The Things I Know
Amanda Prowse
PROLOGUE
Hitch pulled the jotter from her bedside table and unscrewed the top of her pen before writing down the thoughts that raced around inside her head. A small act, but one that encouraged the words to stop rolling and helped her think a little straighter.
She had always done it. Some might consider her thoughts and dreams to be somewhat juvenile, but for someone who was born with challenges, a girl who had always lived life a few steps behind her peers, lurking in the shadows, hidden from the shiny, perfect girls who reached for the stars, it was how she expressed everything that was too hard to say out loud.
These are the things I know . . .
I know my name is Thomasina ‘Hitch’ Waycott.
I know I’m not like everyone else.
I know I was born a little bit different, like someone held the instructions upside down or lost a part when they opened the box.
I also know that words are powerful things and they have weight.
I know certain words have sat in my stomach for as long as I can remember and weigh so much that when I’m in a crowd or I meet someone new they pull my shoulders down and make my head hang forward so I can only look at the floor.
Tard.
Fuckwit.
Rabbitmouth.
I know I want to see other countries.
I know I want to go to New York.
I know I want a boyfriend.
I know I want my own kitchen.
I know I want to paint my nails instead of having them caked in mud.
I know I want to own clothes that are pretty.
I know I want to own sparkly red shoes that I will never get to wear but I can look at whenever I want . . .
What I don’t know is just how different I am and I also don’t know how I can find this out.
And I know that some days I’m happy and other days I’m sad, but that’s the same for everyone, isn’t it?
ONE
The two drove back from the Barley Mow in the pickup truck, the dark, shadowy lanes lit in part by the full bright moon that hung low in the late night sky.
It had been a good evening. How Hitch loved Jonathan being home, realising in that moment just how keenly she’d felt the absence of her clever little brother, who had been away at agricultural college for the last couple of years. And now he was back – her entertainer and her protector.
Jonathan, look after your sister!
Her parents had been yelling this at him since he’d been old enough to walk and talk. And that was kind of the unwritten rule: that they looked after each other. Right now Jonathan was drunk as a skunk and it was her turn to watch out for him by driving him home.
The whole evening had felt curiously like a celebration of sorts, as a good night out often did. They had won at pool, beer had been sunk, the jukebox fed with coins, and their high spirits now lingered in the car. Jonathan sat upright in the passenger seat, his face ruddy from too much drink, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his breath sour. The windows were rolled down to let the cold night air into the cab of the truck and the sounds of their music out.
‘D’you think Shelley might like to go out for a drink with me?’ He slurred a little.
‘You like Shelley?’ This was news.
‘Kind of.’ He sighed. ‘Not really – well, I don’t know. I think she’s pretty and lovely and straightforward and kind,’ he rattled on, ‘but you know what it’s like, Hitch – around here we can’t be too choosy. There’s not that many options.’
‘You can’t go for Shelley just because there’s not much choice.’ She thought about the nice-enough girl who worked behind the bar and who’d been in her class at school. ‘I think that’s a bit mean.’
‘I would never want to be mean to her – she’s fabulous. I just feel like I could go crazy here!’ he yelled.
‘You go crazy? You only came home a couple of weeks ago, and actually the way you’re shouting like a madman makes me think you’re probably halfway there already.’
‘Maybe, but I’m twenty-one, Hitch. I want more than this!’ He looked up through the windscreen at the wide, dark rural sky. ‘Sweet home Whamalama!’ Jonathan bellowed, ignoring her point.
‘That’s not the words.’ She sighed.
‘I don’t care, because I have a secret.’ He grinned at her, tapping the side of his nose before drumming his fingertips loudly on the dashboard.
‘I couldn’t care less if you have a secret.’
‘Good, because I’m not going to tell you what it is.’
‘Good, because, as I said, I don’t care!’
‘Good then, because I’m not telling you!’
Some seconds later she let loose the question that jumped up and down on her tongue: ‘So what is it then?’ She was confident that if he did have a secret it would be nothing of great significance, because she knew practically everything about him.
Over the last couple of years she had devoured the texts and emails he sent from his college digs on the other side of the county. For Hitch, reading about the life he led while learning the business of agriculture in readiness to take over the family farm, it might as well have been on the moon. She would lie in her childhood bed, reading with a smile about the drunken antics of Jonathan and his squad of buddies, who, it seemed, were able to make a party out of the most mundane of events. She pictured the characters he mentioned – Louis, Jasper, Alex, Ben and Big Olly – living her life vicariously through her brother’s stories.