"Hey, Justin. It's Jess again. Please call me back as soon as you get this."

I ended the call for the fifth time, deciding that five times was enough and dropping my phone back into my purse. I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail, my wavy brown locks having a different idea as they blew out of my grip and into my face once more.

I huffed out a frustrated sigh and followed the familiar path I always took home, worry getting the best of me.

I'd seen Justin look a lot of ways. Happy, pissed, hammered, lustful, but never, in three years I'd known him, had I ever seen him with the look he had given me in the hallway at school this afternoon.

The agony, the guilt that had been evident his usual soft and kind eyes. I'd never seen anything like it; other than me every time I looked in the mirror.

The Jessica Davis I had been was gone, dragged down with Hannah Baker the second they lowered her casket into the ground. My friend Hannah.

She had left a long time ago, leaving a lifeless, empty girl in her wake.

"Jess, sweetie!" My mom greeted me with a warm smile at the front door, my brothers standing behind her.

"Hi." I said, forcefully smiling at the three of them.

It was no surprise that Mom, as well as all the other parents in town, had taken a sudden interest in our lives after Hannah's death. They were worried one of their children would be the next one to go.

"Something came for you in the mail." She said, stepping out of the doorway to let me in. I nodded and passed her with a closed mouthed smile. My brothers chased each other into the arcade room down the hall, shouting profanities at each other.

"Here, honey." Mom pushed a loose strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, holding out the shoe box in my direction. I took it hesitantly, not sure if I really wanted to see what was inside.

"Thanks, Mom." I mumbled.

"Jessica, sweetheart. Are you doing okay? How's everything with Justin?" Genuine worry glistened in her eyes.

I shifted on my feet, staring down at the box thoughtfully.

"Yeah, Mom. I'm fine." I turned on my heel and headed back to my room, shutting my door gently behind me.

Setting the shoe box on my bed, I crouched down and pulled a bottle of Liquor I'd taken from Bryce's from beneath my bed, my hand trembling as I stared at it.

I planted myself on top of my pale pink comforter, setting the bottle down beside me as I slowly unwrapped the box, careful not to tear anything I wasn't supposed to.

If this was some sort of joke, something Justin thought would be funny, I'd kill him the second I saw him again.

"What the hell?" I whispered. A row of cassette tapes, something I'd seen hundreds of in Dad's office, sat tightly in the box. Familiar names written on the top of each. My hands fiddled with trying to get them out when a piece of torn notebook paper caught my eye. I pulled it out, blinking a few times to make sure I was seeing what was written on it clearly.

I'm sorry, Jess.

I could tell, just by the messy and shakiness of the handwriting that it had been written by Justin.

"Justin." I clenched the piece of paper in my hand until it was crumbled, anger pulsing through me.

He had the audacity to send me some shitty old shoe box, but couldn't answer any of my texts or calls?

I let the crumbled paper fall to the ground silently, unscrewing the cap on the liquor bottle beside me, tears stinging my eyes at the burning sensation in my throat.

I brushed my fingers along the old cassette player, or as I vaguely remember my dad calling it, a Walkman.

Where and why the hell did Justin get a cassette player?

"Justin, I swear to God," I started, taking the first tape and setting it into the player with one hand, my frail fingers untangling the headphones with the other.

"Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo."

A cry escaped me, my feet getting caught in the headphone cord and tearing them out, leaving the Walkman hanging off the edge of my bed, still playing.

What the hell was that? Was this some sick joke? Was Justin waiting outside my window, ready to laugh his ass off as soon as I let him in?

My hand was a blur as it moved into my line of sight to grab the Walkman hanging off my bed, my fingers trembling as they grasped the small box once more. I took the headphones, pushing my thick hair behind my ears before letting them fall back into place.

"No return engagements. No encore. And this time, absolutely no requests."

I'd recognize the voice in a crowd of millions of people. Hannah Baker.

"I'm not saying which tape brings you into the story. But fear not, if you received this lovely little box, your name will pop up . . . . I promise."

"Now why would a dead girl lie?"

My finger pressed down softly on the pause button, the static in my ears sounding like a soothing lullaby in comparison to what I had just heard.

