Thirteen Reasons Why (28 page)

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Authors: Jay Asher

BOOK: Thirteen Reasons Why
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No one knew who caused it. Not us. Not the police.
But Jenny knew. And Hannah. And maybe Jenny's parents, because someone fixed her bumper real fast.
I never knew the guy in that car. He was a senior. And when I saw his picture in the newspaper, I didn't recognize him. Just one of the many faces at school I never got to know . . . and never would.
I didn't go to his funeral, either. Yes, maybe I should have, but I didn't. I couldn't. And now I'm sure it's obvious why.
She didn't know. Not about the man in the other car. She didn't know it was the man from her house. Her old house. And I'm glad. Earlier, she watched him pull out of his garage. She watched him drive away without noticing her.
But some of you were there, at his funeral.
Driving to return a toothbrush. That's what his wife told me as we waited on her couch for the police to bring him home. He was driving to the other end of town to return their granddaughter's toothbrush. They'd been keeping an eye on her while her parents were on vacation, and she'd left it behind by accident. The girl's parents said there was no need to drive across town just for that. They had plenty of extras. “But that's what he does,” his wife told me. “That's the kind of person he is.”
And then the police came.
For those of you who did go, let me describe what school was like on the day of his funeral. In a word . . . it was quiet. About a quarter of the school took the morning off. Mostly seniors, of course. But for those of us who did go to school, the teachers let us know that if we simply forgot to bring a note from home, they wouldn't mark us absent if we wanted to attend the funeral.
Mr. Porter said funerals can be a part of the healing process. But I doubted that very much. Not for me. Because on that corner, there wasn't a Stop sign that night. Someone had knocked it over. And someone else . . . yours truly . . . could've stopped it.
Two officers helped her husband inside, his body trembling. His wife got up and walked over to him. She wrapped him in her arms and they cried.
When I left, closing the door behind me, the last thing I saw was the two of them standing in the middle of the living room. Holding each other.
On the day of the funeral, so those of you who attended wouldn't miss any work, the rest of us did nothing. In every class, the teachers gave us free time. Free to write. Free to read.
Free to think.
And what did I do? For the first time, I thought about my own funeral.
More and more, in very general terms, I'd been thinking about my own death. Just the fact of dying. But on that day, with all of you at a funeral, I began thinking of my own.
I reach the Stop sign. With the tips of my fingers, I reach forward and touch the cold metal pole.
I could picture life—school and everything else—continuing on without me. But I could not picture my funeral. Not at all. Mostly because I couldn't imagine who would attend or what they would say.
I had . . . I have . . . no idea what you think of me.
I don't know what people think of you either, Hannah. When we found out, and since your parents didn't have a funeral in this town, no one said much about it at all.
I mean, it was there. We felt it. Your empty desk. The fact that you would not be coming back. But no one knew where to begin. No one knew how to start that conversation.
It's now been a couple of weeks since the party. So far, Jenny, you've done a great job of hiding from me. I suppose that's understandable. You'd like to forget what we did—what happened with your car and the Stop sign. The repercussions.
But you never will.
Maybe you didn't know what people thought of you because they themselves didn't know what they thought of you. Maybe you didn't give us enough to go on, Hannah.
If not for that party, I never would have met the real you. But for some reason, and I am extremely grateful, you gave me that chance. However brief it was, you gave me a chance. And I liked the Hannah I met that night. Maybe I could've even loved her.
But you decided not to let that happen, Hannah. It was you who decided.
I, on the other hand, only have to think about it for one more day.
I turn away from the Stop sign and walk away.
If I had known two cars were going to crash on that corner, I would've run back to the party and called the cops immediately. But I never imagined that would happen. Never.
So instead, I walked. But not back to the party. My mind was racing all over the place. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't walk straight.
I want to look back. To look over my shoulder and see the Stop sign with huge reflective letters, pleading with Hannah. Stop!
But I keep facing forward, refusing to see it as more than it is. It's a sign. A stop sign on a street corner. Nothing more.
I turned corner after corner with no idea where I was going.
We walked those streets together, Hannah. Different routes, but at the same time. On the same night. We walked the streets to get away. Me, from you. And you, from the party. But not just from the party. From yourself.
And then I heard tires squeal, and I turned, and I watched two cars collide.
Eventually, I made it to a gas station. C-7 on your map. And I used a payphone to call the police. As it rang, I found myself hugging the receiver, part of me hoping that no one would answer.
I wanted to wait. I wanted the phone to just keep ringing. I wanted life to stay right there . . . on pause.
