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McCoy 1

Ashley McCoy
Jamee Larson
ENGL 229
25 March 2019
Fiction Draft

I once heard about a tribe in a remote part of Africa whose people believe that each of us is born
with a finite number of heartbeats. A predetermined destiny in which the heart beats till it
reaches an enigmatic number, then stops by itself. As a result of this conviction, the people of
this fabled community often rate the importance of an action based on how many heartbeats it
will use. This might explain why the good and the honest and the righteous always seem to leave
this earth a little too early. For we let them take on too much of the burden of loving and feeling
and they use up their heartbeats for people who don’t understand the significance of such a deed.
This might also explain why the dishonest and the ingenuous and the unreformed seem to stick
around for longer than they are welcome. They keep their heartbeats for themselves.

Scientists have worked to disprove this theory, as scientists do. Researchers reason that this
belief in the fate of the heart developed from an unconscious understanding of the human body.
An individual will experience a high resting pulse when the body is fighting off infection or
fever. Left untreated or undiagnosed, a heart being overworked and underappreciated will release
a hormone similar to adrenaline that continues to push the pulse rate and stresses the body. The
heart, left to its own devices and lacking for energy, eventually secedes from the race and stops
beating. This might explain why Galapagos tortoises, whose heart sluggishly beat at a rate of six
beats per minute, live a long and steady life. This might also explain why hamsters, whose hearts
excitedly race at 450 beats per minute, live only long enough for children to get attached and
parents to be relieved. Of course, though, there is an exception to every rule.

I first learned of my impending doom from Stephanie DeCraz in my eighth-grade gym class. We
had just walked out of an overcrowded locker room where we dressed in matching grey
polyester-cotton blend outfits that had the mystifying ability to be too tight and too big all at the
same time. Dressed in the uniform of the unwillingly exercised, we were making our way to the
gymnasium at a pace that did not reflect the fact that we were five minutes late. The girls, of the
all-girl gym class, had figured out early on that by dressing at a leisurely rate we could delay the
pain of jogging at nine o’clock in the morning. Mr. Hanson, who use to be a history teacher but
now spends his day with a clipboard and stop watch, is uncomfortable in a room filled with
unpredictable teenage hormones. Therefore, every other day when he teaches the eighth-grade
girls gym class, he simply grumbles of our tardiness but never works to correct our behavior.

It was somewhere between lap four and five when Stephanie turned to me, somewhat out of
breath and completely unmotivated, and shared with me her knowledge of African tribes and
their hearts.
“I’m telling you right now if I only have a certain amount of heartbeats to use, then I don’t
wanna be using ‘em running around this smelly gym,” she bellyached. “Waste of my time
runnin’ in circles.”
I barely heard her as she continued on about the cruelty of requiring students to workout in the
early hours of the morning for nothing more than “unproven” health benefits. I barely heard her
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when she complained of my not listening to her complain. I couldn’t hear her over my heavy
breathing, stomping feet, and thoughts of heartbeats. Lap after lap, as my feet hit the warped
wooden floorboards covered in wax that reflected the yellow glow of florescent lighting, I
thought about heart rates and death and love and fate. My thoughts raced by at the pace of 200
beats per minute, interrupted only by the shrill scream of Mr. Hanson’s whistle that indicated it
was time to stop running.

Stephanie and I had become unlikely friends due the unforgiving process of elimination that
occurs in Junior High and carries on into High School. Neither one of us passionate about any
one thing to claim to be a member of a group. My aversion to organized music making kept me
out of band, I never did respond quick enough to the shouting of my last name for a coach, and I
couldn’t quite grasp the concept of letters in math. I missed the summer scramble where pimpled
ex-middle schoolers decided on their claim to fame before moving into the seventh grade. When
the basketball rosters were set and the band learned its sheet music and the sleepover schedule
was filled, I was left Stephanie. Or she was left me.

Steph, as she requested everyone call her to save .5 seconds of time, had a boisterous personality
that filled up the cramped desks of our classrooms. She laughed by throwing her head all the way
back, sometimes clapping her hands along with the movement, as if she was the first and only
person to discover humor in certain moments. Her long brown hair, never stray or messy, was
constantly getting slung around her shoulder when she sat in a desk and if you sat too close you
were sure it get slapped by the ends. She was the type of friend that always had your back, as
long as you were of the same opinion of her. She was unapologetic, in a way that I envied. I was
the opposite of her in almost every way. Of a shy and quiet composition, I existed at Brownston
Junior High mostly as Steph’s accessory.

