and left.
Yet Rita did not call either that day or later. Tanya phoned instead. Lika just wanted to ask her about the lost mobile and bring the chat to an end. She did not want to hear latest tattle that the classmate was ready to share with anyone any time of the day or night, but then she thought it would be a good opportunity to learn something about Vlad. At that very moment Tanya as if she had read her friend’s mind claimed,
“Lika! I’m telling you something! You just fall! So you’d better sit!”
“Already sitting.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“So?” Lika could not wait. It turned her stomach when the friend feignedly inflated the importance of the news. She had already imagined how many tedious gossips she would have to get through before the classmate could possibly say something she wanted to hear.
“It’s about Vlad!” Tanya blurted out.
Lika’s heart skipped a beat and went; she cheerfully smiled.
“OK, let it be about Vlad,” she said pretending to sound indifferent.
“Crikey, dear! You should’ve seen “im! He was…” as if been choked with delight, the mute came from the other side of the wire but then broke finally having found the right words, “Swanky! Irresistible! Orlando Bloom nervously smokes on the sidelines and tears his hair with envy! Marsha, my cousin, you remember her – knows his aunt – said his mum bought him – that – in Milan!”
“What did she buy? Who did she buy?” Lika did not understand anything.
“Oh, don’t you understand?! Mum bought him a tux.”
“Ah, now I see.”
“You’ve no idea how chic he was! And that tux…” Tanya said languidly.
“Why don’t I? I do have an idea,” and her imagination drew a picture of Vlad wearing a tux quite easily. And at that very moment Lika regretted she had not been there to see him.
“And this is just the beginning! I haven’t told you half a story yet,”
And again, there was a pause.
“Come on, out with it once you’ve started!”
“So – we were at the tables when he appeared. You know, he likes being in the centre of attention. He went across the hall and everybody stared at him! Even Timokhina (it was their tutor) said he looked stunningly.
“Argh, really said so?”
“Not exactly. She used some other words. And so, after her speech he was off, just evaporated. I asked the girls where he could possibly be, but nobody saw him leaving. Any ideas why he left so early?”
“May be, some troubles at home?” Lika started worrying.
“And that’s not there!”
“Yah! Why are asking if you’ve got the answer? Just say it.”
“Here,” Tanya exclaimed, “we come to the most interesting part! He said to Timokhina that he felt sick and that he had a terrible headache. In all, she let’m leave.”
Tanya was silent testing Lika’s patience. Lika sighed inwardly.
“And?”
“He didn’t have a headache. He just lied!”
“Was that him who told you that?”
“No. Malik told me. Malik and Oleg joined him later. They had their own party there! Emilie and Rita were sort of going there too.”
“Did they go?”
“Don’t know. I thought you knew. Weren’t you there?” wondered Tanya; her voice full of true disappointment.
“No. They didn’t invite me” Lika drew a sigh.
“And Rita hasn’t said a word about it,” suggested the curious classmate.
“She might never been there,” Lika immediately stood up for her friend.
“She did go there. Know it for sure,” Tanya declared.
Lika did not know what to answer. The thoughts of her friend who might have stopped trusting her began to spin round inside her head, but she threw them away.
“Odd, rather odd,” came from the other side of the wire, “Don’t you find it fishy?”
“No, I don’t. She hasn’t got time to tell me yet.”
“Crikey! What a fool you are! Your Rita took a fancy to Vlad that’s why she hasn’t told you anything!”
Lika was dumb struck.
“What a rave! What does it have to do with Vlad?” She managed to say in half a minute or so.
“Blimey, dear! You’re kidding! I guess, she’ll take Vlad from you! No difference for you?”
Lika was lost for words. Her head seemed to be swelling and getting so heavy that the neck did not seem to be strong enough to hold it and was about to break. She got hold of her head with her hand trying to push back her pulsing temples, but “Rita and Vlad together” was pattering harder.
“Are you still here?” Tanya hollered.
Lika made herself breathe in deeply. “Let it be so,” she ordered in her mind’s eye and immediately calmed down. It stopped rapping in the temples making it easier to breathe.
“Lika, are you listening there?”
“I am.”
“Crikey! Why not answering then?”
“I don’t know what to answer,” Lika avowed.
“It’s okay, don worry. It doesn’t matter, for all know there’s something between you two.
“All?” Lika did not cease to wonder. Somehow, the idea that she was being hoaxed crept into her brain.
“All? The whole school, Lika!”
“Mмм… For how long?”
“Quite long. Malik told me in September. He saw a photo of you inside Vlad’s wallet.”
“What a rave!” Lika thought, “May it appear to be true? How come he’s got my photo?”
“So how long have you been dating? You can spill the beans; it’s not a secret anymore,” Tanya was about to plead.
“You know, Aunt Ann’s calling me – let’s have a talk later. See you.”
“See you,” Tanya mouthed with disappointment on hearing long beeps in the receiver.
And Lika perched herself on her bed; her fingers grabbed a mattress’s edge. She did not have a slightest idea of what had just happened.
“Just a hoax. A prank,” she concluded. “Rita must be up to this. That’s why she neither calls nor answers my calls.”
No matter how hard Lika had tried to hide her feelings toward Vlad, Rita might have guessed the point and made up her mind to support Lika in such an odd way. It was like her. She had always been up to incredible things to raise one’s spirits. And this time she succeeded as well. The very thought that Vlad had her photo warmed Lika’s heart.
Lika instantly urged to have a talk with her friend to tell the truth about her feelings towards Vlad at last as though the chat with Tanya had torn the chains off her heart, and the feelings she had been suppressing came flooding her all over.
She dialed Rita’s number but the number appeared to be disabled, and it was too late to try her home phone number. Having dropped the phone on her bed, she glanced at her own reflection in a mirror. She was smiling. It was a sincere smile coming out of her very heart which also made some tears come down from her eyes.
They