But that person must have been immune to the cheerleaders and their cheers because he didn’t end up on my list anywhere.
And no, I’m not telling you his name…yet.
For fun, I filled mine out as Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, that semester’s required reading and the first person to come to mind.
Holden. What a horrible first date that depressed loner would make.
The moment the surveys were distributed, in third-period history, I bubbled in my answers.
There sure were some weird names on my list. Exactly the sort of people I’d expect to fall for a Holden Caulfield.
It was your typical day in Coach Patrick’s history class. Decipher a bunch of notes scribbled on the board probably five minutes before class started, then copy them down in your notebook. If you finish before the end of class, read pages eight through one ninety-four in your textbook…and don’t fall asleep.
And no talking.
How was I to know every single one of those girls would call me? I assumed everyone at school saw the survey as a joke. Just a fund-raiser for Cheer Camp.
After class, I walked straight to the student body office. At the end of the counter, closest to the door, was the drop-off box-a large shoebox with a slit cut in the top and decorated with cutout pink and red hearts. The red hearts had OH MY DOLLAR VALENTINE! written on them. The pink ones had green dollar signs.
I folded my survey in half, slipped it into the box, then turned around to leave. But Ms. Benson, smiley as usual, was standing right there.
“Hannah Baker?” she said. “I didn’t know you and Courtney Crimsen were friends.”
The look on my face must have expressed exactly what I was thinking, because right away, she backpedaled. “At least, that’s what I figured. That’s what it looked like. I mean, you are friends, aren’t you?”
That lady is beyond nosy.
My first thought was of Tyler standing outside my window…and I was furious! Was he actually showing off those Peeping Tom photos? To Ms. Benson?
No. Ms. Benson told me she had delivered some checks to the yearbook room that morning. Taped to the walls were sample shots that might appear in the yearbook. One particular photo was of Courtney and me.
You guessed it. The one from the party, with my arm around her waist, looking like I was having the time of my life.
Quite an actress, Hannah.
I told her, “No, we’re just acquaintances.”
“Well, it’s a really fun picture,” Ms. Benson said. And this, these next words, I remember exactly: “The wonderful thing about a yearbook photo is that everyone shares the moment with you…forever.”
It sounded like something she’d said a million times before. And before, I probably would have agreed. But not with that photo. Anyone looking at that photo would definitely not be sharing our moment. They could not come close to imagining my thoughts in that picture. Or Courtney’s. Or Tyler’s.
Everything about it was false.
Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken.
Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you-just a tad-off the road. The wheels kick up some dirt, but you’re able to pull it back. Yet no matter how tightly you grip the wheel, no matter how hard you try to drive straight, something keeps jerking you to the side. You have so little control over anything anymore. And at some point, the struggle becomes too much-too tiring-and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy…or whatever…to happen.
Pressing my fingertips hard against my hairline, my thumbs against my temples, I squeeze.
In that picture, I’m sure Courtney was wearing a beautiful smile. Fake, but beautiful.
She wasn’t. But you couldn’t know that.
See, Courtney thought she could jerk me around wherever she wanted. But I didn’t let that happen. I jerked myself back on the road just long enough to push her off…if only for a moment.
But now? The survey. For Valentine’s Day. Was this just another chance to get thrown off the road? Was this survey, for the guys who found my name on their list, going to be the excuse they needed to ask me out?
And would they be extra excited about doing that because of the rumors they’d heard?
I looked at the slit in the top of the shoebox, too thin to squeeze my fingers through. But I could lift off the top and take out my survey. It’d be so easy. Ms. Benson would ask why and I could pretend I was embarrassed about filling out a love survey. She’d understand.
Or…I could wait and see.
If I had been smart, if I had been honest with my survey, I would have described Hannah. And maybe we would have talked. Seriously talked. Not just joking around like last summer at the movie theater.
But I didn’t do that. I wasn’t thinking that way.
Would most students, as I expected, get their list and just have a good laugh, thinking nothing of it? Or would they use it?
If Hannah’s name and number had shown up on my list, would I have called her?
I slouch down into the cold bench, leaning my head back. Far back, like the tip of my spine might burst if I keep going.
Very little, I told myself, could go wrong. The survey was a joke. No one’s going to use it. Calm down, Hannah. You are not setting yourself up.
But if I was right-if I called it correctly-if I willingly gave someone an excuse to test those rumors about me… well…I don’t know. Maybe I’d shrug it off. Maybe I’d get pissed.
Or maybe I would let go and give up.
This time, for the first time, I saw the possibilities in giving up. I even found hope in it.
Ever since Kat’s going-away party, I couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah. How she looked. How she acted. How it never matched up with what I heard. But I was too afraid to find out for sure. Too afraid she might laugh if I asked her out.
Just too afraid.
So what were my options? I could leave the office a pessimist and take my survey with me. Or I could leave it as an optimist and hope for the best. In the end, I walked out of that office with my survey still in the box, unsure of what I was. An optimist? A pessimist?
Neither. A fool.
I close my eyes, concentrating on the cool air floating around me.
When I went into the movie theater last summer for a job application, I pretended to be surprised that Hannah worked there. But she was the whole reason I applied.
“Today’s the day!” the cheerleader said…cheerfully, of course. “Pick up your Oh My Dollar Valentines at the student body office today.”
On my first day at work, they placed me in the concession stand with Hannah. She showed me how to pump “butter” topping into the popcorn.
She said that if someone I had a crush on came in, I shouldn’t put butter in the bottom half of the tub. That way, halfway through the movie, they’d come back out asking for more. And then there wouldn’t be so many people around and we could talk.
But I never did that. Because it was Hannah I was interested in. And the thought that she did that for other guys made me jealous.
I hadn’t decided yet if I wanted to find out who the survey matched me up with. With my luck, it’d be a fellow lumberjack. But when I walked by the office and found no one standing in line, I thought…what the hell.
I went up to the counter and started saying my name, but the cheerleader at the computer cut me off.
“Thanks for supporting the cheerleaders, Hannah.” She tilted her head to one side and smiled. “That sounded dumb, right? But I’m supposed to say it to everyone.”
It was probably the same cheerleader who gave me my survey results.
She typed my name into the computer, hit Enter, then asked how many names I wanted. One, or five? I placed a five-dollar bill on the counter. She hit the number Five key and a printer on my side of the counter spit out
