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

this time, Ruby is astounded by the number of results that come up for her now, pages and pages of them. New York is apparently teeming with support groups for people in trauma. Feeling—oddly—like she is being guided, Ruby clicks on the link for a Manhattan meet-up offering support and friendship for people with PTSD, including those with ‘non-traditional’ causes.

Discovering a murder victim. Non-traditional? Ruby reads on.

The meet-up brief describes sessions that include individual sharing (optional) and group discussions: We offer a place of non-judgement, where your safety is the priority. No formal diagnosis of PTSD is required to join. The group meets every two weeks, at a Midtown East location. Address to be shared upon RSVP.

The registration form is short. Ruby fills it out and hits the send button before she has time to think better of it. Almost immediately, an email dings through with a generic welcome note from someone named Larry. Congratulations! Know it takes courage to make the first step in your healing process. You should be proud of yourself …

Attached to the welcome email is a list of dates, locations and times for the group’s spring sessions: the next meeting is set for Thursday, four days from now. Ruby barely even asks her big sister for advice, has never considered seeing a therapist. Is she really going to do this?

Over the speakers, a man is still crooning about New York; as he sings about brand-new starts, the lyric sounds out across the cafe, lands right next to her, and the hairs on Ruby’s arms bristle. There is suddenly no question. She will go to this meet-up. She will seek out people who understand. What is the worst that could happen? If she goes the wrong way, she’ll find what she is looking for, eventually. Because you can find anything in New York, right?

Even a dead body, she thinks, alarmed to discover that, for once, this starkest of truths almost makes her laugh.

When I started showing up in her dreams it was an accident, by the way. There isn’t exactly a difference between awake and asleep for me these days. She’s the one who changes when her eyes are closed, she’s the one who becomes more open. Remembering me standing next to her in Riverside Park, understanding that I followed her home—these are things she forgets in the daylight, and I didn’t know there was a way I could remind her of them. Until it happened.

I try not to hold too tight when she does remember. I really am sorry for all the things she has to carry. That’s why I pushed for her to seek help, back there in the cafe. That’s why I placed my fingers over hers, pressed down on the keys.

Well.

Truth is I can’t touch anything, not really. But it makes me feel better to imagine. That it didn’t all just disappear because someone else wanted it to. That I am still here. Even if no one can see me. Even if nobody knows my name.

Yet.

Small things have started happening, see. Important things. At first, they seemed like little accidents. But now, if I concentrate hard enough, it seems I can drop the beginnings of a thought into Ruby’s head, cause her mind to ripple. It happened with that PTSD article. Just a small nudge, but she felt it, followed it. Noah told me all about trauma. Explained it almost as well as that Boston doctor. Back when we were talking about shaking memories loose, and I imagined a body full of holes. He told me there’s a chance we inherit trauma, that bad memories can get passed down from one generation to another, and I thought about my mother at the time, all the things I never knew about her. But now I wonder if I’ve somehow passed my memories on to Ruby, accidentally pressed them into her bones. The way Noah made it sound—

But that’s enough talking about Noah. My crow, my death bird. I don’t want to think about him, don’t need to, now that I’ve got Ruby. I should have paid more attention to the things he told me, yes. But that won’t do me any good these days. Besides, when I do remember him clearly, I feel a pain as sharp, as awful, as anything I ever experienced when I was alive.

And what’s the point of being dead if they can still hurt you from the other side.

It’s as if they have forgotten me. The others.

Him.

The problem is, if I don’t fully understand how I manage to push through sometimes, I understand even less about why. Most of the time, it’s like I’m a silver fish, darting through a wave, a shadow too quick to catch. But there are times, when I see them up close—Noah shutting the door to my bedroom; Tammy checking her phone; Mr Jackson hiding a box of photographs in his closet, in the space where the Leica used to be—that the waves get too big, they toss me around, batter me against something hard and unyielding, and the water rushes in.

Is it them or me turned upside down when that happens?

All I know for sure is that Ruby is my only calm sea. When the others make me feel as if I’m dying all over again.

Or worse. As if I never existed at all.

We are getting closer, the quote says.

In the accompanying black and white picture, O’Byrne stares out, looking stern and assured. Looking like the kind of man who is used to being listened to.

Consider yourself warned, the quote goes on. You will be found. We are learning more about you every day. It is only a matter of time.

O’Byrne is bluffing, I want to say as Ruby reads this official statement over and over, her heart thumping. He’s trying to lure him out from wherever he is hiding. Trick him into coming forward. They don’t really know anything about him at all.

I too have