Knox
“All right, well, it’s your fault for distracting me,” Sylvie says.
“I don’t think we need to, like, assign blame here. It’s not a huge deal,” I say.
“Yeah, but I’m still going to feel terrible if I make you miss your bus, so I’m just getting out in front of it.”
“Saying it out loud to convince yourself?”
“Basically. What time is your bus? You still haven’t said.”
“That’s because I’m not totally sure yet which one I’m going to take.” I pause for a few seconds. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
Sylvie rolls her eyes, but not in a mean way. “I’m not worried. You’re not in my hair.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So I’m nothing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said literally a second ago that you were worried about everything. If you’re not worried about me, I must not be part of everything, which means that I am not a thing, aka nothing.”
“Do you want me to knock you out?” Sylvie says. “Like fully a roundhouse kick right to the dome and out cold?”
“You just destroyed me in arm wrestling, so I don’t know if that’s even a joke.”
“I don’t know either,” she says. “But I know that I was not including you when I said I was worried about everything whilst simultaneously not considering you to be nothing. God, what a confusing sentence I just uttered for your benefit.”
“I’m still pondering it. I think I feel reassured?”
“Look. Would it help if I specifically listed out some other stuff I’m not worried about? I’m not worried about raccoons becoming sentient and taking over the world. I’m not worried about the heat death of the sun. I’m not worried about the Yellowstone volcano erupting. I’m not—”
“Whoa, wait, back up. The Yellowstone volcano?”
“Yeah,” she says, “I saw a show about it on the Discovery Channel. Basically, like, Yellowstone Park is all above a huge volcano. That’s why you’ve got hot springs and geysers and stuff. And apparently, it erupts every 250,000 years or so, and it’s been about 250,000 years since the last one.”
“So we’re due.”
“Yeah, and it’s so big that when it erupts it’s going to wreck the whole western United States. Cover it ten feet deep in ash.”
“That sounds like . . . not an ideal situation,” I say.
“I would characterize it as far from ideal, honestly,” Sylvie says.
“Ideally, it would spout warm chocolate and cover the western United States in that.”
“That seems like maybe too much of a good thing.”
“Is there such a thing?”
Sylvie looks at me. “Of course. You’ve never experienced it?”
“I think I’ve only experienced too much of what someone else considers a good thing.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t, no.”
“All right. Let’s hear an example.”