Thirteen Reasons Why

by Jay Asher

“The wonderful thing about a yearbook photo is that everyone shares the moment with you . . . forever.”

Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken.

Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you—just a tad—off the road. The wheels kick up some dirt, but you’re able to pull it back. Yet no matter how tightly you grip the wheel, no matter how hard you try to drive straight, something keeps jerking you to the side. You have so little control over anything anymore. And at some point, the struggle becomes too much—too tiring—and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy . . . or whatever . . . to happen.

Maybe I’d shrug it off. Maybe I’d get pissed. Or maybe I would let go and give up. This time, for the first time, I saw the possibilities in giving up. I even found hope in it.

Let someone take away any sense of privacy or security you might still possess. Then have someone use that insecurity to satisfy their own twisted curiosity.

certain thoughts begin creeping around. Will I ever get control of my life? Will I always be shoved back and pushed around by those I trust?

The next day, Marcus, I decided something. I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back. As the song goes, “You are lost and gone forever, oh my darling, Valentine.”

I lean back against a poster locked behind a plastic frame and I close my eyes. I’m listening to someone give up. Someone I knew. Someone I liked. I’m listening. But still, I’m too late.

Eventually, she said the words that ran through my mind the rest of that night: “You don’t need to watch out for me, Clay.” But I did, Hannah. And I wanted to. I could have helped you. But when I tried, you pushed me away. I can almost hear Hannah’s voice speaking my next thought for me. “Then why didn’t you try harder?”

No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people.

I pretended not to notice him. Not because I had anything against him, but because my heart and my trust were in the process of collapsing. And that collapse created a vacuum in my chest. Like every nerve in my body was withering in, pulling away from my fingers and toes. Pulling back and disappearing.

I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events in my life, the more my heart collapsed.

He asked if I was all right, and I forced myself to nod. But my eyes kept staring at the glass—through the glass—at the spoon. And I kept thinking, over and over, Is this what it feels like to go insane?

My eyes began tearing up, but I could not break my stare from the small wet circle where the glass had been. If I even tried to utter a single word, I would have lost it. Or had I already lost it?

I can tell you this, at that table, the worst thoughts in the world first came into my head. It’s there that I first started to consider . . . to consider . . . a word that I still cannot say.

When you try rescuing someone and discover they can’t be reached, why would you ever throw that back in their face?

Come to think of it, I cut my hair the very day Marcus Cooley and I met at Rosie’s. Wow! That’s weird. All those warning signs they tell us to watch out for, they’re true. I went straight from Rosie’s to get my hair cut. I needed a change, just like they said, so I changed my appearance. The only thing I still had control over. Amazing.

Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal to you, Zach. But now, I hope you understand. My world was collapsing. I needed those notes. I needed any hope those notes might have offered. And you? You took that hope away. You decided I didn’t deserve to have it.

The last time I found myself this close to a person, a person slowly dying, was the night of the party. The night I watched two cars collide in a dark intersection. Then, like now, I didn’t know they were dying. Then, like now, there were a lot of people around. But what could they have done? Those people standing around the car, trying to calm the driver, waiting for an ambulance to arrive, could they have done anything at all? Or the people who passed Hannah in the halls, or sat beside her in class, what could they have done? Maybe then, like now, it was already too late.

This isn’t fair. If Zach had any idea what Hannah was going through, I’m sure he wouldn’t have stolen her notes.

And as I stood there in the hallway—alone—trying to understand what had just happened and why, I realized the truth: I wasn’t worth an explanation—not even a reaction. Not in your eyes,

I heard about that. Hannah flipping out for no apparent reason, embarrassing herself in front of so many people. But they were wrong. There was a reason.

In the back of our class, Mrs. Bradley also had a paper bag. It hung with the rest of ours on the spinning bookrack. We could use it—and she encouraged it—for notes about her teaching. Critical or otherwise. She also wanted us to recommend topics for future discussions. So I did just that. I wrote a note to Mrs. Bradley that read: “Suicide. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.” That’s the note. Word for word. And I know it’s word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I’d write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away. But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn’t been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I’d push it away. But I pushed it away a lot. And it was a subject we never discussed in class. But I was sure more people than just me had thought about it, right? So why not discuss it as a group? Or deep down, maybe there was more. Maybe I wanted someone to figure out who wrote the note and secretly come to my rescue. Maybe. I don’t know. But I was careful never to give myself away.

The haircut. Averting your eyes in the halls. You were careful, but still, there were signs. Little signs. But they were there. And then, just like that, you snapped back.

Except I did give myself away to you, Zach. You knew I wrote that note in Mrs. Bradley’s bag. You had to. She took it out of her bag and read it the day after I caught you....

A few days before she took the pills, Hannah was herself again. She said hello to everyone in the halls. She looked us in the eyes. It seemed so drastic because it had been months si...

