On our first reading lesson I managed to read 23 pages of a book named Thirteen Reasons Why written by Jay Asher. It has won several awards and has received five stars from Teen Book Review.

It starts with a prologue. An unnamed narrator is mailing a package because the day before, he got that package in the mail, and his task is to send it to the next person "on Hannah Baker's list". He has a horrible headache. He pays the postage and drinks his coffee. The coffee is not good because it is already cold, but he needs something to wake him up. The clerk tells him that the package will get there tomorrow or the next day. Then the narrator is walking to school. The closer he gets to school, the worse his head hurts. He feels terrible and just wants to pass out somewhere. If he goes to school, he'll have to see Mr. Porter, the last person who will get Hannah Baker's package. And if he goes to school, he will have to see Hannah Baker's empty desk.

Later, I learned that narrator's name is Clay Jensen. He gets home from school and finds a package with his name on it. He is excited so he opens it and finds seven audio cassette tapes. Both sides of each cassette are numbered with blue nail polish. The numbers go up to thirteen. Clay has no idea who would send him tapes. He wonders how he will play them, because who has cassette recorder nowadays… Then he remembers that his dad has an old stereo with a tape deck in the garage, so he goes there to listen to the first tape.

Next chapter is called Cassette 1: Side A

He presses play and the first tape starts with: "Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo." Clay is shocked, because Hannah killed herself. Then in this tape Hannah says that these tapes will explain why she's dead and that the people listening to the tapes are the reasons why she did it. Hannah says she has two rules. The first rule is to listen to the tapes. The second rule is, after listening, to send these tapes to the next person on the list. Then Hannah says that somebody else has a copy of the tapes and if anybody breaks the rules and doesn't send the tapes to the next person on the list, the tapes will be published and whole city will hear them. Clay is sick to his stomach. He is scared and he doesn’t understand what is going on. He doesn’t know why he is on the list. He says he didn’t do anything to her. Also he didn't know Hannah very well before she died. They were just going to the same school. But he'd wanted to know her better. They had worked at the movie theatre together last summer, and one time, they kissed at a party. But that’s all.

The first tape is about Justin Foley. Hannah says that Justin betrayed her and he probably isn't even aware of it.

Justin was Hannah's friend Kat's boyfriend. When Kat moved away at the end of that summer, Hannah started liking Justin. Eventually, he asked for her number and she gave it to him. He called the same night and they made plans to meet at Eisenhower Park.

When Hannah first moved to town, there were two other new kids, Alex Standall and Jessica Davis. Hannah and Jessica met through a guidance counselor, Miss Antilly, who switched schools later that year.

Clay remembers that she was replaced by Mr. Porter. Hannah says that the change in guidance counselors was "very unfortunate". And because of that sentence Clay wonders whether Mr. Porter was also a reason why Hannah killed herself. Clay thinks that Mr. Porter was acting very suspicious when he was asking about Hannah the day she killed herself (he asked that before everyone knew that she is dead). In my opinion Clay has a right to think that, because what teacher would just ask and care about a student outside working hours?

The tape continues. When Miss Antilly was at school, she tried to match up Hannah with Jessica. She wanted them to be friends. Hannah and Jessica were both embarrassed, but after the meeting they hang out. I think it was very nice of Miss Antilly that she cared and that she wanted them to make friends. Because it is hard when you are new and you don’t have anybody.

That same afternoon, Hannah and Jessica took the bus to a coffee shop. There they met Alex. They noticed him watching them and Jessica asked him which one of the girls he was looking at. He said he was new, too, and just wanted to hang out. Then Hannah mentions that Alex and Jessica weren't really her friends. They were just hanging out with each other until they made real friends. From my perspective it was kind of mean of Hannah to say that. But probably, it was true.

Alex was the first one of them to make real friends. He stopped hanging out with them and without him, Jessica and Hannah just didn't have much to talk about anymore.

Then one day Jessica told Hannah to meet her at Monet's. When Hannah got there, Jessica accused her of stealing Alex from her. Hannah denied it but Jessica said she had heard all the rumours about Hannah (some people where spreading rumours about Hannah that she sleeps with every boy). Hannah said that she can take the blame for the breakup if that's what Jessica wanted to hear, but the rumours weren't true.

Then Jessica smacked and scratched Hannah over the eye. Her nail broke off and Hannah had a scar.

Hannah says that Jessica's scratch is a knife in her back because she would rather believe some made-up rumour than what was true. I think that that’s the problem nowadays because people spread false information and especially about girls being some kind of sinners. Then people believe these rumours and it can hurt those girls very much.

Then the tape continues and Hannah wants to know if Jessica went to her funeral. Clay says that Jessica couldn't have gone to Hannah's funeral, because there hasn’t been any funeral yet.

And that's the end of the tape. And in my opinion the lesson we can learn from this chapter is not to believe rumours and try to get to know the people before you make assumptions about them.

to be continued