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• characters such as Justin Foley, Jessica Davies, Tony Padilla, Hannah Baker etc belong to Jay Asher and the Netflix team •
The sky slowly turned darker as each minute passed in the next day, as Chad sat locked inside his squared, yet comfy room who’s walls were painted in a light blue shade listening to the tapes that had arrived on his front porch on the previous day.
Curiosity had wandered in his mind, only thinking about Jessica and Justin’s conversation at school.
Could these be the tapes?
Chad knew who it belonged to after hearing the first sentence that came out of the tape with a blue painted ‘1’ in front of the first tape.
‘Hey. It’s Hannah. Hannah Baker.’ The first words coming out of the walkman that belonged to Mike Beaumont, Chad’s father sent shivers down the boy’s spine.
He was expecting it to be Hannah’s tapes but he was never really prepared for the impact.
‘Don’t adjust – whatever device you’re hearing this on. It’s me, live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore and this time, absolutely no requests.
Get a snack, settle in, because I’m about to tell you the story of my life, more specifically why my life ended.
And if you’re listening to this, you’re one of the reasons why.’
Chad quickly stopped the recording, taking a moment to calm himself down noticing his heart rate accelerate, as he heard the voice of the girl he had been friends with and ended because of a rather stupid reason.
Chad had his worries after hearing about the tapes, his worst mistake coming back to haunt him was one of them.
Chad slowly pressed play curious enough to want to hear the rest of Hannah’s reasons. He was interested to know her reasons since he had his theories.
‘I’m not saying which tape brings you into the story. But fear not, if you receive this lovely little box, your name will pop up, I promise.
The rules here are pretty simple, there are only two.
Rule number One: you listen
Rule number two: you pass it on
Hopefully neither one will be easy, its not supposed to be easy or I would’ve emailed you an MP3.
When you’re done listening to all 13 sides, because there are 13 sides to every story, rewind the tapes, put them back in the box and pass them on to the next person.
Oh and the box of tapes should have included a map.’
Chad stood up from his computer chair and walked towards his bed that had the box that had the wrapped tapes in, he looked inside to find a squared paper full of destinations.
He picked it up and went back to his computer chair, ready to hear the rest.
Chad hit the play button before Hannah’s voice was already in Chad’s hears.
‘I’ll be mentioning several spots around our beloved city.
I can’t force you to visit them, but if you’d like a little more insight, head for the stars.
Or you know, just throw the map away and I’ll never know.
Or will I?’
Chad walked outside, the dark already ruled the town as he walked towards his dad’s black coloured kia forte car who his father trusted in the hands of the younger Beaumont.
He started driving carefully his dad’s car, still listening to Hannah’s voice as she gave him directions of where to go in the map.
The boy thought it was a bad idea but curiosity got the best of him at that moment.
‘Put your finger on C and your other finger on 4, bring them together. That’s our first red star.’
Chad stopped at the side of the road for a moment, putting his two fingers on C and 4 as Hannah ordered.
Chad was almost too caught up that he didn’t even notice a familiar car pass his father’s car.
He followed the map, still driving as Hannah’a voice echoed in the background.
Chad ended up in a house, a house he recognised as The Baker household, all the lights were out as the night wind hit the smaller tree next to it furiously.
Hannah threw a party in that house, although Chad didn’t really remember any key memory from it so he just kept listening.
As Chad kept listening, he noticed this was his best friend’s tape.
Chad felt scared that whatever Justin had done, it would change Chad’s view on him which was something Chad did not want to happen.
Their friendship was special. For him.
Chad continued to listen to Hannah’s directions to his next point in the map, he ended up in a park which he knew pretty clear after hanging out with Justin in that certain park when they were little, and even now.
Eisenhower Park.
Chad parked next to his new destination, leaving the car and walked towards the rocket slide.
‘I dreamed our first kiss would take place in the park.
I never told you that. The dream starts with me at the top of the rocket, holding onto the steering wheel.
It’s still a playground rocket, but every time I turn the wheel to the left or right, the trees lift up like they’re taking flight.’
Chad listened all the while imagining what she was feeling, Chad always thought he was good at imagination, so that was not something hard for him.
He imagined Justin and Hannah chasing each other, going down the slide and lots and lots of giggles.
