Thirteen Reasons Why: Cassette 5: Side A Summary & Analysis

As Clay leaves Rosie’s, he hears Tony calling out to him. He walks over to Tony’s window. He’s afraid Tony wants to have a conversation, though he’s not sure what about. Tony tells him to get into the car. Clay does so and shuts the door. Tony starts to talk and drive without looking at Clay. He tells Clay he’s the ninth person he’s had to follow around: Tony has the second set of tapes.

Tony asks Clay which tape he was listening to in Rosie’s; Clay tells him it was Ryan’s part of the story. Clay asks Tony why Hannah gave him the second set of tapes. Tony tells Clay to listen to the next tape before he gives him the answer. The next tape, Tony says, is about Clay. Clay throws his arm into the car door and pounds his head against the seat, but Tony insists. Clay puts in the next tape and presses play.

Hannah begins the tape by saying, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” As Clay listens, Tony yells to him, “It’s okay!” Clay’s head twitches with pain, and he feels his heart twisting. Hannah says she had heard so many good things about Clay from other people over the years that she wanted to find out if they were really true. She wanted to hear a juicy rumor about him because she couldn’t believe someone could be as good as everyone said. But she never found out anything bad about Clay. When Clay hears this, he looks over to see Tony smirking.

Hannah tells the listeners that this tape isn’t for her to reveal anything bad about Clay. Clay’s name doesn’t even belong on this list, but she has to tell his part of the story if she wants her own story to be complete. Clay asks Tony why he has to listen to this—why couldn’t Hannah skip him? But Tony says it would frustrate Clay not to know more about Hannah. Clay knows he’s right. He asks Tony where they’re driving to, but Tony doesn’t tell him.

Hannah explains that there are parts of her story she didn’t include on the tapes. Nobody will know everything about her, and nobody can ever know everything about anyone’s life except their own. But she wants her listeners to know that everything is connected: “When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life.” The next few tapes will focus on one night, which she calls “our night”—“our” meaning herself and Clay—because it was the night she and Clay properly connected. Clay remembers that night with anger: it was the night he had to leave an elderly man at the site of a car crash to tell the man’s wife that her husband was fine—while the driver her husband hit was dying.

Hannah continues her story, picking up on the night of the party. She isn’t even supposed to be there: her parents grounded her because her grades have been slipping. But she knows that Clay’s going to be at the party. This fact surprises her and everyone else—Clay never goes to parties. Hannah sneaks out so that she can attend the party and see Clay. The air is warm and humid as she walks to the party. It’s her favorite weather, and it makes her feel hopeful. (As Clay listens, he remembers that he felt the same way that night.)

On her way to the party, Hannah takes a detour past her old house. There’s a car in the garage with its engine going. After she stares for a while, the garage door rises, and a man drives the car down the driveway. The driver (the elderly man who will later crash his car) has no idea of their link to each other, which makes Hannah feel lonely.

On the tape, Hannah tells Clay that her loneliness at seeing the elderly man was one of the reasons she overreacted when she and Clay talked later in the evening. As Clay listens to this story, he wonders whether Hannah found out that this man was involved in a car crash later that night.

Hannah’s story continues. When she arrives at the party, things are already in full swing. Many people are drunk. Hannah searches for Clay, hoping to properly connect with him because they never seemed to have the chance before. (As Clay listens to the tape in the present, he knows he would’ve loved to get to know Hannah better, but he was put off by her reputation and scared he had no chance with her.) When Clay sees Hannah in the kitchen, he greets her. (Though Hannah thinks Clay appeared “out of the blue,” Clay, in the present, knows he actually ran away from her when he first saw her at the party, trying to work up the courage to talk to her.)

In the kitchen at the party, Clay pours half his drink into Hannah’s cup. She knows some people would find this creepy, but she doesn’t. They go to the living room and sit on the couch. (On the tape, Hannah doesn’t name the people they sat down beside, but Clay remembers they were Justin and Jessica, and they were kissing each other. He also realizes that Hannah couldn’t escape the tangled connections between herself and everyone around her.) Sitting on the couch, Hannah and Clay have an in-depth conversation for the first time. They have a lot in common. Hannah wants to tell Clay everything she’s thinking and feeling, but she’s too scared. Clay tells Hannah he’s had a feeling they would get along well. Hannah doesn’t know why Clay would think this, as he must have heard all the rumors about her.

 On the tape, Hannah says she wishes she and Clay had connected sooner, but by the time they talked at the party, she’d already given up on connecting with people. As Clay listens, he wishes Hannah had told her whatever she was feeling: he would’ve listened.

On the couch at the party, the girl (Jessica) next to Hannah keeps drunkenly bumping into her, so Hannah and Clay get up to find somewhere quieter. They end up in the doorway to an empty room. Standing in the doorway with Clay, Hannah feels a rush of loneliness even though they’re getting along. She knows it’s because she won’t let herself connect with anyone. She’s been hurt too many times. Still, Clay is there for her, making her laugh, so she kisses him. Eventually, they go into the empty room and shut the door. While he listens, Clay remembers thinking the word “amazing” over and over the whole time they were together.

On the tape, Hannah guesses that her listeners must feel shocked that they didn’t know she and Clay kissed, but she reminds them that they only think they know about all the people she kissed, when in fact she can count the real number of them on one hand. Clay leans forward and screams into his hand.

Clay stares at the tape in the Walkman. Staring into the two spindles is the closest he can get to looking into Hannah’s eyes. Hannah tells the listeners that the only thing that happened between herself and Clay was kissing, though she wanted more.

Hannah continues her story. At the party, her and Clay’s kisses feel like first kisses to her, and that makes her think of Justin—the anticipation of their first kiss, followed by the way Justin ruined the memory of it. She tells Clay to stop kissing her, but he doesn’t know why. Inside, Hannah feels that by kissing him, she’s adding to a reputation that’s already out of her control. (As Clay listens to the tape, he disagrees: he wasn’t going to tell anyone.)

In the empty room, Hannah continues to tell Clay to stop. Clay keeps trying to talk, but each time, Hannah starts to scream. Eventually, Clay gets up and leaves. The light gets brighter as he opens the door then fades as he closes it. As Clay listens to the story, he regrets leaving Hannah there alone when she needed him, but he knows he was scared. Hannah tells Clay on the tape that his part of the story ends here.

Hannah’s story continues. At school in the weeks after the party, Clay tries to make a connection with her, but she always ignores him. It’s too hard to deal with the thoughts that flooded her head when she kissed him that night—thoughts that allowed her to finally make the connections between all the different people who have affected her life since her freshman year.

On the tape, Hannah’s story returns to the night of the party. After the party, Hannah goes home and writes down a list of all the people who came to her mind when she kissed Clay. She draws lines between the ones who connect to each other. She discovers that the next connection—the person who entered the room after Clay left it—is Justin.

At the end of this tape, Hannah tells Clay that, because Justin already received these tapes, he should skip to the next person when he sends them on. She ends by apologizing to Clay. Clay’s muscles ache and his eyes sting. Tony asks him if he’s okay. Clay says he misses Hannah, and Tony says he does, too. Clay doesn’t know how to interpret that night at the party: at the end of it, he felt even more confused about Hannah. Now that he’s listened to the tape, though, he understands her. As he says that, he breaks down in tears. Tony sits with him in silence. After a while, Clay wipes his eyes and thanks Tony for listening to his feelings.