Thirteen Reasons Why

Hannah begins the next side of the tape by reminding her listeners of the Oh My Dollar Valentines, a project that the cheer squad organized each at school each year to raise funds for their camp. It involved participants filling in a survey and paying a dollar to find out who their “one true soul mate” was (based on their answers to the survey). If participants paid five dollars, they’d receive their top five matches. Hannah filled out her survey because she loved surveys—that’s the reason she bought teen magazines. (As an aside, she says that the makeup tips in them were also helpful, which surprises Clay, who thought Hannah never wore makeup.) Hannah also mentions that the results of the career survey the students completed in freshman year told her she’d be a good lumberjack—the same result Clay got.

Hannah describes the Oh My Dollar Valentine survey. The first part asked the participant to describe themselves; the second part asked them to describe what they were looking for in a match. Hannah realized as she filled hers out that she was describing a particular person at school. Clay reflects on his answers and wishes he’d filled his survey out seriously, but he actually filled it out as the character of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, which gave him a strange list of matches.

On the tape, Hannah’s story picks up just after she finishes the survey and drops it in the box in the office. When she turns around, a teacher greets her and mentions she saw a photo of Hannah and Courtney together in the yearbook room. The teacher says that yearbook photos are great because they memorialize your experiences forever, which makes Hannah panic: she suddenly realizes she has no control over what people think of her. She reconsiders doing the survey—will it just be an excuse for the guys whose lists she ends up on to ask her out, and would they be excited to do that because of all the rumors they’ve heard about her? If they act the way she expects—taking advantage of getting her name on their lists—she feels like she might just “give up.” Still, she leaves the survey in the box and walks out of the office.

As Clay listens to Hannah’s tape, he wonders whether he’d have gotten Hannah’s name on his list if he’d filled his survey out honestly. And would he have called her? Ever since he met her, he’d been preoccupied with her, bothered by how she didn’t seem to match up with the rumors people shared about her. But he’d been too afraid to get to know her and find out what she was really like. Last summer, he applied for a job at the movie theater because Hannah worked there (though he pretended he didn’t know she did).

Hannah’s story picks up the day the survey results come out. Hannah isn’t sure if she wants to receive her list. But she goes to the office and finds it empty, so she asks the cheerleader at the counter for her results. She pays five dollars. The cheerleader prints out a list of five names. As Hannah looks at the list, the cheerleader asks who’s on it. Hannah thinks the cheerleader is joking, but she shares the names anyway, and they agree it’s not a bad list—though Hannah doesn’t think it’s an especially good one.

Hannah thinks one boy on the list is cute, but the cheerleader tries to convince her not to pursue him. Hannah doesn’t push her to ask why not, though on the tape, looking back, she says she should have. At that moment in the office, her phone rings. She doesn’t recognize the caller. He tells her he paid for her phone number, and Hannah and the cheerleader realizes Hannah’s name showed up on his Valentine’s list. They work out it’s not any of the boys on Hannah’s list, but he tells her Hannah was the first name on his. Finally, she asks him for his name, but then she sees him standing outside the office: Marcus Cooley.

Hannah knows that Marcus likes to tell jokes and goof around, so she doesn’t immediately trust him. She says he’s lying about having her name on his list, but he shows the list to her. They agree to meet at Rosie’s after school for ice cream. The cheerleader begs Hannah to let her brag about the match, but Hannah says she has to wait until tomorrow. On the tape, she doesn’t share the cheerleader’s name: she says she did nothing wrong and was very sweet. (Clay knows for sure that the cheerleader is Jenny Kurtz, who, when she heard about Hannah’s death, walked right out of class without asking to be excused.) Hannah says that after what happened at Rosie’s, she tried to avoid the cheerleader, but she couldn’t avoid her forever—the cheerleader will make a later, named appearance in the tapes.

