Thirteen Reasons Why: Cassette 1: Side B Summary & Analysis

Hannah welcomes the listeners back and reveals that this side of the tape is about Alex Standall. Alex voted Hannah “Best Ass in the Freshman Class,” and Hannah expects that he has no idea why he’s part of these tapes. Clay listens, sitting on the curb as the sun begins to set. Hannah tells Alex that, if he thinks she’s overreacting, he can just stop listening—but she threatens him and the other listeners with the second set of tapes.

Hannah recalls one morning in class in freshman year when a list begins to circulate. That morning, while her class watches a dull documentary, she hears whispers around her, followed by the sound of the boy behind her leaning over his desk to peer over the back of her chair. The boy says, “You bet it is.” She confronts him and discovers the list titled “Who’s Hot/Who’s Not.” As Clay listens to the story, he realizes that Hannah’s reputation must have begun with Justin’s rumors. 

Hannah doesn’t care which side of the list she’s on; she just wants to know what everyone’s whispering about. Before the teacher confiscates the list, Hannah finds her name under “Best Ass.” She looks across the room to see Jessica Davis looking upset—Jessica’s name is under “Worst Ass.” She thinks Jessica is actually much prettier than her (though Clay disagrees). She knows that Alex gave them their labels out of revenge. More importantly, Alex’s choice to write her name down meant that her reputation kept growing. Clay gets up from the curb and starts walking again. He thinks Hannah is being unfair—the list was just a bad joke—and he worries how his own reputation will change after people hear these tapes.

Clay arrives at the location of the first star on the map. It’s Hannah’s old house. Clay is shocked by a bizarre coincidence: a month ago, he had to run to this house to tell the wife of the couple that now live here that her husband, an elderly man, had been involved in a car crash. The husband was safe, but he had been unable to reach his wife on the phone. Clay had had no idea that this house was once Hannah’s home. As he stands staring up at the house, he wonders whether Hannah’s story would’ve been different had she met Zach that summer day before the start of school—what if she had been attracted to Zach instead of Justin? Would she still be alive?

On the tape, Hannah continues to tell the story of Alex’s list. The day it comes out, she doesn’t take it too seriously. But the list allows the people around her to start objectifying her. She tells the listener to head to the next starred location on their maps: Blue Spot Liquor. It’s a tiny store plastered in ads for cigarettes and alcohol, but there’s a rack in front of the counter with all her favorite candy bars. The day the list comes out, Hannah goes to Blue Spot as usual, but as she’s searching for money to pay for her candy bar, a boy walks in. She doesn’t name the boy on the current tape just yet, though she says he has a whole tape to himself.

As Hannah finishes paying for her candy, the boy who just walked in slaps Hannah’s butt. He tells Wally, the man behind the counter, that Hannah was named “Best Ass in the Freshman Class.” Wally clicks his tongue, the first sound Hannah has ever heard him make, and she can tell he’s furious. She slaps the boy’s hand away.

In the present, Clay pauses the tape as he arrives at Blue Spot Liquor. Wally isn’t behind the counter today. Clay wonders why he’s disappointed. He chooses a soda at random and picks a Butterfinger from the candy rack. As he pays, he asks the clerk whether Wally still works here; the clerk replies that Wally has the day shift.

Clay continues listening to the tape. After Hannah pays for her candy and swats the boy’s hand away, she tries to leave Blue Spot, but the boy grabs her wrist and spins her around. She tries to pull away; he tells her he’s “only playing” and lets her go.

Clay recognizes the boy Hannah is talking about. Even though he’s always wanted to confront him, he’s always ignored his behavior instead. He sits outside Blue Spot and wonders why he bought the Butterfinger—he isn’t hungry, so did he only buy it because Hannah used to buy candy there? He wonders why that would matter to him and reminds himself he doesn’t need to copy every single thing Hannah describes.

On the tape, Hannah analyzes what happened in Blue Spot that day. By saying “I’m only playing,” the boy claimed Hannah’s body as something that belonged to him, that he could play with. By telling Hannah to relax, he belittled her feelings.

Clay begins to realize what Hannah means by the list affecting people’s opinions of each other. He remembers that after he read the name under “Best Lips,” he could only focus on that girl’s lips whenever she spoke, not the words she was saying. When the boy grabbed Hannah’s butt in Blue Spot Liquor that day, she was especially angry because she knew he’d done it after seeing her name on a list. She tells Alex that when he wrote his list, he left the people on it open to ridicule. That’s what he did to Jessica, too—and the next tape is all about Jessica.