“Be a good little Alice and just follow the White Rabbit, okay?”

“Who are you? Rabbit and Souris call you ‘Alice,’ me and Dee call you ‘Faye.’ I just didn’t know if ‘Alice’ was your poker-playing, Southern Hemisphere name or what. Hey, I’m just trying to fit in here. If I should be introducing myself as ‘Clark,’ I want to know about it sooner rather than later so I don’t embarrass myself.”

“Are you referring to the day you instructed me to ‘follow the white rabbit,’ plied me with absinthe and brownies, and tried to have your way with me? Didn’t take long for you to lose your romantic streak, did it?”

“Follow me down, Alice Faye Dahl. I know the way.”

“Okay, so English settlers brought rabbits with them to Australia to breed for food and stuff, right? But they escaped and basically started destroying the country, eating the vegetation, that kind of thing. So by the early 1900s, the government was trying to figure out a way to get rid of all the rabbits. Want to hear what their genius plan was? The rabbit-proof fence. Worked out great for the rabbits. Once they learned how to play badminton and got the hang of tennis on grass, they couldn’t remember how they ever lived without it. Supposedly there was something like six hundred million rabbits by 1950. But you’re missing the point. The point is that even though it was pretty obvious from the beginning it wasn’t working, they kept right on building it—two thousand miles of it.”

“Don’t make me Alice-nap you, Alice. Because you know I can carry you.”

“Alice? You didn’t get this far without realizing that you don’t have to cheat to win. You just have to accept that people are easily manipulated.”