Our friendship ended the same way it started, fading in and out of existence like a flickering
lighthouse light. Existing in a moment for necessity but without purpose elsewhere. Having
survived Mr. Hanson’s P.E. class, we existed in mutual obligation until the end of our eighth-
grade year. Steph went onto Davidson High School while I attended Central. As was the natural
progression of things.

It's funny how someone can have such a big impact on a certain moment in your life, but then be
completely forgotten for the rest. I gave Steph up until my first day of High School before letting
the memory of her fade into the background. Steph likely gave me a couple weeks. The friendly
stranger at the grocery store is given no more than a few seconds. The inconsiderate stranger at
the grocery store is given a whole day. Time is a fickle thing, we are each given an unannounced
allotment. Sometimes when we least expect it, after we believe that time has ran out, we are
given a little more.

At Central High School, after discovering the gift of realized mediocracy along with many other
newly received freshmen, I found a friend group who made Steph become a distant nonthought. I
was no longer the introverted blonde with glasses that seemed to constantly sit on the edge of my
nose. I shed the oversized hoodies and became the introverted blonde with friends perpetually
pushing me beyond my comfort zone. Known for my calm disposition, chocolate chip cookie
recipe, and orange backpack, I found my place. And without my knowledge Steph found hers.
McCoy 3

I made it all the way to my junior year before Steph came crashing back into my life, doing a hit
and run that left permanent scars in places that no one could see.

Four Area Teenagers Dead from Apparent Overdose the headline read, seven words strung
together in a way that would change countless lives forever. Social media erupted with frantic
messages trying to convey the unconveyable sadness of the tragedy, as social media does.
Sympathy, accusations, outrage, disbelieve mixed in an overwhelming storm, doing nothing but
leaving more confusion in its path. News stations reported, as news stations due. The hard-
cutting facts: cocaine overdose, Davidson High School teenagers, Stephanie DeCraz, Chloe
Martinson, Khalid Fall, and Trevor Johnson. Four souls who could no longer tell their story, four
souls who couldn’t explain this to their friends and family, four souls who couldn’t climb out of
the dark hole. Everyone else took on the burden of talking for them.

Articles were published, telling the somewhat true story of the life of Steph. She was born on
September 12th and died on January 2nd. Her parents, Jerry and Denise, along with her younger
brother Jackson were left in the wake of such a shocking event. She was part of the Davidson
High School basketball team and was popular among her peers. She volunteered at church events
and had hopes to become more than she was. Yet, the channel 4 news and Daily Forum couldn’t
possibly tell all of Steph’s story. Like how we became improbable friends in middle school or
how she had a dimple on her left cheek that appeared when she was trying to fight off a smirk.
Or how she loved ketchup but hated tomatoes. Or how her parents fought, often, leaving her to
find people to give her the attention she desired. Or how she never felt like she could live up to
expectation. Or how once she discovered the thrill of a high she wanted more. Or how she fell so
hard and fast that the wind was knocked out of her and she couldn’t find her voice to scream. No,
those last facts, they died with Stephanie DeCraz.

Central High School responded, how any good high school would respond, with a mandatory
seminar on the dangers of drug use. In the itchy chairs of a dark auditorium, I learned of the
importance of reporting suspicious behavior and the number to call when illegal drug use is
suspected. I learned how to speak to my parents or another adult about feelings of depression. I
learned to recognize the signs and symptoms of an overdose.

The presenter spoke in a frantic way that made it hard to understand every word he was saying,
he wore a D.A.R.E. t-shirt and attempted to rally the troops with his personal overdose story. He
told of feeling as though he could explode. He described a panic induced state where his muscles
twitched with a burning heat and his head spun with the pressure of choices that are hard to take
back. He said that his heart beat so rapidly that it felt as though it might jump out of his chest and
run away.

I wonder if Steph felt the same, if she remembered her theory about African hearts and the
limited number of beats that we are given in a lifetime. Panicked and anxious, perhaps she
thought about how this one decision, after multiple other decisions, had led her to a path where
she was using up her heart beats in a wasteful way. Maybe she thought about how she would
have used these heart beats as they raced away. She could have gone to college, fought for a
cause, made someone smile, have a family, and grow old in an unruly way. She could have told
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her story and shared her infectious laugh. Or perhaps she forgot about the African tribes, maybe
they didn’t have any more time with her. Maybe she was just tired of runnin’ in circles.

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