said.
You kept your eyes straight ahead. “They’ll trace it. They can trace phone calls, Hannah.” Then you started up the car and told me to shut the door.
I didn’t.
So you reversed the car, and I jumped back to keep the door from knocking me over.
You didn’t care that the metal sign was crushing-grating-the underside of your car. When you cleared it, the sign lay at my feet, warped and streaked with silver scratches.
You revved the engine and I took the hint, stepping back onto the curb. Then you peeled away, causing the door to slam shut, picking up speed the further you got…and you got away.
In fact, you got away with much more than knocking down a sign, Jenny.
And once again, I could have stopped it…somehow.
We all could have stopped it. We all could have stopped something. The rumors. The rape.
You.
There must have been something I could have said. At the very least, I could have taken your keys. Or at the very, very least, I could have reached in and stolen your phone to call the police.
Actually, that’s the only thing that would’ve mattered. Because you found your way home in once piece, Jenny. But that wasn’t the problem. The sign was knocked down, and that was the problem.
B-6 on your map. Two blocks from the party there’s a Stop sign. But on that night, for part of the night, there wasn’t. And it was raining. And someone was trying to deliver his pizzas on time. And someone else, headed in the opposite direction, was turning.
The old man.
There was no Stop sign on that corner. Not on that night. And one of them, one of the drivers, died.
No one knew who caused it. Not us. Not the police.
But Jenny knew. And Hannah. And maybe Jenny’s parents, because someone fixed her bumper real fast.
I never knew the guy in that car. He was a senior. And when I saw his picture in the newspaper, I didn’t recognize him. Just one of the many faces at school I never got to know…and never would.
I didn’t go to his funeral, either. Yes, maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. And now I’m sure it’s obvious why.
She didn’t know. Not about the man in the other car. She didn’t know it was the man from her house. Her old house. And I’m glad. Earlier, she watched him pull out of his garage. She watched him drive away without noticing her.
But some of you were there, at his funeral.
Driving to return a toothbrush. That’s what his wife told me as we waited on her couch for the police to bring him home. He was driving to the other end of town to return their granddaughter’s toothbrush. They’d been keeping an eye on her while her parents were on vacation, and she’d left it behind by accident. The girl’s parents said there was no need to drive across town just for that. They had plenty of extras. “But that’s what he does,” his wife told me. “That’s the kind of person he is.”
And then the police came.
For those of you who did go, let me describe what school was like on the day of his funeral. In a word…it was quiet. About a quarter of the school took the morning off. Mostly seniors, of course. But for those of us who did go to school, the teachers let us know that if we simply forgot to bring a note from home, they wouldn’t mark us absent if we wanted to attended the funeral.
Mr. Porter said funerals can be a part of the healing process. But I doubted that very much. Not for me. Because on that corner, there wasn’t a Stop sign that night. Someone had knocked it over. And someone else… yours truly…could’ve stopped it.
Two officers helped her husband inside, his body trembling. His wife got up and walked over to him. She wrapped him in her arms and they cried.
When I left, closing the door behind me, the last thing I saw was the two of them standing in the middle of the living room. Holding each other.
On the day of the funeral, so those of you who attended wouldn’t miss any work, the rest of us did nothing. In every class, the teachers gave us free time. Free to write. Free to read.
Free to think.
And what did I do? For the first time, I thought about my own funeral.
More and more, in very general terms, I’d been thinking about my own death. Just the fact of dying. But on that day, with all of you at a funeral, I began thinking of my own.
I reach the Stop sign. With the tips of my fingers, I reach forward and touch the cold metal pole.
I could picture life-school and everything else-continuing on without me. But I could not picture my funeral. Not at all. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine who would attend or what they would say.
I had…I have…no idea what you think of me.
I don’t know what people think of you either, Hannah. When we found out, and since your parents didn’t have a funeral in this town, no one said much about it at all.
I mean, it was there. We felt it. Your empty desk. The fact that you would not be coming back. But no one knew where to begin. No one knew how to start that conversation.
It’s now been a couple of weeks since the party. So far, Jenny, you’ve done a great job of hiding from me. I suppose that’s understandable. You’d like to forget what we did-what happened with your car and the Stop sign. The repercussions.
But you never will.
Maybe you didn’t know what people thought of you because they themselves didn’t know what they thought of you. Maybe you didn’t give us enough to go on, Hannah.
If not for that party, I never would have met the real you. But for some reason, and I am extremely grateful, you gave me that chance. However brief it was, you gave me a chance. And I liked the Hannah I met that night. Maybe I could’ve even loved her.
But you decided not to let that happen, Hannah. It was you who decided.
I, on the other hand, only have to think about it for one more day.
I turn away from the Stop sign and walk away.
If I had known two cars were going to crash on that corner, I would’ve run back to the party and called the cops immediately. But I never imagined that would happen. Never.
So instead, I walked. But not back to the party. My mind was racing all over the place. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t walk straight.
I want to look back. To look over my shoulder and see the Stop sign with huge reflective letters, pleading with Hannah. Stop!
But I keep facing forward, refusing to see it as more than it is. It’s a sign. A stop sign on a street corner. Nothing more.
I turned corner after corner with no idea where I was going.
We walked those streets together, Hannah. Different routes, but at the same time. On the same night. We walked the streets to get away. Me, from you. And you, from the party. But not just from the party. From yourself.
And then I heard tires squeal, and I turned, and I watched two cars collide.
Eventually, I made it to a gas station. C-7 on your map. And I used a payphone to call the police. As it rang, I found myself hugging the receiver, part of me hoping that no one would answer.
I wanted to wait. I wanted the phone to just keep ringing. I wanted life to stay right there…on pause.
I can’t follow her map anymore. I am not going to the gas station.
When someone finally did answer, I sucked in the tears that wet my lips and told them that on the corner of Tanglewood and South…
But she cut me off. She told me to calm down. And that’s when I realized how hard I had been crying. How much I was struggling to catch one good breath.
I cross the street and move further away from the party house.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve walked out of my way so many times to avoid that house. To avoid the reminder, the pain, of my one night with Hannah Baker. I have no desire to see it twice in one night.
