The Thing About Jellyfish

In this brief Prologue, Suzy, the protagonist, makes a comparison of the appearance of jellyfish to a beating heart thanks to the way jellyfish move through water. Suzy credits her seventh grade science teacher with a statistic: “Mrs. Turton says that if you lived to be eighty years old, your heart would beat three billion times” (2). Suzy describes death by drowning, attempting to picture the details like the coldness of the water. She points out that the heart of her friend Franny, who drowned, “beat only about 412 million times” (3).

On a seventh grade field trip to the aquarium, 12-year-old Suzy Swanson sees others in her class listening to the guide and placing hands on the water’s surface to touch the rays. Suzy reveals that it is now “exactly one month since the Worst Thing had happened, and almost as long since I’d started not-talking” (8). The “Worst Thing” is the death of her former friend, Franny Jackson. Suzy used to be a consistent chatter box, but since Franny died, she has decided to keep her own pointless talk from cluttering up the world; she speaks only when necessary. Her parents have arranged for her to see a counselor, and her first appointment will take place that afternoon.