I can't follow her map anymore. I am not going to the gas station.
When someone finally did answer, I sucked in the tears that wet my lips and told them that on the corner of Tanglewood and South . . .
But she cut me off. She told me to calm down. And that's when I realized how hard I had been crying. How much I was struggling to catch one good breath.
I cross the street and move further away from the party house.
Over the past few weeks, I've walked out of my way so many times to avoid that house. To avoid the reminder, the pain, of my one night with Hannah Baker. I have no desire to see it twice in one night.
She told me the cops had already been called and were on their way.
I swing my backpack in front of me and pull out the map.
I was shocked. I couldn't believe you actually called the police, Jenny.
I unfold the map to give it one last look.
But I shouldn't have been shocked. Because as it turns out, you didn't call them.
Then I crumple it up, crushing the map into a ball the size of my fist.
At school the next day, when everyone replayed the events of what happened the previous night, that's when I found out who had called. And it wasn't to report a fallen sign.
I stuff the map deep into a bush and walk away.
It was to report an accident. An accident caused by a fallen sign. An accident I was never aware of . . . until then.
But that night, after hanging up the phone, I wandered the streets some more. Because I had to stop crying. Before I went home, I needed to calm down. If my parents caught me sneaking back in with tears in my eyes, they'd ask way too many questions. Unanswerable questions.
That's what I'm doing now. Staying away. I wasn't crying the night of the party, but I can barely hold it back now.
And I can't go home.
So I walked without thinking about which roads to take. And it felt good. The cold. The mist. That's what the rain had turned into by then. A light mist.
And I walked for hours, imagining the mist growing thick and swallowing me whole. The thought of disappearing like that—so simply—made me so happy.
But that, as you know, never happened.
I pop open the Walkman to flip the tape. I'm almost at the end.
God. I let out a quivering breath and close my eyes. The end.
CASSETTE 6 : SIDE B
Just two more to go. Don't give up on me now.
I'm sorry. I guess that's an odd thing to say. Because isn't that what I'm doing? Giving up?
Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. And that, more than anything else, is what this all comes down to. Me . . . giving up . . . on me.
No matter what I've said so far, no matter who I've spoken of, it all comes back to—it all ends with—me.
Her voice sounds calm. Content with what she's saying.
Before that party, I'd thought about giving up so many times. I don't know, maybe some people are just preconditioned to think about it more than others. Because every time something bad happened, I thought about it.
It? Okay, I'll say it. I thought about suicide.
The anger, the blame, it's all gone. Her mind is made up. The word is not a struggle for her anymore.
After everything I've talked about on these tapes, everything that occurred, I thought about suicide. Usually, it was just a passing thought.
I wish I would die.
I've thought those words many times. But it's a hard thing to say out loud. It's even scarier to feel you might mean it.
But sometimes I took things further and wondered how I would do it. I would tuck myself into bed and wonder if there was anything in the house I could use.
A gun? No. We never owned one. And I wouldn't know where to get one.
What about hanging? Well, what would I use? Where would I do it? And even if I knew what and where, I could never get beyond the visual of someone finding me—swinging—inches from the floor.
I couldn't do that to Mom and Dad.
So how did they find you? I've heard so many rumors.
It became a sick sort of game, imagining ways to kill myself. And there are some pretty weird and creative ways.
You took pills. That, we all know. Some say you passed out and drowned in a bathtub full of water.
It came down to two lines of thinking. If I wanted people to think it was an accident, I'd drive my car off the road. Someplace where there's no chance of survival. And there are so many places to do that on the outskirts of town. I've probably driven by each of them a dozen times in the past couple weeks.
Others say you drew the bathwater, but fell asleep on your bed while it was filling. Your mom and dad came home, found the bathroom flooded, and called your name. But there was no answer.
Then there are these tapes.
Can I trust the twelve of you to keep a secret? To not let my parents find out what really happened? Will you let them believe it was an accident if that's the story going around?
She pauses.
I don't know. I'm not sure.
She thinks we might tell. She thinks we'll walk up to our friends and say, “Do you want to know a horrible secret?”
So I've decided on the least painful way possible.
Pills.
My stomach pulls in, wanting to rid my body of everything. Food. Thoughts. Emotions.
But what kind of pills? And how many? I'm not sure. And I don't have much time to figure it out because tomorrow . . . I'm going to do it.
Wow.
I sit down on the curb of a dark, quiet intersection.
I won't be around anymore . . . tomorrow.
Most houses on the connecting four blocks give little indication that anyone is awake inside. A few windows flicker with the faint blue light of late-night TV. About a third of them have porch lights on. But for the rest, other than a cut lawn or a car out front, it's hard to tell anyone lives there at all.

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