Fascinating geography
Шрифт:
Mirror. Once upon a time it reflected her, a tall, thin, not very beautiful girl with an oval face, a narrow nose, and shoulder-length black hair with dyed strands. Now in the mirror one could only see jars of cosmetics, which Alina forgot to close in the morning: she was in a hurry to get to work. It’s strange why the mirror doesn’t reflect the tall, narrow-shouldered Tatar girl? Was she really dead? Is she no longer there? She will never turn on the TV on the opposite wall of the room, and the bed will no longer be useful to her, and in the family photo above her head, her brother will draw with a felt-tip pen exactly the same red cross as above her parents, aunt and grandparents.
Taking a breath, the girl went into her brother’s room. Anyone, he just has to look at her, living, breathing, talking, thinking. Even if she is not able to put on slippers or find her reflection in the mirror.
Afraid of making a lot of noise, Alina crept up to the chair where Kostya was sitting and put her hands on her brother’s shoulders. Wow, mother-of-pearl varnish, on the index finger of the right hand, slightly chipped. This is a small work-related ’injury’ after the girl tested the strength of a closed bag of crackers shortly before her death.
Alina’s twin brother, Kostya, a short, heavy-set brunette, very unlike his sister, by the way, was sitting at the computer, constantly distracted from his work. Typical gamer brother pose, however, this time something was different. In his left hand the guy was holding not a cup of coffee, but a half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka, and next to the keyboard lay three black crackers from the kind his sister had roasted in the oven a couple of days ago. It’s clear and without words – he tried to drown his grief in vodka.
The girl read the text of the message that was written by her own, yes, her brother.
You, friends, are probably waiting for a letter from Alina. Alas, there is no point in doing this. Because she is no longer there. She died. At work. She was very sick, and did not tell anyone about it, did not show her weakness.
Then she was unable to read and grabbed Kostya by the shoulders with both hands and tried to shake and scream:
– Kostya, what are you writing? – the girl whispered, hopelessly dropping her hands, – I’m alive, Kostya.
But the answer to her was only the lines in the letter.
Now I have no last close person.
– Kostya, how can you?
Why doesn’t he hear? Why is he writing this! And he will also send it over the Internet to all of Alina’s best friends. And none of them will write a single line anymore, they will all suffer and cry for their untimely departed friend. But she is alive! Hello! Maybe we’ll even be able to have some fun when we get out of this strange story with invisibility. What if a magic cap or robe just fell on her at the factory. Everyone thinks she is dead, but she continues to live.
Alina sank to the floor right next to the chair where her brother was sitting and began to cry. But even her sobs were inaccessible to Kostya’s hearing.
Pity, bitterness, hopelessness… all this overwhelmed the girl. Why did fate treat him this way? For what? First the parents, and then she… Although, no, she is alive. Mom and dad aren’t around. They died when Alina and Kostya were nineteen. She remembered that terrible day perfectly… as if in reality, as if it was repeating itself in her memory even now, after the so-called death.
It was summer. Heat. Alina came back from her exam. She was then graduating from food college. Kostya is not a coward, he did not run away from the army, in those years he served Russia somewhere in the Ryazan region. So the girl lived alone with her parents. Having returned from the exam, she lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. A phone call woke her up. She immediately felt that he was not kind. That’s what it turned out to be: they called from the hospital – my father and mother crashed near Berdsk. Since then, she has already lived for four years with her only relative, her brother, earning a living, being in fact the head of the family. True, Kostya himself was also not known as a slob and got a job at the same factory as Alina, as a truck driver, delivering «Kirieshki» throughout Western Siberia.
After the death of her parents, the girl increasingly began to show strange abilities: as if she could see someone else’s future using cards, all the food she prepared had the desired effect, and, oh, horror, she learned to make fire by snapping her fingers. This is how Alina began to do without matches, the quality of which was simply skimped on by manufacturers. True, the girl began to use magic sparks only after the flashing fragment of one such match hit her in her left eye with all the ensuing consequences. And it’s not worth talking about cutlets with love spells and hangover cabbage rolls. And all these miracles are at the behest of the pike, Alinochka’s desire.
Remembering her extraordinary gift, the girl decided to try to set fire to her brother. If she succeeds, she will quickly heal him with the help of her own homemade jelly. But her magic turned out to be invisible, like herself. A fireball the size of a tennis ball flew through Kostya’s chest, and then through the monitor, and then went out completely, hitting the wall.
– Cool! – Alina smiled to herself. – Invisible fire is an original thing, isn’t it?
Two days ago she would not have started making such jokes, but now she had no time for that. Well, at least someone would have noticed and understood that she was alive, but no: her brother is killed and thinks that she is no longer in the world.
The girl was offended and went into her room through the wall. What’s wrong with that? If slippers do not fit on your feet, then why not overcome fifteen centimeters of concrete rock? She imagined that the wall was parting in front of her, and… she succeeded!
When Alina was five years old, she kept asking her mother: what was there in the thick walls. Mom answered that the brownies lived there, and there was no point in disturbing them. Now, when she grew up, she saw with her own eyes – nothing special: grayness, dust and not a single poltergeist.