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

one another, Josh could have walked down to the river with her, he could have held her hand and assured her that—but, here, Ruby stops her train of thought. Josh is not the man she thought he was. They had an interlude and now it’s over, and she simply needs to be more careful with her judgement from now on. Stop giving her heart away so fast.

(Why do people, the good ones, always seem to blame themselves when someone deceives them? Seems to me, when that happens, the bad guys get away with more than just their obvious crimes.)

Perhaps it is her current isolation, so soon after she thought she’d found her people. Maybe it’s a way to evict Josh from her head, to think about something else today. Or perhaps it was merely a matter of time, an inevitability. Whatever it is, on this Tuesday in late May, six weeks to the day after my murder, Ruby finds herself back in Riverside Park, the grounds humming with people now, runners and cyclists and skaters rolling past signs on metal poles that flap ads for the twilight movies and sunrise yoga classes starting soon.

(I would have loved this place in summer.)

On this sunny day, as Ruby cuts through the upper levels of the park and heads down to the waterfront, her recollections of that earlier, stormy morning feel more like a movie than a memory. Dank tunnels and dead ends have been replaced by dappled trees, families strolling, dogs on leashes. Following the river, the running trail is more like a freeway today, people moving fast and slow, back and forth. It seems impossible to Ruby that she had once been down here all alone. Her head moves left and right, taking in every benign marker she passes. Nothing looks familiar in the sunlight; it is like she has never been here before.

It’s not as if the place remembers you.

The morning Ruby found me, the park had pressed down on her, closed her in. Now it all looks blink-bright. Water sloping toward New Jersey on her right, sports fields and banks of stairs on her left. The park is wide open and sprawling, postcard perfect. It’s not until Ruby comes to the exact place, not until she bends over and puts her hands on the metal railing, just like she did that morning six weeks ago, that her body protests. Reminding her, in a rush of adrenaline and heart constriction, that there is no movie in her mind. Instantly, looking down at the water, she is back inside the reality of what happened here. The sky cracks and cars swoosh overhead, rain soaks through her, pools in her eyes, and there is a girl face down at the water’s edge, not getting up, not turning over when Ruby shouts at her. She remembers the body being picked up, carried out from under the path, remembers bright red, and the pale of naked legs. Sirens flashing, the bright colours behind her eyes, silver foil wrapped around shaking shoulders. Men with gloves on, searching. Somewhere amongst these mental images, Josh suddenly appears, and Ash too, as confusing and disorienting to her senses as it is to remember finding the body of Alice Lee.

Ruby is trying to breathe through these jumbled memories when a man comes up beside her and offers a friendly smile.

‘Nice spot down here, isn’t it,’ he says, so tall and broad shouldered that for a second, he blocks the sun.

‘I …’ Ruby blinks at the vastness of him. He is wearing neat shorts and a polo top, and he smells of something woody, expensive. His eyes are bright blue, sparkling, and if this spot isn’t nice at all, if it is the place Ruby found the body of Alice Lee, this man is at least something clean, fresh, separate from the horror. It might be nice to forget for a moment, she thinks, almost desperately. To ignore what she knows about this place.

Ruby turns away from the river to face him, turns away from Josh, from Ash. From me.

(I should have known she’d do that, eventually.)

‘It is pretty special, yes,’ she says to the blue-eyed man.

‘Whoa! What is that accent?’ he shoots back, coming closer.

Ruby tries to widen her smile.

‘I’m Australian. I guess I haven’t picked up the New Yorker accent yet.’

And, so, it begins. He asks her how long she’s been in the city, tells her he lives in the neighbourhood. Asks if she likes this part of town. As they talk, Ruby can tell the man is well looked after, from his tanned skin and bright eyes, to the inconspicuous designer labels stitched everywhere from his shirt to his shoes. Those straight American teeth. Dressed in her worn-through running gear, she does not miss how he glances at her body between sentences, assessing her, too.

‘I’m not bothering you, am I?’ he asks at one point in their conversation.

‘No, not at all,’ she says, and almost believes it. ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’

‘Would you like to join me for coffee, then?’ he asks. ‘I’ve always thought about visiting Australia, and I’d love to ask you some questions about it.’

If Ruby feels a heart-patter of wariness, it gets lost in that desire to forget where she is, what she knows.

‘Sure. That would be nice,’ she responds, and before she has time to think better of it, she is following the man to the crowded patio of a small cafe, taking the seat he holds out for her. His name is Tom. He tells Ruby he works in finance—‘Yes, down on Wall Street!’—and his style of conversation is breezy, brash, so that she only has to nod at his commentary or answer his questions directly, rather than come up with something new or interesting to say. As Tom chatters away in this fashion, Ruby finds her thoughts drifting to Death Club, missing the way her new friends listened as well as they talked. There is so much