Chapter 14: Just relax
I turn the tape over numbly. I feel numb. Like nothing is real. Nothing can ever be real again.
Just two more to go. Don't give up on me now.
I'm sorry, I guess that's an odd thing to say. Because isn't that what I'm doing? Giving up?
Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. And that, more than anything else, is what this all comes down to. Me…giving up…on me.
She's calm. My heart is racing but she's calm. She's not angry anymore. She knows what she's going to do. She has made her mind up and she has decided that she won't live to see another morning. She's certain.
I wish I would die.
How did I miss this? How did I miss such obvious signs.
Sometimes I took things further and wondered how I would do it. I would tuck myself into bed and wonder if there was anything in the house I could use.
Forgive me.
A gun? No. We never owned one. And I wouldn't know where to get one.
What about hanging? Well, what would I use? Where would I do it? And even if I knew what and where I could never get beyond the point of someone finding me – swinging – inches from the floor.
How did it get to this point? But I know how. Hannah's already told me. But there had to be some moment of transformation that turned a bright, bubbly, intelligent child full of innocent curiosities and transcendent smiles into the girl speaking on the tape. I wish I could say it makes no sense to me. I wish I could say that I can't see how you can get to the point where it is not only easier to let go, but it is unnatural to hold on and giving up is simply easier than holding on. I wish I didn't comprehend the deep set ache for an end; had no way to understand the days that never seem to end or the nights that despite everything only bring more pain. I didn't before her death. Not really. Not truly.
I do now. The answer can be summed up in one word. One simple word. Failure. You fail to protect someone. You fail to make amends where they are needed. You fail to hold up your end of a bargain. Your failures, some large, some small, all mount on your shoulders with a crushing weight until you are a mere shadow of a human, a ghost of who you once were. Some failures perhaps haunt you more than others, but the end result is the same. It's amazing how little it takes to push someone beyond the realms of an ordinary darkness into a never ending cycle of hell.
It became a sick sort of game, imagining ways to kill myself. And there are some pretty weird and creative ways.
They say that's fairly common. The focus on how to kill yourself if you're truly suicidal. Hell, I've done enough of it since Hannah died, simply to find a way to outrun my guilt. If I take pills to ease my passing from this life then that is a coward's way out, but at least it is an easy one. It is, providing you pick your drugs carefully and precisely, a painless and quiet way out of this messy and chaotic life. The surest method of ensuring death would be for me to jump in front of a train or other high speed object but that is blunt, brutal and messy. The same goes for high buildings and bridges. There is no art form to it only a jumbled, mangled mess of what used to be a human being. Then of course there is how I plan to be found; do I want some innocent walker or family with small children to come across a body hanging limply from a nearby tree? So you see, death isn't as simple as you may imagine. For a perfect death there has to be a symmetry, there has to be an art form, a formation. A bloated body washed ashore is simply ugly, there is nothing there to show of what life once resided within the carcass that now is.
The thoughts that you can't say out-loud, the ones which would be a sure fire way to get yourself locked up in a mental asylum. But the thoughts that swirl around regardless of the knowledge that they are forbidden.
Do you remember the last thing you ever said to me?
Yes. "Hannah, wait." She was leaving the classroom. I told her to wait. But I didn't make the effort to go after her.
The last thing you did to me?
I let you walk out of that room without a backwards glance.
And what was the last thing I said to you? Because trust me, when I said it, I knew it was the last thing I'd ever say.
"I'm talking about my life, Mr Porter." That's what she said. The life that she threw away that evening. The life I could have saved. She knew exactly what she was going to do when she spoke to me. She knew then that she was going to die. She gave me that one chance to help her. And I failed her. If I had a chance to replay things, press rewind and undo the past, I would move heaven and earth to get to her, to save her from herself. No matter what the later consequences I wouldn't have let the final meeting stand, I'd face the heavenly wrath of the Father himself if necessary.
And then, someone called my name.
Over the tall wooden fence at the side of her house, a head poked up. And whose head would that be? Bryce Walker's.
Jock. Bully. Looking at a scholarship for sporting achievements. Good job really as he has no hope of getting a decent place on brains alone.
Courtney rolled her head my way but kept her eyes shut. "We're in our underwear," she said.
This is what she was talking about when she said there'd been an incident at the party.
Everyone knows who you are, Bryce. Everyone knows what you do. But I, for the record, did nothing to stop you.
No. You wanted him to destroy you completely. You wanted to let go. You needed a reason. A final reason.
Your fingers made their way under my bra. But you didn't grab me. Testing the boundaries I guess. Sliding your fingers along the underside of my breasts.
I'm going to throw up. I come to the realisation just in time to make it to the bathroom. I can hear Hannah's voice indistinctly as lean over the bowl of the toilet retching compulsively for several long minutes. Rewinding the tape back I go back to where I'd left off.
Bryce, you had to see my jaw clench. You had to see my tears. Does that kind of shit turn you on?
I'm going to kill him.
You were touching me…but I was using you. I needed you, so I could let go of me completely.
I am so going to kill him.
For everyone listening, let me be clear. I did not say no or push his hand away. All I did was turn my head, clench my teeth, and fight back tears. And he saw that.
Slowly. Painfully. And with the greatest amount of pleasure.
"Just relax," he said. "Everything will be okay."
Just…relax. The words slam into my brain. The force of them nearly physically knocks me off my seat and I find myself rushing back into the bathroom to retch up whatever is left in my stomach. Just…relax. "Just relax, I only need a few minutes." "Just relax, I'm only messing." "Just relax, everything will be ok." Just relax. It was Bryce. That's why she's repeated that line. It was Bryce. And I am going to have his balls for it. I'll have his balls, his scholarship and his freedom.
When you were done, Bryce, I got out of the hot tub and walked two houses away. The night was over. I was done.
Just relax. I'm going to kill him. I am honestly going to kill him. He didn't rape Hannah Baker, that I know. But he did rape someone.
Just relax.