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

viewed from the outside, in,’ Josh answers. ‘The jury is still out on whether the reversal of those stars was deliberate, or a rather ironic mistake for a building dedicated to navigation.’

They are both laughing now, mimicking the consternation of those in charge of festivities on that 1913 opening day. I prefer to think of the lone astronomer just off the train, thumb and forefinger to his chin, scanning the skies, and I see Noah’s face in this moment, and Franklin too, watching from the doorway, almost as if they’re waiting for me. The scene is blurry, as if I’m looking through tears, but the waves don’t come this time. I’m trying to understand what that means, when Lennie and Sue arrive, causing those other faces to shimmer and disappear.

We each take a seat at the table.

It soon becomes clear this will not be a regular Death Club meeting tonight. With Josh and Ruby still laughing, Lennie asks to be let in on the joke, and soon Josh is repeating the tale of the starry ceiling above them. From this beginning, the stories traded across Cape May Salts and martinis and crème caramels remain light, buoyant, and for the most part, I do not mind. Something about seeing Noah and Franklin like that has slipped me into a mood deeper than sorrow, and I cannot begrudge these friends wanting a night to themselves. It feels inevitable even, as I watch Lennie grimace over a raw oyster, and listen to Josh conjuring another story about New York’s quirks and mistakes, while Sue explains the difference between lobster and crayfish to Ruby, biting into her first Maine lobster roll. Nobody says they are not going to talk about life and death tonight, yet they all agree to this armistice. I see this understanding pass quietly between them, and I find myself moving back from the table, letting their conversations fade.

To watch them from a distance is to see arms touching, hands grazing. Broad smiles and secret glances. Glasses clinked together, forks dropped with a clatter. Butter dripping onto the tablecloth and napkins pressed against mouths. Red wine and whiskey ordered, and small, full sighs. I see how they have travelled a great distance together this past week, like the passengers teeming in and out of the terminal above us. If intimacy is exponential, it is opportunistic, too, taking advantage of nights like this to assert itself, lock everyone in place.

I am fascinated by the shift, yet that deeper-than-sorrow feeling persists. Because I know I do not belong at this table. I cannot join the living as they trade their stories, cannot share any part of my day, my past or my now, the way they do. They are discovering each other, moving forward together, while I remain the dead girl, Jane. Riverside, Doe. A month after my murder, without any fresh revelations to stoke public interest, I am a news story already growing old.

Because the people who do know my stories have stayed silent. Friends—and a lover, too—whose fingers might twitch toward their phones whenever the Riverside murder is mentioned, but they never, ever make the call. Just as the members of Death Club can set me to the side tonight, the people who know me, love me, have been doing this for weeks now. Ever since, each on their own, they thought, What if that’s my Alice? And then quickly pushed me away.

When you see it all from the outside, you realise how little of anything is where it is supposed to be. People’s love gets muddled up, too. Reversed. East is west and west is east. Sometimes the reordering is unnoticeable. And sometimes, when you look up, there is a vast, empty space where the stars used to be.

Life is getting better for Ruby Jones. She has, as she told her sister, made friends. New York glitters in their presence, and this is more than she could have hoped for. Some evenings, like this last one, she might even say that she is happy.

At last.

But there is still a dead girl. An unnamed dead girl who shows up in her dreams, asking to be known. There is still that bloodied face, beseeching Ruby when she closes her eyes. This is not something she can ignore.

Ruby knows how to be sad. She knows what to do with her sorrow. But what about happiness? What about joy creeping up on despair, disorienting it with laughter and light. What do you do with that contradiction?

In other words: How do you hold your pain close and let it go at the very same time.

It is Tammy who finally makes the call.

Of everyone, she has been the least able to keep me from niggling at her thoughts, though it took time for her to acknowledge things were not quite right. Unlike Mr Jackson, Tammy did not subscribe to any of the national papers; my friend seldom paid attention to the news in general, so for a while there, she had no idea about the murder over in New York. She really was too busy monitoring her father’s sobriety and keeping Rye out of trouble, both men increasingly using her strength and even temper as their leaning post. Days were full, and nights made up for the days, until she’d let a few weeks, and then a few more go by without checking in with me. Back then, she still thought I was with Mr Jackson, remembered me practically hanging up on her when he came through the door, and if she’s honest, this last phone call had bothered her a little. The way I had seemed so consumed by him. It wasn’t enough to make her angry at me, but it was enough to stop her from messaging on my birthday (though she would say she simply forgot), and enough to keep her attention focused elsewhere.

She’ll reach out if she needs me, she told herself, and that’s it, isn’t it.

That’s how