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

They left the bar around 8 p.m., when the line to buy another drink got too long, moving on for mac ‘n’ cheese at a half-empty diner a world away from New York’s rooftops. As they ate, the conversation returned to men and relationships. Lennie was laughing at Ruby’s recent, disastrous foray into online dating—‘God, dick pics are the worst!’—when she suddenly stopped and waved her fork at Ruby.

‘What about Josh, then?’

‘What—what about him?’ Ruby felt her cheeks go hot.

‘You said before that you don’t really notice guys these days. But Josh is a little hard to miss, don’t you think?’

‘He’s handsome, sure,’ Ruby admitted, and in doing so unwittingly cemented this observation into fact, so that she will feel an odd sense of anticipation the next time she sees him, a nervous flutter at the heft of him. It might be nice, she reasoned over her bowl of pasta, to have someone else to think about from time to time. Which is how her own locked doors started to inch open, slowly but surely. Sometimes it really is as simple as saying a thing out loud, turning it into your newest truth.

(What? You thought desire was more complicated than that?)

What Ruby doesn’t know: Lennie met Josh that very afternoon for coffee. He told her that he’d been spending time researching the Riverside Jane case, had even tried to call in a few journalistic favours from his mates at the precinct, but so far—nothing.

‘It’s like this girl never existed, Lennie,’ he said. ‘Or it suits certain people to have it seem that way.’

(When I think about the continued silence of those who do know the details of my existence, Josh comes as close to the truth as anyone has so far.)

As they continued talking about me, Lennie noticed how often Josh brought the conversation back to Ruby.

‘She’s a bit of a mystery herself, isn’t she,’ Lennie couldn’t help saying when Ruby’s name came up yet again, and Josh’s shrug was too casual, too considered, to indicate anything other than agreement.

‘Kind of exotic, too,’ she added slyly. ‘With that accent and her big, brown eyes, and the way she came here on her own, just jumped right into the unknown.’

‘Not sure what her eyes have to do with that,’ Josh had retorted, but he was grinning, and Lennie realised she’d never seen that particular look on his face before. Something almost bashful. It was enough for her to get her arrows ready, draw back her bow. For nothing is more intoxicating to a fixer than bringing two people together. This one would take some creativity, she knew; both her targets were openly wary of romance. But she had no doubt there was potential in this match, and that afternoon Lennie determined she would do all she could to bring Ruby and Josh together, as if this had been the plan all along.

It could easily have been her life’s work, by the way, playing matchmaker to the damaged like this. If she hadn’t accidentally bound herself to the dead, instead.

In this week of small and significant moments, a week where those posters with the approximation of my face tatter on poles, and my real name stays locked inside people’s mouths, Noah walks past the precinct on West 82nd Street four separate times. DNA from the crime scene once again comes back: No match. Neither victim nor perpetrator are anywhere to be found in any local or national databases; question marks remain where both of our names should be written.

That is to say—as the days since my murder pass, certain people reveal themselves, layer by layer. And others keep holding their secrets tight.

Ruby and Josh show up to the next Death Club meeting, Ruby’s third official meeting in as many weeks, at the exact same time. Walking through the doors of Grand Central Oyster Bar, Josh sees Ruby’s eyes widen as she takes in the amber-lit, terracotta tiles arched over their heads. He had forgotten how iconic the ceiling of this cavernous room is, and Ruby’s reaction makes him feel something akin to pride.

‘It’s a city where you should always look up,’ he says, liking the way Ruby turns to look at him now. When their hostess seats them, the young woman smiles at the pair, the way strangers look at lovers, conspiratorial and approving, so that all three momentarily confuse the occasion. When the other Death Club members arrive, when it becomes clear this is not in fact a date, the hostess finds herself oddly disappointed. Love makes her job easier, diverts the steady stream of workers and tourists arriving each night, their undercurrents of tiredness and resentments buzzing about them. It would have been nice to be in the presence of romance on this spring night.

(She is not the only one who thinks so.)

Seated across the red and white checkered table from each other, with Lennie and Sue still on their way, Ruby and Josh find conversation easier than either would have thought. Soon, Josh is telling Ruby an animated tale about the famous celestial ceiling of the Grand Central Terminal above them, a funny story I already knew, thanks to Noah. How back in 1913, on the day the terminal opened, an amateur astronomer passing through the new building stopped and noticed the blue and gold zodiac mural hung high above everyone’s heads had been painted in reverse, so that east was west, and west was east. Meaning the constellations were not at all where they should be. It is a New York blunder Josh loves; it amuses him to think about the grandeur of that opening day, and the moment one anonymous, practical man looked up and burst the gilded bubble.

‘I never knew that!’ Ruby laughs, admitting she wouldn’t know her Orion from her Pegasus. ‘So, you’re saying the sky is back to front up there?’

‘Either that, or the mural is meant to represent the heavens when