Cassette 2: Side A
- When Hannah first moved to town, there were two other new kids, Alex Standall (from the previous tape) and Jessica Davis.
- Hannah and Jessica met through a well-meaning 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" (5.110). But she'll explain that in another tape.
- Clay wonders whether Mr. Porter had a role in Hannah's suicide. He was asking about her the day she killed herself and he didn't look so good. Clay remembers a girl telling him that day that she saw an ambulance pulling away from Hannah's house.
- Hannah says that she and Jessica were both embarrassed that Miss Antilly was trying to pair them up, but they got along anyway.
- That same afternoon, Hannah and Jessica took the bus to Monet's Garden, a coffee shop.
- That's Clay's next stop. He's never ridden the city bus, but it's getting cold outside, so he gets on.
- At the coffee shop, Hannah and Jessica 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. Hannah mentions that Alex and Jessica weren't really her friends; they were just hanging out with each other until they made real friends.
- Alex was the first one of them to make real friends and stop hanging out with them. And without him, Jessica and Hannah just didn't have much to talk about anymore.
- By this point, Clay has reached his stop, and he gets off the bus near Monet's.
- The tape continues: one day, after Alex voted Hannah best ass and Jessica worst ass, Jessica told Hannah to meet her at Monet's.
- When Hannah got there, Jessica basically accused her of stealing Alex from her. Hannah denied it but Jessica said she'd heard all the rumors about Hannah.
- Hannah said something about taking the blame for the breakup if that's what Jessica wanted to hear, but the rumors weren't true.
- At this point, Jessica, hearing Hannah say she was to blame, smacked and scratched Hannah over the eye. Her nail broke off in Hannah's skin and left a scar.
- Still listening, Clay goes into Monet's.
- Hannah says that Jessica's scratch is more than a scratch: "It's a punch in the stomach and a slap in the face. It's a knife in my back because you'd rather believe some made-up rumor than what you knew to be true" (5.135).
- Hannah wants to know if Jessica went to her funeral and if she noticed the scar she'd left on Hannah's face.
- Clay reflects that Jessica couldn't have gone to Hannah's funeral, because her family didn't hold one for her, at least not here.
- And that's the end of the tape.