And like me, he’s always had a thing for Hannah Baker.
But first, let’s go back a few weeks. Let’s go back…to Rosie’s.
My stomach pulls in tight, like working through a final sit-up. I close my eyes and concentrate on bringing myself back to normal. But I haven’t felt normal in hours. Even the lids of my eyes feel warm. Like my whole body is fighting a sickness.
I just sat there, in the booth where Marcus left me, staring into an empty milkshake glass. His side of the bench was probably still warm because he’d left only a minute ago. When up walked Zach.
And down he sat.
I open my eyes to the row of empty stools on this side of the counter. On one of these stools, maybe this one, Hannah sat when she first arrived. By herself. But then Marcus arrived and took her to a booth.
My gaze follows the counter down to the pinball machines at the far end of the diner, then over to their booth. Empty.
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.
My eyes burn. I reach forward and slide a hand down the frosted milkshake glass. Ice-cold droplets cling to my skin and I run my wet fingers across my eyelids.
I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events in my life, the more my heart collapsed.
Zach was sweet. He went on letting me ignore him until it became almost comical. I knew he was there, of course. He was practically staring at me. And eventually, melodramatically, he cleared his throat.
I lifted my hand onto the table and touched the base of my glass. That was the only sign he was going to get that I was listening.
I pull my glass closer and turn the spoon inside it in slow circles, softening whatever remains at the bottom.
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?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For whatever happened just now.”
I felt my head continue to nod as if it was attached to heavy springs, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I appreciated his words.
He offered to buy me another milkshake, but I gave no response. Was I unable to talk? Or did I just not want to talk? I don’t know. Part of me thought he was hitting on me-ready to use the fact that I was now alone to ask me out. And it’s not that I completely believed that, but why should I trust him?
The waitress dropped off my bill and took the empty glass away. Soon, getting nothing out of me, Zach left a few bucks on the table and returned to his friends.
I keep stirring my malted. There’s hardly any left, but I don’t want the glass taken away. It gives me a reason to sit here. To stay here.
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 keep stirring.
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.
I know you tried coming to my rescue, Zach. But we all know that’s not why you’re on this tape. So I’ve got one question before we continue. When you try rescuing someone and discover they can’t be reached, why would you ever throw that back in their face?
For the past several days or weeks or however long it took you to get these tapes, Zach, you probably thought no one would find out.
I lower my face into my hands. How many secrets can there be at one school?
You probably got sick to your stomach when you heard what I did. But the more time that went by, the better you felt. Because the more time that went by, the more likely your secret died with me. No one knew. No one would ever find out.
But now we will. And my stomach gets a little sicker.
Let me ask you, Zach, did you think I turned you down at Rosie’s? I mean, you never got around to asking me out, so I couldn’t officially turn you down, right? So what was it? Embarrassment?
Let me guess. You told your friends to watch while you put the moves on me…and then I hardly responded.
Or was it a dare? Did they dare you to ask me out?
People did that. Recently someone dared me to ask Hannah out. He worked with both of us at the Crestmont. He knew I liked her and that I never found the nerve to ask her out. He also knew that for the past few months, Hannah hardly spoke to anyone, making it a double challenge.
When I broke out of my daze, and before I left, I listened in on you and your friends. They were teasing you for not getting that date you assured them was in the bag.
I will give you credit where it’s due, Zach. You could have gone back to your friends and said, “Hannah’s a freak. Look at her. She’s staring into Neverland.”
Instead, you took the teasing.
But you must have a slow boil, getting more and more angry-taking it more and more personally-the longer you thought about my nonresponsiveness. And you chose to get back at me in the most childish of ways.
You stole my paper bag notes of encouragement.
How pathetic.
So what tipped me off? It’s simple, really. Everyone else was getting notes. Everyone! And for the most insignificant of things. Anytime someone even got a haircut they got a bunch of notes. And there were people in that class I considered friends who would have put something in my bag after I chopped off most of my hair.
When she first walked by me in the halls, with her hair cut so much shorter, I couldn’t keep my mouth from falling open. And she looked away. Out of habit, she tried brushing the hair out of her face and behind her ears. But it was too short and kept falling forward.
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.
She pauses. Silence. Just static, barely audible, in the headphones.
I’m sure the school had psychologists come in loaded with handouts, telling you what to look for in students who might be considering…
Another pause.
No. Like I said before, I can’t say it.
Suicide. Such a disgusting word.
The next day, when I found my bag empty, I knew something was up. At least, I thought something was up. The first few months of class I received maybe four or five notes. But suddenly, after the telltale haircut…nothing.
So after my haircut, I waited a week.
Then two weeks.
Then three weeks.
Nothing.
I push my glass across the counter and look at the man down by the register. “Can you take this?”
It was time to find out what was going on. So I wrote myself a note.
He shoots me a hard look while counting back change. The girl on this side of the register also looks at me. She touches her ears. The headphones. I’m speaking too loud.
“Sorry,” I whisper. Or maybe it doesn’t come out at all.
“Hannah,” the note said. “Like the new haircut. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” And for good measure, I added a purple smiley face.
To avoid the major embarrassment of getting caught leaving myself a note, I also wrote a note for the bag next to mine. And after class, I walked to the bookrack and made a show of dropping a note in that other bag. Then I casually ran my hand around the inside of my bag, pretending to check for notes. And I say “pretending” because I knew it would be empty.
And the next day? Nothing in my bag. The note was gone.