with a face of an angel,” Coco sang in a lilac voice, as if looking at Rita’s portrait, “She’s cheerful and open hearted. You could not help but fall in love with her!”
“That’s true!” Lika agreed at once, “Rita is wonderful! She’s very nice and kind!”
“Nobody in their right mind would ever say a word against it. But… with all her kindness and beauty, she hasn’t been taught to overcome difficulties of life.”
“She could learn how to fight difficulties,” Lika began to defend her friend.
“Of course, she could. If only she was able to find a reason why she would have to do this. Is there such a reason in her life?”
Lika did not reply. She was trying to demonstrate a straw Rita could possibly catch at to give birth to the child. “What could possibly motivate her? What does she love most of all? She likes going out and meeting her friends. She loves her parents and her friends. She’s mad about travelling. By the age of seventeen she’s visited lots of countries.” Lika recalled the photos of beautiful sceneries and souvenirs that Rita always brought to her from the trips. “She’s also fond of nice and expensive clothes she brings from Europe.” And in fact, Rita always presented much of the clothes to Lika because she has never worn a thing for more than three times, except for those that she fancied a lot. “No, that’s not what I need!” Lika thought sadly. “She’s very kind… there must be something… Oh, how could I forget?! Rita is very fond of animals. She’s been a member of a society protecting the environment. Last year, she managed to set an abandoned kitten up. She was so happy! And at home she’s got a lot of different indoor flowers and plants, she takes care of them with great care and love. She talks to them while watering them and wiping their leaves. And they respond to it with rapid growth, the splendor of their greenery, and the brightness of their flowers. But this, too, does not seem to help,” sighed Lika.
“What about her ambitions?” Coco prompted.
“Ambitions? I don’t know… She wants to get higher education, get a good job, get married…”
“Have you got it now?”
“Not really.”
“So what we have is a nice and beautiful girl who loves animals and the world around her. She got used to living in comfort and welfare and takes admiration of her friends and people around her for granted. The only problem is that she isn’t able to overcome hardships of life because she hasn’t had any till now. Taking into consideration her life goals, which are only obstructed by an unexpected pregnancy, makes the final result obvious, for me, at least,” the cat concluded.
“No!” Lika declared, “I do not agree! I’ll persuade her! I believe she can change. There’s nothing fatal about it!”
“That’s your right, dearie!” Coco said in the end, and they did not recur to the subject that day.
Chapter 7
Aunt Ann disappeared
Lika understood that she had to be more persuasive in her argument to make Rita change her mind about the baby. In fact, she did not know much about having children, being pregnant, and all the sort of things. So she decided to study the topic thoroughly. She turned on the computer, waited until the antivirus loaded and opened the Google Chrome browser. In the address bar she typed the word “pregnancy” and clicked the first link in the list, but the site appeared to be difficult to navigate. It was much easier with the second. There she found an automatic pregnancy calendar, which gave out the expected date of delivery. It was then that she learnt that pregnancy term was counted in weeks. So Rita was supposedly in her sixth week. Then Lika read about baby’s week by week development, which was accompanied by pictures.
“He’s so tiny, just like a pea, but his brain is being already formed. He’s able to respond to external stimuli, and you can hear his heart beating,” Lika summarized after she had finished reading the article. “He certainly doesn’t look like a human yet… he’s something resembling a lizard,” she examined the pictured on the screen. “Yes, he is,” she concluded.
“Anyway, he’s got his soul, his conscious and his feelings. He can feel his mother’s emotions as well,” Lika heard Coco’s voice inside her head.
“There’s nothing about it here,” objected Lika.
“Take my word. I know it for sure.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Lika surfed the Internet until she came across a YouTube video which showed the detailed process of a fetus formation and its further development. She watched it in a burst of inspiration. “It’s incredible!” she admired in the beginning – “Amazing! Just wonderful how it all works! It looks like space… kinda birth of a new star”. “How cute and funny he is,” she melted at the end. “Rita must see this!” She finally said to herself and dialed Rita’s number. On hearing Rita’s “hello’, she began to tell the friend about the video, but Rita refused to listen because she was about to go to bed.
“Going to bed?” Lika got surprised. “So early?”
“Lika, have all the clocks in you flat got broken? Then let me tell you, it’s twenty seven past eleven.”
“You’re joking and it’s nice,” Lika replied and turned round to the window to check the sun. It was dark outside. And it was really twenty seven past eleven on the clock.
“Holy moly! I’ve lost the track of time. I’m sorry, dear. May I see you in the morning?”
“Year, okay,” Rita said wearily.
Then they wished good night to each other, and Lika sat on her bed thinking over the thing. “How could it come I’ve surfed the Internet for so long and haven’t noticed how much time went by? And where’s Aunt Ann? She hasn’t looked into my room not even once. She hasn’t called me to have dinner. Has something happened to her?”
The girl jumped to her feet and ran to her aunt’s room. The room was empty. There was no one in the bathroom and the kitchen but the cats sleeping each in its place – Coco in the basket, Dasha and Masha in their boxes. Lika was nonplussed; scary thoughts about her aunt’s disappearance burst into her head. “She might have gone to the shop, and on the way she might have fallen over and broken her leg, and at the moment she might be lying there unable to get help, or she might have been attacked by robbers…”
“Neither one thing, nor another,” appeared in her head, and the girl immediately recognized Coco. It had got out of the basket stretching itself. “She must’ve been kidnapped by aliens and might be experimented on at the moment.”
Lika did not understand whether the cat had said a joke or had told the truth. “Kidding?” she asked.
“No, I’m not. Just giving you another possible variant because your versions are… a bit dull and boring. She’s broken her leg…” Coco muttered. “Why? Why don’t you think that she’s fallen in love with a biker, and now they both are speeding through the night?
Lika imagined her aunt on a bike holding the waist of a big bearded biker and smiled.
“Or she might have found a case full of dollars
