Just Like That...

Well the theme of this book is really representing its title in a good way. Just Like That is a central theme in this book because Hanna is learning that "just like that" things can change. Hook-ups become break-ups, friends become foes and life becomes death in an instant.  In the next 100 pages things really get turned upside down for Hanna. As her friends try to console her over her ending friendship/ hook-up with Will, information is left to slip between the cracks of trust. Hanna's friendship with Maura and Kelsey has lasted over ten years without a break but things are slowly about to crumble with them. After her friends find out Will has a famous, rouge, rock star sister and that Hanna was the last to talk with the teens who fell through the ice and died things get heated. There was a simple phrase, "talk and you die", something the three girls knew was never to be broken but when drugs and alcohol get involved everything slips out. Maura slips it to her boyfriend one night after a few too many shots and a few to many hits. His big mouth gets it around the whole school and beyond and when Hanna is approached at a party and ridiculed for starting a vicious rumor she is sent over board. She sits the girls down and they all try to avoid the elephant in the room, somebody has talked and now they will die. Maura confesses to telling her boyfriend and Hanna is enraged. The fallowing week she skips Monday and Tuesday, however, Wednesday when she goes to school Hanna can sense the two girls are keeping something from her. When Hanna confronts them Kelsey admits to kissing Spencer, Hanna's ex-boyfriend, while they were still dating and realizes he was never upset about the break-up but rather at the fact that he had thought Hanna knew he cheated.
Hanna is so full of emotion she goes to see her counsoler, she has asked for drop out forms and being 18 and enough credits to graduate, she can do so. After a week she realizes she is suddenly out of the loop when party invites go out and she isn't on the list but that isn't her main concern, she is a working girl now. Her mom is consensual with her decision because she says that "sometimes school just isn't the place to be", kind of like Aerin Walker, Will's Rock star sister with a dark past.