Thirteen Reasons Why: Cassette 1: Side A Summary & Analysis

The first tape begins to play. On the tape, Hannah Baker introduces herself. Clay is shocked: Hannah Baker killed herself. Hannah’s voice continues, explaining that whoever is listening to the tapes is one of the reasons why her life ended. She states the rules for her listeners: first, they must listen to the tapes; then, they need to pass them on to the next person. She hopes neither of these things will be easy for them. Clay’s mom comes in and asks what he’s listening to. He scrambles to pause the tape and tells her it’s a school project.

Clay’s mom asks if she can listen to the tapes, but Clay says it’s not his project—he’s helping a friend. His mom leaves and he struggles to press the play button again. He turns the volume down as Hannah says that the 13th listener “can take the tapes straight to hell.” She explains that she copied a second set of the tapes, so if anyone fails to send them on, they’ll be released publicly. She warns the listeners that they’re being watched and shouldn’t take her for granted again.

Clay feels sick. He thinks he received the tapes wrongly: he only knew Hannah from working with her at the movie theater last summer, and there’s no way he took her for granted. He checks the packaging for a return address, suspecting that someone sent him the tapes as a joke, but he hears Hannah saying that the people on her list should’ve received a map. He remembers that a few weeks ago, just before Hannah died, he found a map in his locker with locations marked by red stars. He’d meant to find out if anyone else around school had received one, but he’d forgotten about it in his backpack.

Hannah’s taped voice explains that she’ll mention places during the tapes that she’s labelled on the maps. Though she can’t force her listeners to go there, if they do, they’ll understand her story better. Then, she begins to address Justin Foley, a senior. Clay knows Justin was Hannah’s first kiss, but he begins to wonder how he knows that. Hannah says Justin was someone she felt drawn to since freshman year, and he’s where her story begins. She explains that even though Justin and all the other listeners might feel like they only played small parts in her story, every one of their actions mattered. Clay has no idea what his part in Hannah’s story is.

Hannah directs the listener to find C-4 on the map and says they should go there when this tape is finished: it’s the location of her first house in this town and the first place she saw Justin. One summer day before Hannah’s freshman year, she and her friend Kat waited at Kat’s window until Justin and his friend Zach walked over, but when the two boys arrived, they slipped on the wet grass before running away, embarrassed. Clay remembers Kat telling that story at her leaving party, where he met Hannah for the first time. He thought Hannah was pretty, and the fact that she was new to town meant he could pretend to be a “new and improved,” more confident version of himself around her.

Clay decides that the only reason the tapes are being passed on is through fear of people outside the list hearing them: they must contain “really bad” details. He wonders why he’s even listening to them, but he never thought he’d hear Hannah’s voice again and he knows he can’t give that up. On top of that, he’s worried that there really is something on the tapes that could hurt him, and he isn’t willing to call Hannah’s bluff. 

Hannah continues her story: she and Justin grow closer thanks to the fact that most of their classes are near each other. After seeing each other in the hall for a while, Hannah works up the courage to say hello. Eventually, they start having conversations. Hannah’s mom told her to “play hard to get” if she wanted to get a boy’s attention, and it seems to work with Justin. He starts to wait outside her classes to talk to her and, after a few weeks, asks for her phone number. He’s the first boy she gives it to. That day, when she gets home, he has already called twice, lying to her mom that he’s calling Hannah to talk about math homework.

As Clay listens to the tape, he pulls the map out of his backpack. Clay’s mom calls through the door to ask if he wants dinner. He says no—he’s heading to a friend’s house to work on the project. He decides to go to the first star on the map, but only after going to Tony’s house. Tony isn’t a close friend, but Clay knows where he lives and that he has an old Walkman that can play tapes—in fact, even his car stereo can only play tapes. Clay plans to borrow the Walkman and walk back home through Hannah’s neighborhood while listening to some of the tapes. He can’t listen to the tapes at home. He needs some breathing room.

On the tape, Hannah describes the conversation she and Justin had when she called him back that afternoon. He gives her a math problem: Train A is leaving his house, and Train B is leaving hers 10 minutes later. She answers that the trains meet at the bottom of the rocket ship slide in Eisenhower Park in 15 minutes, and Justin says that seemed “awfully slow.” Hannah tells the listener she knows they’re thinking, “Hannah Baker is a slut.” But she says she isn’t—she just wanted a kiss, and that’s it. Clay remembers hearing a different story about Hannah and Justin: that Hannah let Justin put his hands under her bra.

Hannah explains that the rocket ship is similar to the one in her old town. On summer nights before her freshman year in this new town, she’d climb the rocket ship and think of home. For the few nights before she meets Justin in the park, she dreams that she’s sliding down the rocket ship slide toward Justin. Each time, just as she’s about to reach him and kiss him, she wakes up. But today, she’s finally going to kiss him, and she chooses to meet by the rocket because it reminds her of innocence. She’s anxious about the kiss, but it ends up being beautiful. On the tapes, Hannah says she knows people want to hear more scandalous details, and the truth—that it was just a kiss—is the least popular version of the story. 

Hannah enjoys dating Justin for about a month following their kiss, but then Justin starts to spread rumors that something more intimate than a kiss took place. She tells the listener that it wasn’t the rumor itself that contributed to her death, but that the rumor began a snowball effect that changed Hannah’s entire reputation and ruined a memory she treasured. She instructs the listener to turn the tape over for the next part of the story.

Clay arrives at Tony’s house. Tony and his dad are working on his car. They greet Clay and ask him to help them out by starting the car’s ignition.  While Clay sits in the driver’s seat, his eyes lock onto Tony’s and he wonders if Tony knows about the tapes. He sees Tony’s Walkman on the floor in front of the passenger seat and, when Tony looks away, he scoops it into his backpack. Tony’s dad decides the car is in good shape, thanks Clay for his help, and heads inside. Tony asks Clay why he came round. Clay says he just needed to get out of the house. As he walks away from Tony’s, he waits for Tony to call after him about the Walkman, but nothing happens. Clay takes the Walkman out of his backpack, slips the first tape into it—B-side out—and puts on the headphones.