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

Despite their camera-ready smiles, they of all people would understand you can’t survive every situation on your own. That sometimes you need help to get up off the floor.

But she isn’t the one that needs help, is she?

Something she realises now. She went to the precinct because she wanted to be around people for whom Jane is the only thing that matters. To stay focused on that body, and to be closer to her, too, the way she was just a few days ago. It doesn’t feel right to have been there first and to just go about her life from then on, as if nothing had happened. She wants to be with Detective O’Byrne, sorting through evidence, looking for clues, finding the missing links.

This really is the only thing that matters.

I could help, she thinks, and then stops herself, feeling foolish. Maybe she has gone a little crazy, after all. Imagining a place for herself at the table like that. Imagining she could make a difference to the investigation.

Ruby hears Jennings now, the way he said it might be good to talk about what she experienced down at the river. Messaging Ash is sure as hell not going to make things better, she knows. Cassie with her gentle scolding, and entreaties to come home, won’t do either. But who does that leave, then? Like a whisper in another room, Ruby gets the feeling there is an important conversation going on without her that contains the answers she is looking for. She senses an invitation, waiting. If she can only figure out where those whispers are coming from.

Unsure what to do with this new concept, floating just out of reach, Ruby turns off her phone, puts it in a drawer, before lying back down on the bed. Eventually, she falls into a fitful, early morning sleep, dreaming of a young woman with a spade as tall as she is, digging at the earth, singing as she works, and when she wakes from this dream it is near on midday. Ruby can hear workmen talking and laughing outside her window, hanging off their planks, swinging on their ropes. They are going about their business. The city keeps moving.

You need to keep moving, too.

These words come through more like a shout than a whisper, catapulting Ruby up and out of bed. She showers and dresses carelessly, ties her wet hair in a knot, and is out the door fast. It is chilly outside, but the April sun is a bright glare in a clear blue sky, and Ruby scolds herself for losing half the day already. Something shifted while she was sleeping. A click and unlock. She does not want to wake on the bathroom floor, or sleep while the sun is out on a Sunday. She does not want to cry on the street, and she does not want to send drunken, unanswered messages across the ocean.

What Ruby wants is to be useful. It might be foolish to think that Detective O’Byrne would have any use for her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t help in other ways. Even if it simply means remembering that every Jane Doe—her Jane Doe—is a real person, with a real name they deserve to get back.

What to do next, then? Who might want to talk with her about dead girls, who might want to climb down into the darkness with her?

The answer, when it comes, seems obvious. There must be other finders of the dead out there. She just needs to work out how to find them. Heading to the nearest coffee shop, carrying her idea carefully, as if it might break, Ruby settles on a high stool at the window and connects her laptop to the free wi-fi. An over-size latte is soon set down in front of her. The comfort of coffee, she thinks, before squeezing her eyes shut, willing inspiration to come.

‘Finding a dead body’ might be a good place to start.

She carefully types these words into the search bar on her laptop, holds her breath as the results appear. This feels like the beginning of something, that whisper from another room getting louder, but the first few search results are all about something called Death Clean-ups, an apparently burgeoning biohazard industry Ruby has never heard of. These grim advertorials for wiping crime scenes clean are followed by list after list of ‘I found a dead body!’ stories, blog posts decorated with words like gruesome and horrifying and nightmare. Ruby gives this content a cursory glance only; she is not looking for titillation.

Finally, three quarters down the page, a headline jumps out at her.

PTSD: When the body gets stuck in fight or flight mode.

So that you don’t, you know, get stuck. Wasn’t this the language Officer Jennings used outside the precinct? This isn’t exactly what she had in mind, but she clicks on the link anyway, letting her breath out slowly as the article loads.

Her coffee is cold by the time she finishes reading. Here, laid out by a well-known doctor from Boston, is the clearest explanation for what trauma does to a person, to their mind and body. The flashbacks, the constant visions of the rain and the river, all the obsessive thoughts swirling around. The way she keeps dreaming about dead girls. Not to mention her sudden paranoia, the idea that any man she encounters might be capable of murder. It’s all explained by the doctor. This hypervigilance, he says, is a mark of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And danger only has to be perceived, he asserts, for PTSD to be triggered. Encountering a dead body is actually right there on his list. A familiar song about the wonders of New York croons over the cafe’s speakers as Ruby ponders this new information, wonders what to do with what feels, suddenly, like a key in her hand.

And then she remembers her earlier plan. To seek out other finders of the dead. Perhaps this is where they are hidden. Fingers typing fast