7/23/2019 Audio Narrative 2nd Draft

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There are a lot of terrifying things on this earth. Shark attacks, volcanic eruptions, fires, floods,

freak accidents, spiders, stock market crashes, Kanye 2020- the list of human fears is infinite.

Topping the list for many, however, is something so incredibly frightening most dare not speak

of it. The greatest fear of all is… being a freshman in high school.

Shudder.

For those unaware, the term “freshman” is roughly translated as “first year student,” or, “object

of an entire school’s aggression for the whole year.” Upperclassmen shove you in lockers! They

steal your lunch money! You’ll drown in the secret swimming pool! You’ll definitely get lost,

and no one will help you find your way! Teachers eat failing students for lunch and the football

team uses freshmen for punting practice. Being a freshman is like being the protagonist of a

horror movie.

A long time ago, in the year 2011, I was a freshman in high school. Not immune to this fear,

arriving at campus early for cross country preseason required mustering quite a bit of courage.

The terror of being a freshman was compounded with my fear of cross country. Please take this

moment to add my coach assigning a hill workout to that list of terrifying things.

Despite my fears, I showed up at practice, pulling up to the cinderblock behemoth that is

Shawnee High School. I knew a couple other freshman, but mostly the team was a sea of

unfamiliar faces, high ponytails and muddy sneakers I didn’t recognize. One practice that week,

my coach gave us a particularly gruesome workout, thousand-meter repeats around the perimeter

of the campus. The sun beat down on the earth, baking the dirt until it cracked. Bone-dry pine

needles crunched under our sneakers, releasing that particular smell of heated pine that I’ll

forever associate with cross country. Sweat poured in rivers down my back, and my shirt was

quickly soaked through. It was, in a word, hellish.

It was cross country, though, and this didn’t matter- we still had to give the workout our all. Onerepeat, I was approaching the finish line, and felt alright. I was in the zone. Accelerating, I

quickly approached one of the upperclassmen. Aurora, a junior, wore scrunchies shaped like

giraffes and brightly colored shorts, and she always had a smile on her face. You know, one of

those absolutely terrifying upperclassmen. But I gained some ground and thought  I’m going to

 sprint this out. I can do this!  My pace moved into a sprint as I approached the finish line, taking

long stride after stride, stride, stride, stride. She tried to stick with me but I got ahead in the last

few paces, and my foot cross the line first.

Oh shit, I thought, I’ve done it now. I’m going to get murdered in the locker room. They’ll hang

my sneakers from the ceiling as a warning so other freshmen know their place . I had neveractually heard of this happening, but figured there was a first time for everything. My life passed

 before my eyes as I said my final prayers.

Panting, I slowly drifted away from the line when Aurora jogged after me. “Maybeth, hold on!”

she shouted.

Yep. This is the part where she kills me. Really, it’s my fault. How stupid can you be to pass an

upperclassman? On a workout, too? Come on, Marybeth!

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She stopped in front of me. “I just wanted to thank you.”

WHAT?

I shook my head to clear my ears. This was not the time for wishful thinking! I needed to focus,

calm her down, convince her I wasn’t worth the murder charge.

“Um, what?”

“Thanks. You really pushed me at the end there.”

My eyes were the size of Montana. “I thought you were going to kill me!”

Aurora laughed. “What? No! You definitely made me finish faster. That’s why we run as a team-

to push each other.”

I smiled as she jogged off, mentally turning to my list of terrifying things, and crossed being a

freshman off.