Ransom(26)
“Uh… okay?”
“You don’t get it?”
“No, I get it. I just don’t get why it’s a thing. I mean, why don’t you just, you know, talk about those things as they come up? Why do you need a list?”
“Because it’s so much more fun this way!”
I meet Karen’s eyes in the mirror.
She smiles kind of sheepishly. “It is fun. I have no idea why. And sometimes it helps Paige when she’s feeling a little scattered.”
I suddenly realize that Karen’s obsession with lists and schedules might not be quite as random as it seems. Maybe all of these things were created with the purpose of helping Paige find some elusive order in her life.
I smile. “Okay, I’m sold. Let’s make a talk list.”
Karen retrieves a piece of paper from her bag. “Me first. Um… let’s discuss… what is the hottest thing we can imagine each member of Ransom doing?”
I groan. “I cannot do that. I can’t imagine Reed Ransome doing anything sexy, I’m sorry.”
“Too bad,” Karen singsongs. “No one is allowed to veto an item on the talk list. All subjects are equally worth discussion.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
“Okay, my turn,” Paige says, clapping her hands. “Um… how do you think the world would be different if dinosaurs had never gone extinct?”
Karen laughs as she scribbles it down. “Good one. Daisy?”
“Uh…” I’m at a complete loss. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve had very few conversations in the past year to draw from.
“It can be something totally random and silly,” Paige tells me. “Obviously. Or it can be something real. Whatever you want.”
“Okay. How about… what’s your favorite vacation and why?”
“Nice,” Paige says. “That’s a good getting-to-know-you-better question. Karen?”
“My next subject will be… what is the sexiest thing that you want to do with a member of Ransom?”
“You have a one-track mind, Karen,” I say drily.
She waggles her eyebrows at me. “Paige?”
“Would you rather replace your ears with toes, or replace your hands with giant noses? Discuss.”
Karen and I both crack up.
“Paige is the best at making talk lists,” Karen says, writing it down.
“That’s a lot to try and follow,” I say. I decide I may as well embrace the silly. “Okay, here’s mine: Describe, in detail, what your zombie apocalypse plan is.”
“Our what?” Paige asks.
“You know, what’s your game plan should the undead walk the earth? When the outbreak first starts getting going and the shit hits the fan, what’s your plan? Where would you go? What would your priorities be?”
“I like it,” Karen says. “Okay, my next topic: food.”
“Food?” Paige asks. “What about it?”
Karen shrugs. “I just like food. I want to talk about it.”
For some reason, that cracks me up even more than Paige’s body-replacement question. I realize that the girls had a point: Talk lists are much more fun than regular old conversation. We go around like that for several more rounds until Karen is finally satisfied.
“That ought to be just about right,” she says, capping her pen.
“How do you know when you have enough topics?” I ask.
“You just know,” she says solemnly.
It takes us more than an hour to go through the topics on the talk list. I’m surprised to learn that both Karen and Paige have a sexual preoccupation with Cash. I had assumed that they, like most of the girls our age, would be into Daltrey.
“He’s totally hot,” Paige says, when I mention this. “But he’s so… I don’t know. Good. Cash, on the other hand, has a bad streak. You can just tell.”
“That’s definitely accurate,” I mutter, thinking of the long string of girls I’ve seen disappear across my lawn and into his basement window over the years. “But why is that attractive to you?”
Paige grins. “I don’t know. Sometimes, you just want them to be bad, you know?”
I laugh. “Fair enough.”
“What about you?” Karen asks. “What’s the sexiest thing you can imagine one of them doing?” She has a wicked glint in her eyes, knowing this is uncomfortable for me.
“I think it would be pretty sexy if Cash stopped being such a womanizing bastard and actually got serious with someone.”
“Boo,” Karen says, and I laugh.
We are all in agreement that the best zombie-apocalypse plan is to somehow steal a boat from the rowing team so we can navigate by river and avoid roads then make our way into the wilds of the mountains.