Hannah Baker—Alex Standall

Hannah Baker—Alex Standall is a relationship that moves from the relief of finding company in a new school to a lasting break shaped by Alex’s list. In Hannah’s account, their early connection was real but fragile: Alex and Jessica Davis helped make the first weeks less lonely, yet his public choice of Hannah’s name turned that tentative belonging into a source of hurt for both women and a starting point for the wider chain she describes.

First Days and First Impressions

Hannah and Alex are both newcomers to the area when Hannah begins her freshman year. She recalls that she was not entirely alone: Alex and Jessica were also new, and the three relied on one another during the first weeks. They did not become close friends, but each offered the others a small defense against the prospect of wandering unfamiliar halls, eating lunch alone, or getting lost alone. This recollection places the relationship’s beginning in ordinary mutual need rather than deep intimacy.

Hannah first meets Jessica in Ms. Antilly’s office at a new-student orientation. Alex enters their orbit at school, where Hannah and Jessica notice him watching them. Jessica asks him whom he was staring at, explaining that they are both new and want to know. Alex stammers that he is new, too, and Hannah remembers that he simply wanted to join their conversation. The initial awkwardness gives way to a longer exchange: the three talk for at least an hour, happy at the thought that the first day of school will not be spent alone.

The scene leaves one detail unresolved at first: whom Alex had been looking at. Hannah later insists that, on that first day at Monet’s, he had been checking out Jessica, not her. That distinction matters because it undercuts the later impression that Alex’s selection of Hannah on the list reflected attraction or preference. In Hannah’s interpretation, the original gaze was directed elsewhere, while the later public pairing served a different purpose.

Friendship at Monet’s

Hannah clarifies that although she and Jessica first met in Ms. Antilly’s office, they got to know one another at Monet’s; Alex also became part of their acquaintance there. The café thus marks both the continuation of their early companionship and the place from which Hannah narrates the relationship’s change. It is not presented as proof that the three were inseparable. Hannah says they never became close friends, but the time they spent together made the prospect of beginning school without company less daunting.

Hannah recalls one exchange in particular: Jessica leaned across the table and whispered that a guy was checking Hannah out. Hannah already knew whom Jessica meant, because she had been watching him too, but she corrected Jessica: he was checking Jessica out. The small correction contains the later conflict in miniature. The two girls compare their perceptions of Alex, and Hannah’s version resists placing herself at the center of his attention. What begins as a shared, almost playful reading of a glance will later be recast through the consequences of the list.

The List and the Break

Hannah connects Alex’s list to the change in how people treated her. She says that after Justin Foley’s earlier story had given the school a sexualized image of her, she was an easy name to put opposite Jessica’s. She argues that Alex did not choose her because he preferred her to Jessica; he chose her to get back at Jessica, knowing Hannah’s name would hurt Jessica more than anyone else’s. The list therefore recasts an earlier impression of Alex’s attention: in Hannah’s account, the choice is an act of revenge, not a declaration of desire.

Hannah says that Alex needed a name to place opposite Jessica’s and that her already damaged reputation made her an effective choice. She identifies this decision as a catalyst: every event documented on the tapes, she claims, might not have happened if Alex had not written her name on the list. She also stresses that the point of the tape is not yet to explain his motivation in full, but to show how people change when they see her name on a stupid list. The relationship becomes consequential beyond the two of them because the list changes the social meaning attached to Hannah and helps set other events in motion.

When Jessica confronts Hannah at school and says they need to talk, Hannah understands that she means Monet’s and believes she knows why. The conversation brings the list’s personal cost into the open. Hannah tells Jessica that Alex did not choose her over Jessica; he chose her to retaliate against Jessica. Jessica closes her eyes and says Hannah’s name almost in a whisper. Hannah preserves the moment as evidence that Jessica understands what Hannah is saying, even as the friendship between the girls is being damaged by the very choice Alex made.

What Hannah Accepts—and Rejects

Hannah acknowledges that she was jealous when she realized Alex had been checking Jessica out on their first day at Monet’s. She also tells Jessica that she knows about the relationship between Jessica and Alex, and says she is willing to accept any blame Jessica wants to place on her for their breakup if it helps Jessica move on. But she immediately draws a boundary: accepting blame does not make the accusation true. Her insistence that the story is not true distinguishes compassion for Jessica’s hurt from agreement with a false account of what happened.

That distinction complicates Hannah’s view of Alex as well. She does not deny that the three of them shared a meaningful beginning, nor does she say that she and Alex ever became close. Instead, she sets the early companionship beside his later act and measures the distance between them. The boy who once wanted to join two newcomers’ conversation becomes, in her account, the person whose list helps turn a private social injury into a public label.

The relationship’s significance lies in that transformation and in Hannah’s causal reading of it. Alex’s list is not merely an insult between classmates: Hannah presents it as a decision that exploits her reputation, wounds Jessica, and helps create the conditions for later events on the tapes. Her recollection preserves the smaller truth alongside the larger accusation: before the list, the three new students had briefly made school feel less lonely; after it, that fragile connection could no longer shield them from the consequences of what Alex had done.