‘And that’s all that happened, we kissed.’
Those words brought pain to Chad, somehow it felt like a hard thing to swallow.
Justin never told Chad about kissing Hannah, why didn’t he?
They told each other everything. And worst then that, is that Chad was a hundred percent sure that this would end in disaster. As his memory remembered everything on the next day prior this memory.
Chad stood next to his friends Justin, Zach, Bryce and Jonathan as they seemed to be giggling about something that Chad had no clue about.
‘”Did you get first base, Justin?” Bryce taunted while caressing Justin’s cheek with one finger.
“Get off me, I’m not saying anything.” Said Justin softly pushing Bryce‘s hand away.
Their voices was loud, their voices being echoed through the halls of Liberty high. Even getting glares from people that passed by.
“Second?” Bryce continued receiving a ‘fuck off’ from Justin as a reply.
“Okay, assholes. Picture’s a thousand words.” Justin spoke while showing everyone a picture on his phones.
Chad tip toed closer to see what was in the phone that was causing such reaction on the other boys’ face.
There was a photo of Hannah Baker on what seemed to be a slide, showing her lower parts accidentally, or not?
Chad believed Hannah wouldn’t do that on purpose. Why would she? She’s new and she did not seem to have a that kind of reputation so far.
All the boys started laughing at the picture while Chad just stood still not reacting to anything.
When one of the boys turned to look at him though, he pretended to be happy, that it was the funniest thing in the world.
“Public space. That’s hot.” Said Bryce, picking up the phone in his hands while Justin turned to Chad.
Justin gave Chad an encouraging smile while Chad gave him a fake smile in return.
“Oh, yeah. We’re sending this shit around.” Spoke Bryce, taking a step forward as his larger fingers started to slowly hit Justin’s screen.
“No, Bryce stop!” Justin exclaimed as Jonathan and Zach kept him against the wall, enabling him to do anything against it.
But yet, a smile remained on his face. As if it was a joke.
Chad walked closer to Bryce, trying to stop him even though getting to Bryce is like trying to get to a lion.
“Bryce, seriously stop. It’s enough, you don’t need to send it to everyone.” Chad spoke while looking straight at the screen in Bryce’s hand.
“Stop being such a goodie pants, Beaumont. Have some fun will you?” Bryce spoke with a smirk his eyes not leaving the screen, Chad let out a sigh as Justin still fought in the background to be let free, yet a laugh left his mouth every time as if it was funny.
Chad knew that Justin could have set himself free. He just didn’t try too hard.
Did they care? Did he care?
Chad knew the answer to that, part of him hoped he was wrong.
But Chad laughed along when the boys eyes were on him, but when their eyes were away, his face turned serious, swallowing hard.
Chad was interrupted from his memory as he heard something like a piece of wood being stepped on and breaking in the distance.
He’s eyes moved instantly towards the sound, finding a pair of lights in the distance, the lights of a car is the only possible thing that came to Chad’s mind.
He felt like someone was watching him. And that was something that he hated feeling, he felt like he was in a horror movie.
Like he was being choked and not being able to do anything or even breath.
But the feeling didn’t take long to go away, as the car was soon gone along with the feeling of being watched.
“Fuck.” He finally spoke with a sign of relief.
•
When Chad arrived home, he put the hearing device he had been using until now aside and hit the pillows, feeling the relaxing feeling creep into his body who was still tense.
But yet his mind was still far from relaxed, it kept going back to what Justin had done and Hannah’s words.
A boy he admired so much, but he was so nice to him, sometimes. Why did he do it? Just to show off?
Could Hannah be lying about it all?
The questions took turn in his mind as Chad tried to find any explanation possible.
Be he knew that it was just the start of a set of tapes full of discoveries. Including his own.
•
The next day, he had to go back to school and face Justin Foley, the boy who had been on his mind.
Not for normal reasons and not like the past, but because of the tapes that he had received two days ago in which Foley had been the star of tape number 1.
If that tape had affected him so much, what would all the rest do, including his own? The boy with the shiny brown hair thought.
He waved a goodbye to his parents, Mike and Helena Beaumont who smiled gracefully at their proud son who kept a smile on his face.
Having no clue the pain and wanders that smile kept hidden.
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