I Kept The Promise

• Cassandra Keeley, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2010

Author Cassandra Keeley,
Goulburn High School
15 years old.


For Chad.


I clasped my palm around the base of a glass bottle, as the enthralling blue liquid splashed inside, enchanting me to follow the rules of peer pressure and social belittlement. Thoughts ran sluggishly through my head, as I began silently weighing up the consequences of the actions I was to take part of. I looked up at my best friend, Abby Winchester, swinging from a boy with a cigarette in her mouth and the blue tinge of blueberry flavored alcohol circled around her lips.
My drink sat in my lap, opened, but not yet touched my mouth. I was driving tonight, and I knew that my mother’s words were clear before I left: I was not to drink and drive. On my way out the door, as I scurried my way to meet Abby, I had made the brief and effortless promise not to.
I sat my bottle on the table and made my way across the room,
‘It’s 11:00,’ I shouted in Abby’s ear.
She swung around and stumbled toward me. I held her up and lead her out the door. Sitting her in the passenger seat, I ordered her to fasten her seatbelt and made my way to my side of the car.
I reversed gradually and commenced driving down the street filled with cars and intoxicated teenagers. Abby shut her eyes and jumbled herself across the passenger seat.
“Abby,” I asked, holding the wheel and looking directly at her. “Plea-”
I felt the right side of my body shatter and my arms swing uncontrollably outward. My head fell to the wheel and a strong shudder of agony run down my body. I could feel a million jolts of pain stab my body, haphazardly. I could see faint smudges of red and black, splashed randomly against my eyelids.

I woke up to the strong smell of antibacterial soap and cleansing to the realisation I was in a hospital. I could not move; I attempted mindlessly to merely open my eyes with no success. I could hear my mother’s gentle sobs rest upon me and her touch so yielding and zealous. All she wanted was for me to open my eyes.
I wanted to scream, shout that I was still here, that I am still alive, just simply a convict within my torturous body. I fell adrift to what was day and what was night, my mother remained alongside me until the fatal day her tearful weeping sheltered the sounds of scribbles that would sign my life away.
The driver in the other car that T-boned my own, was inebriated at the wheel – and as I rested there, taking my last machine-generated breath, I dazed into the vague distance of solitude. I felt my mother’s hand on my cheek and thought to myself; If only the other driver had been gifted with such advice as I was.