I'm listening to someone give up. Someone I knew—someone I liked. I'm listening... but still, I'm too late.

And like I said, I didn't know him very well, but my ears perked up whenever I heard his name. I guess I wanted to hear something - anything - juicy. Not because I wanted to spread gossip. I just couldn't believe someone could be that good. If he was actually that good... wonderful. Great! But it became a personal game of mine. How long could I go on hearing nothing but good things about Clay Jensen? Normally, when a person has a stellar image, another person's waiting in the wings to tear them apart. They're waiting for that one fatal flaw to expose itself. But not with Clay.

It's up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.

You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.

I repeat his words in my head. What's going on? What's going on? Oh, well, since you asked, I got a bunch of tapes in the mail today from a girl who killed herself. Apparently, I had something to do with it. I'm not sure what that is, so I was wondering if I could borrow your Walkman to find out. 'Not much,' I say.

Personally, I never understood the power of having books written about your experience - whatever that experience may be - until I wrote one and started hearing from teens. I just got an email from a reader who said that "Thirteen Reasons Why" was the first time they had felt understood. A book shouldn't be anybody's first time feeling understood and that's where censorship bothers me. These books need to be out there.

And it feels strange, almost sad, to walk through ther empty halls. Each step I take sounds so lonely.