Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz (books to read for teens txt) 📕

footing as they approached the body. Was the girl already down by the water when she was killed, or did someone drag her off the walkway and throw her over the railing? How strong would you have to be to do that?

Why would anybody do that?

(We both ask this question over and over.)

The shower has been running so long that the water has gone cold, and Ruby makes herself think of Ash, heads for the only loop in her mind that feels familiar, her one reliable distraction. Remembering when she last saw him in person, she tries to focus on something alive and breathing and real. She has to think of Ash, or the heaving, bone-shaking sobs will start again, the ones that felled her when she first stood under this shower in her muddy running clothes, the water so hot it stung all over. Ruby’s hands were trembling so badly she couldn’t get them to cooperate, couldn’t make her fingers unclasp her bra, or lift her saturated top over her head. As she struggled to undress, the hot, hot water needled at her newly exposed skin, and the sobbing came up out of her as a howl. Something animal and angry, something rage-filled, until it all emptied out, and Ruby was left sitting naked on the shower tiles, hyperventilating. It was as if she couldn’t remember how to breathe. She kept seeing the body, kept feeling the terror of waiting out there alone, with that yellow hair swirling in the water, sky thundering above her. And then, just as suddenly as the crying hit, Ruby clicked over into a kind of numbness, found an empty space behind her eyes she had never known was there, a place where she could stare, unblinking, letting the water cool over her. Just so she could tremble in a different way.

Better to think about Ash, about the mess her life is in, because she can control that, she can live inside a comprehensible drama. She can be that woman. The mistress. The woman with no self-respect. She does not know how to be this other person. How to be someone who discovered a body. She does not know how to be someone who stood across from that body, waiting for the police to arrive, counting to ten over and over, answering the questions the 911 operator asked, and all the while staring at the girl on the rocks, wishing she would just lift her head, say Hey! back at her, even as Ruby knew, looking at those exposed legs, the twist of the girl, that it was too late. That there was no point climbing down onto the rocks, because the girl was already dead.

I found a dead girl today.

This is the text Ruby sends Ash when she finally gets out of the shower. She types out the words, and then switches her phone to silent, feeling that strange emptiness settle behind her eyes again, before getting into bed, still wrapped in her towel. She stares at the ceiling, listening to the rain outside, not even flinching when thunder shakes through the walls.

She gets up off the bed around three in the afternoon. She hasn’t eaten. She can’t eat. She needs a drink, she realises, whiskey specifically. The craving for that amber liquid, for the warmth of it, is her only sure thing, as if someone had fed her this as medicine, long ago. She pulls on tights, boots, a thick sweater. All black. She feels safer somehow, wrapped in dark winter clothing, the kind that swamps her frame, hides her. She’s glad it’s still raining outside, cannot imagine sunshine or blue skies. The world has shifted in just a few hours. The way it always shifts in just a few hours. It’s not years or decades—that’s simply how we tally the axis-shifts, how we adjust and recover from them. We think in years—How was this year, what’s your New Year’s resolution, I’m so glad to see this year gone—but it’s really the hours that change us.

Ruby was a different person when she got up just a few hours ago.

It is possible, she considers, the girl was still alive back then.

(She thinks of me as the girl. The first of the many new names I will be given. ‘I’m Alice,’ I whisper, but the sound comes out as a rush of rain.)

Taking an umbrella from the front desk, Ruby heads back out into the wet. She makes it down the mostly empty streets quickly, heads toward the dirt-wood floors and fairy lights of a small bar she has walked by many times these past few weeks. Thinking, this will be a place where she will be left alone to drink, but she won’t be alone. She never again wants to be as alone as she was this morning.

The sole bartender is distracted by a TV screen on the wall when she walks in; a basketball replay has his full attention. When he sets down her whiskey, the glass is almost full to the rim. He returns to the game before Ruby can say thank you, and she turns away, relieved he didn’t want to make small talk. Slinking away with her drink, she sees two couches at the very back of the bar, ratty and low to the ground. Choosing the one in the darkest corner, Ruby tucks her feet up underneath her and is grateful for the first burn of whiskey in her throat, the small relief of it. Closing her eyes briefly, she wills for her mind to be as quiet as this corner, this place. Prays for the drink to calm her.

Flesh exposed, like bruised fruit. A hand splayed across the rocks.

She opens her eyes.

The older, serious guy who came later. O’Byrne, the homicide detective. He gave Ruby a card with his name on it, said they would bring her in for a formal interview tomorrow, but she should call immediately if she remembered anything. He said people can go