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

It took me a little longer to capture Josh’s attention, or rather, to figure out how to direct it. He was not interested in why Ruby came to New York. Did not ponder her living arrangements or how she filled her days, or what she left behind in Australia. Over brunch, he had completely missed the slant of her cheekbones and the map of her mouth, remained unfazed by the smallness of her hands, the way her fingers wrapped around whatever glass she was holding, or her habit of pulling at her earlobe when she was deep in thought. None of this interested him, none of this came home with him when they parted, which wasn’t exactly unusual for Josh, because not much at all about the opposite sex interested him these days. Lennie and Sue were different, he made time for Death Club because he liked the way their minds worked, the things they didn’t shy away from. And because his agent agreed he might get a book out of it someday. Which is how I figured it out in the end. The hook and the reel.

Me.

Riverside Jane.

He had heard about me, of course. But after meeting Ruby, he started paying more attention to the details. And that’s when he began to notice the jogger reference in every blog post or news article he read. The body was found by a jogger. A jogger made the unfortunate discovery, just after 6 a.m. Jogger encounters dead body in Riverside Park. How many times had he read a variation of this sentence and not stopped to think about this ubiquitous jogger, present in so many tales of woe? How, as a writer, had he not considered what finding a dead body must be like, especially if the discovery made the headlines, led to a massive investigation like this one. How odd that Lennie’s new project, this Australian woman she’d insisted he meet, should turn out to be one such jogger. The jogger in fact. Out of this spark of fascination, a small fire for Ruby was started, a wondering, and that is where I came in, tending those flames until they licked at his dreams.

It’s getting easier. How to do it. Because after that last Death Club conversation, I let myself remember something Noah said, one of those things I never understood at the time.

‘You have a rich inner world, Alice. Populated with people and places that suit your liking.’

What he meant was this: we all exist in our own little worlds, our own private universes. We don’t have to see a person in the flesh to think about them; it’s enough that they’re there in our heads, which is where we do most of our looking, anyway. It doesn’t therefore matter if I’m aware. What matters is that the original members of Death Club can now see Ruby, even when they close their eyes. I just need to show them what’s already there.

Of course, there are limitations. I can’t, for example, make Josh think about Ruby while he’s brushing his teeth or talking on the phone, but I can help turn his head when he passes the proliferation of Australian coffee houses near his workplace, or encourage him to pause over an Aussie Rules football game when he’s flicking through sports channels late at night. Songs on the radio make it even easier. AC/DC. INXS. He hums along to his favourite bands from Down Under, and his mind wanders to Ruby on its own from there. My work is basically done.

Lennie, by contrast, doesn’t take much work at all. That’s mostly because she falls in love with people on the spot. Not romantic love, exactly, but something similar, a kind of euphoric curiosity that propels her to unravel the mysteries of a person, get to know who they really are. She had been right about Ruby’s acute loneliness, the night she watched her from across the room at the group therapy session. And right, too, that loneliness, like any kind of suffering, cloaks a person, hides their endearing quirks and funny stories and good intentions. There’s always someone super interesting under that cloak, Lennie is sure of it, and she’s determined to help Ruby shed her layers. Knowing, without any help from me, that something happened before Ruby found a dead body, that her tangible grief owes itself to more than the death of an unnamed girl.

Essentially, they have positioned themselves perfectly. Taken their individual stories and found a way to place Ruby at the centre of them, a new glue to hold Death Club together. This is exactly what I wanted, a bind to ensure they keep meeting, keep talking, keep asking and answering their questions, so that, eventually, those questions lead back to me. The real me, not Riverside Jane, interesting as she might be, but the girl who was going to live more than seventy-nine years. Until a man took all those years away.

Is our death fated? Do we have a pre-destined, inescapable end, or is it all just arbitrary?

This is the question they ask tonight at Patsy’s, as pasta is twirled around forks, the red sauce from Lennie’s Bolognese staining the crisp white tablecloth between them.

How I might ask it: Was he always going to kill me?

Sue, the first at the table to speak, is emphatic.

‘I’ve always thought that fate is simply a construct designed to help us make sense of things after they’ve happened. It’s how we survive the random after-effects of living.’

‘My parents have God for that,’ Lennie says. ‘“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord”, isn’t that the saying? Either way, they seem pretty sure he’s the one calling the shots.’

‘I prefer to put my faith in the Moirai,’ Josh responds, flashing white teeth in a sardonic grin. ‘Three old women weaving our fate, spinning, measuring, cutting. Life hanging by a thread. Much more evocative than some old guy who is or isn’t his