But everything they said—everything!—came tinged with annoyance. Then one of the girls, her name doesn’t matter here, said what everyone else was thinking. “It’s like whoever wrote this note just wants attention. If they were serious, they would have told us who they were.”

Were they just being nosy, or did they really think that knowing specifics was the best way to help? I’m not sure. A little of both, maybe.

How would you want them to help?

And truthfully, I don’t know what they could have said to sway me either way. Because maybe I was being selfish. Maybe I was just looking for attention. Maybe I just wanted to hear people discuss me and my problems.

Based on what she told me at the party, she would have wanted me to see it. She would have looked directly at me, praying for me to see it.

Or maybe I wanted someone to point a finger at me and say, “Hannah. Are you thinking about killing yourself? Please don’t do that, Hannah. Please?” But deep down, the truth was that the only person saying that was me. Deep down, those were my words. At the end of class, Mrs. Bradley passed out a flyer called The Warning Signs of a Suicidal Individual. Guess what was right up there in the top five? “A sudde...

Would you want the ability to hear other people’s thoughts? Of course you would. Everyone answers yes to that question, until they think it all the way through. For example, what if other people could hear your thoughts? What if they could hear your thoughts . . . right now?

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.

If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?

That’s what I love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff where you’re not sure what the poet’s talking about. You may have an idea, but you can’t be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings. Is it a stand-in—a symbol—for another idea? Does it fit into a larger, more hidden, metaphor?

I hated poetry until someone showed me how to appreciate it. He told me to see poetry as a puzzle. It’s up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.

I bought a spiral notebook to keep all of my poems in one place. A couple days a week, after school, I’d go to Monet’s and write a poem or two. My first few attempts were a bit sad. Not much depth or subtlety. Pretty straightforward. But still, some came out fairly well. At least, I think they did. Then, without even trying, I memorized the very first poem in that notebook. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shake it from my head even today. So here it is, for your appreciation . . . or amusement.

I wrote poetry in middle school to help with my feelings.

To me, I suppose, these tapes are a form of poetic therapy.

the while point of the book

As I tell you these stories, I’m discovering certain things. Things about myself, yes, but also about you. All of you.

And the closer we get to the end, the more connections I’m discovering. Deep connections. Some that I’ve told you about, linking one story to the next. While others, I haven’t told you about at all.

Looking back, I stopped writing in my notebook when I stopped wanting to know myself anymore.

If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don’t want to cry anymore, you don’t listen to that song anymore. But you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see yourself anymore. You can’t decide to turn off the noise in your head.

But I wasn’t writing poetry anymore. I needed a break . . . from myself.

“Expose yourself,” they said. “Let us see your deepest and your darkest.” My deepest and my darkest? What are you, my gynecologist?

That’s when I said it. That’s when I whispered to her, “I’m so sorry.” Because inside, I felt so happy and sad at the same time. Sad that it took me so long to get there. But happy that we got there together.

We all could have stopped it. We all could have stopped something. The rumors. The rape. You.

Last night, on the bus, I left without talking to Skye. I wanted to talk with her, I tried to, but I let her slide out of the conversation. Over the years, she’s learned how to avoid people. Everyone. I step away from my locker and watch her continue down the hall. I want to say something, to call her name, but my throat tightens. Part of me wants to ignore it. To turn around and keep myself busy, doing anything, till second period. But Skye’s walking down the same stretch of hall where I watched Hannah slip away two weeks ago. On that day, Hannah disappeared into a crowd of students, allowing the tapes to say her good-bye. But I can still hear the footsteps of Skye Miller, sounding weaker and weaker the further she gets. And I start walking toward her. I pass the open door to Mr. Porter’s room and, in one hurried glance, pull in more than I expected. The empty desk near the center of the room. Empty for two weeks and for the rest of the year. Another desk, my desk, empty for one day. Dozens of faces turn toward me. They recognize me, but they don’t see everything. And there’s Mr. Porter, facing away, but starting to turn. A flood of emotion rushes into me. Pain and anger. Sadness and pity. But most surprising of all, hope. I keep walking. Skye’s footsteps are growing louder now. And the closer I get to her, the faster I walk, and the lighter I feel. My throat begins to relax. Two steps behind her, I say her name. “Skye.”

Yes, I wanted Hannah to live, and so did readers who got to know her. Even if she angered some of them with her words and decisions, they still wanted her to be alive. I’ve heard from so many people who said that by acknowledging they wanted Hannah to live, despite all the pain and hopelessness she expressed, they realized they are also worthy of the choice to live. And they’re absolutely right.

“They sent her to a hospital,” Courtney says. “A few hours away. It’s a psychiatric hospital.” “Why?” I ask. “She’s not crazy. You know that, right?” “I do,” she says. “I know that.”

“People need to know that there’s somewhere they can go. Someone they can turn to.”