Hannah goes to Rosie’s to meet Marcus. Though she’s never been there before, she’s heard about it through stories: someone had their first “under-the-bra” experience there, and Alex had his first fight just outside. Hannah’s always wanted to go, but not alone, so meeting Marcus is a good excuse. She doesn’t trust Marcus, especially because he’s friends with Alex, but she wants to trust him because she wants other people to trust her despite whatever rumors they’ve heard about her.

Hannah tells the listener to go to Rosie’s and sit at the counter by themselves. They should sit and wait without ordering. As Clay listens to the tape, his phone rings: it’s Clay’s mom. When Clay answers, he finds he can’t speak. His mom asks if everything is all right. He says he’s fine but that he’s still working on the project, and he asks her to bring him the tapes he left in the garage. She says she’s going out anyway to buy more bread for Clay’s packed lunch. Clay asks her to meet him at Rosie’s with the tapes, then he starts walking there. 

On the tape, Hannah tells the listeners that going to Rosie’s by yourself and sitting at the counter without ordering is an uncomfortable experience: the people around you will wonder whether you’re waiting for someone. She resumes her story. That afternoon, she sits at the counter and waits, watching the clock. After 15 minutes—10 minutes longer than it takes someone to walk there from school—she orders a shake. After 30 minutes, she digs in with her spoon to finish it quickly so she can leave. Hannah thought Marcus was being sincere when he suggested they meet up and she tells herself to calm down. Finally, Marcus enters Rosie’s and sits down beside her, apologizing: he didn’t think she’d turn up.

Marcus assumed they’d both been joking about going to Rosie’s, but then he’d reconsidered and shown up anyway. But he showed up with a plan: he wanted to move Hannah to a booth near the back of Rosie’s. (On the tape, Hannah tells the listeners to stay at the counter: “It’s more comfortable there.”) Now sitting in the booth, Marcus makes Hannah laugh so hard her stomach hurts. She leans her head on his shoulder, at which he puts his hand on her knee, and she suddenly realizes what his plan is. She stops laughing and asks Marcus what he’s doing. He asks if she wants him to move his hand. She doesn’t answer and doesn’t move away. Marcus’s hand starts to move up her leg. She tries to pry his fingers off her. Some people look over and immediately turn away.

Clay started to run as he listened to Hannah telling the story of that afternoon, but now he slows down, feeling not physically exhausted but emotionally drained. Rosie’s is across the street. He doesn’t want to go in yet. The movie theater he worked at with Hannah is just a block away. It doesn’t have a red star on Hannah’s map, but Clay feels like it deserves one. He walks toward the theater and peers inside to see the box office where he worked most nights in the summer. He goes inside and leans against one of the movie posters, realizing as he listens to the tape this was the place he could’ve connected with Hannah, but he let the chance slip away.

On the tape, Hannah explains that she had tried to brush off all the events leading up to Marcus touching her at Rosie’s—being betrayed, having her reputation ruined, and having her privacy invaded. She tried to be more optimistic and trusting, but when Marcus took advantage of her, she started to wonder whether she’d ever get control of her life. The next day, she decided to find out how people at school would react to one of the students never coming back.

In the theater lobby, Clay walks up to the box office window and looks inside. He remembers feeling cramped in there, often looking over to where Hannah worked at the popcorn counter. One night, Bryce Walker came in with his then girlfriend and asked Clay to charge her the under-12 rate for a movie ticket. Bryce told Clay, “She won’t be watching the movie anyway.” His girlfriend didn’t find the comment funny and said she’d pay for her own ticket, but Bryce told her to relax: “It was a joke.”

Halfway through the movie, Clay remembers, the girl came running out, upset and holding her wrist. Bryce emerged at the end of the movie and went up to Hannah at the concession counter. Hannah laughed at his jokes, which made Clay angry; he wanted to ask Bryce to leave, but he also thought Hannah should be the one to do that. At the end of his shift, Clay approached Hannah and asked her about Bryce, but she told him she didn’t need him to look out for her. Clay wonders why he didn’t try harder to do just that.