My heart was pounding against my ribcage, trapping my breath as I tried to release it. My mind couldn't wrap itself around it, the sound of her voice, every word that left her mouth.

The words of a dead girl.

"Jess?" There was a light knock of my window, seeping into my thoughts and giving them a gentle tug until I was out of them. I pushed myself off my bed, a part of me praying that it was Justin standing out there. Disappointment fluttered in my chest when I found the last person I wanted to see standing outside.

Bryce.

"Hey," I clenched the widow sill in my hands, feeling it beginning to dig into my palms until they were stinging with pain.

"You coming to the party tonight?" He flashed me a smile, one that I had always found welcoming, comforting.

"You seriously came all the way down here to ask that? You could have just called." He shrugged, moving closer to the window. Flashes of him standing before me, his hands on my thighs, my shoulders, my face, flickering in and out of focus.

"I thought it'd be better to ask in person." He responded. I nodded, my eyes everywhere outside my window but him.

"So, you coming? I'm sure Justy's gonna be there." The backhanded comment caught my attention.

The last thing I wanted to do was be within a hundred feel of Bryce Walker, but I needed to see Justin. To make sure that he was okay.

"Sure, yeah." I started to shut my window, "You better get your ass out of here, my dad will be home any minute." He saluted me with a wink before ducking under the old oak tree behind the house and becoming nothing but a small speck in the distance.

I slid down the wall, wrapping my arms tightly around myself, my face buried in my knees as I felt my body beginning to ravage with shakes, sobs.

I felt a hand rest on my shoulder, warm and soft, comforting. I lifted my head a fraction, catching the familiar assuring smile of Hannah Baker.

She laid her head back against the wall behind her, as she had done the few times she had been over here, her lips slowly thinning out until there was no reminisce of a smile being there in the first place.

"What's wrong, Jess?" She let her hand fall back on to her lap, blood starting to spread along her white blouse and skirt, her eyes vacant, "Isn't this what you wanted? Didn't you want me dead?"

Something close to a whimper left my mouth, my nails digging into my scalp as I buried my face deeper into my lap.

"Stop it! Make it stop!" I screamed, hearing the loud, thunderous footsteps of my father rushing to my room. I shook my head repeatedly, sobbing.

"I'm sorry, Hannah! I'm sorry!"

*

"I know it may sound like it, but I wasn't completely alone the beginning of my freshman year. Two other freshman, both featured here on Hannah Baker's Greatest Hits, were also new to the area. Alex Standall and Jessica Davis. And while we never became close friends, we did rely on each other those first few weeks of school."

I paused the tape, my eyes on the teenagers littering the Walker's front yard.

I was still reeling in shock over Justin's tape. I had known what he did, sure, but I also knew that Bryce had been the one to send the picture to himself, then the rest of the school. Hannah had lied.

But had she? Or was she only telling her side of the story, what she knew about those next few months of school?

"With one week left of summer vacation, Ms. Antilly called me at home to see if I'd meet her at school. A little new-student orientation, she said."

When we had met. That had been the day Hannah and I had met.

"If she had told me the real purpose of our get-together was to introduce me to a new student, I wouldn't have gone."

Me either.

"I mean, what if we had nothing in common? Or what if I thought we had nothing in common, but she, the other student, thought we did? Or what if the opposite happened and I thought we could become friends and she didn't?

But we did, Hannah. We became friends.

"But the other girl was Jessica Davis, and she didn't want to be there anymore than I did."

That was all it took for my entire body to shut down. Between the alcohol and tapes, I was gone. My mind in another reality, far away from where I was in the present.

"Whoa, there. It looks like someone can't hold their alcohol." I felt arms tighten around my waist, my mind automatically registering the fact that I was in front of Bryce's house and he had been the one to catch me.

"Let go!" I screamed, "Let me go, Bryce!"

But it wasn't Bryce. I could tell by the color of his skin, the soft, almost soothing, scent of cologne that lingered on his body as he held me against his chest.

"Tony?" I breathed out, clenching the Walkman tighter in my hand so it wouldn't hit the ground when I did.

"Jessica." He said with a soft look, "I think we need to talk." 

***AN***

Hope you guys enjoyed! 

Let me know what you thought!

~ChasingMadness24