his waist. She thanks Riley. But Riley does not know that the edge of the cliff is delicate. A ton of rocks that supported the edge falls, and Riley takes his last sight of life.