PROLOGUE
There are a few things you should know about me before we begin this story. I think these things are important in order for you to understand why . . .whyI did the things I did,whyI am who I am and justwhy?Because isn’twhy?the ultimate question?Whyis everything?Whyis this andwhyis that andwhyam I?
So, here are the facts: my name is Becca Thorne. That’s not my real name, by the way. My actual name is Pebecca Thorne, and the story of how I lost that little sloping line that magically turns a “P” into an “R” is quite a peculiar one. It involves a single drop of water that fell on just the right spot on my birth certificate to magically dissolve the ink. The stray drop of water came from my mother’s eye, right around the time that she heard the news that my father had died in a car accident. If my father hadn’t died at that exact moment, and my mother had received the news a mere second later, I might not have gone through my entire life being looked at strangely whenever people read my name out for the first time.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I bring up my name right now—surely something as trivial as a name should have little to do with all the existential questions ofwhy? But I disagree; I think my name has a lot to do with all thewhysof my life. A name is important and being given the wrong name soon after your birth definitely gets you off on the wrong foot. Not to mention being given the wrong name under such wrong circumstances. My strange misnaming always left me feeling like some great tragedy had been etched into my story right from the very beginning. It always left me feeling that I didn’t really know who I was, and, like that missing line, I too was missing something.
So that’s one thing to note about me; the other thing is that I consider myself a deeply flawed human. I know what you’re thinking: Everyone has flaws, and while this is true, my flaws really have led me to choose the wrong fork in the road more times than I care to remember. Dinner fork, fish fork, salad fork, dessert fork . . .Yup, been there, done that, got the forking T-shirt.
By now, you’re probably curious about what these flaws are and why I have them. Whilst thewhatis perhaps easier to answer; thewhy, though, well, that’s a little trickier, but I do suspect it has a lot to do with that single stray tear all those years ago. The tear that sealed my fate and made me who I am.
And who am I? I hear you ask. Honestly, I don’t think I’m entirely sure of that either. But I am sure of a few things, and they are definitely things worth noting. I’m a person who cares far too much about what others think of me! Sometimes, I care so much about what others might think of me and what I’m doing that I land up being crippled with fear, and do nothing at all.
Let’s move on to number two, now. Here it is: I work far too hard trying to prove the world “wrong” about me. I don’t even know what I’m trying to prove half the time, or to whom. But I just am. I’m constantly doing things just to be able to say, “See, I did it. HA!” Honestly, it’s bloody exhausting.
And here’s the last one, and perhaps it’s the one that’s landed me in the most trouble . . . I jump before I think. I jump before I’ve even thought about thinking. I jump with both feet and both hands and every other limb and digit one can jump with. The problem is, I always forget to take my brain with me on these jumps. I always seem to leave it behind as I run off blindly towards a fruit fork, or—God forbid—one of those sharp, pointy, oyster forks that can definitely poke your bloody eye out.
So, like I said, I think it’s important to remember these things as we embark on this story together. Because, if I think about it now, it all becomes very clear to me how I landed up in the situation I currently find myself in. I think it’s rather obvious that my flaws and that tear have all played a good part in helping me choose this particularly twisty fork in the road that has found me in such a monumentally, stupendously enormous amount of . . .
