The Thing About Jellyfish

“But the truth is, it barely even gets you twelve years.” 

Suzy discusses how 412 million heartbeats sounds like a considerable number, but in relation to the number of heartbeats an eighty-year-old has logged, it is not very many. Suzy thinks of two topics when she has this thought in the opening narrative: how jellyfish look like hearts beating, and the sensory details that might have painted the scene moments before Franny drowned at the ocean.

“Not everything makes sense, Zu. Sometimes things just happen.” 

Suzy’s mother tells her the sad news about Franny’s death in a flashback scene, and Suzy reacts with repeated claims that the news makes no sense. Her mother cannot provide what Suzy would consider to be a rational or valid reason that explains Franny’s drowning, and her mother admits in this passage that reasons cannot explain everything that happens.

“Maybe she is dead because of that jellyfish sting.”

Suzy bullets a list of ideas, facts, and statistics about the frequency of jellyfish stings and the number of people she knows in her life, proving on paper that it is statistically possible that Franny might have suffered a jellyfish sting, leading to her drowning. This idea forms the basis for her hypothesis about Franny’s death and sends Suzy on a mission to learn more about jellyfish.