“If you’ve ever picked up a geography textbook in your life, then maybe you could read there that a meridian is an imaginary line running through the Earth’s poles and crossing the equator at a right angle,” Kateryna replied. “I hope the word ‘imaginary’ is clear to you. Did they explain it to you in your geography classes?”
“Well… Our geography teacher, she said something else about the horizon… that it’s an imaginary line… Only I still don’t understand how it can be imaginary, because I can see it!”
“What?—The horizon! I’ve seen it a hundred times! And never once noticed that it was imagining!” Kateryna sighed. With Anya, she preferred to talk with her eyes closed, without even turning her head toward her. I understood that the girl’s savage geography knowledge no longer surprised her.
“Shut your mouth, Anna,” she repeated. “And imagine that you, too, are imaginary—in the sense of nonexistent. Or I—who exactly among us is nonexistent doesn’t matter at all, as long as I don’t have to hear what you’re saying. You bought a book at the airport, I saw. So read it for now… even if only remember the letters.”
Anya sniffed in offense and, rustling through her bag, really did take out a book—a collection of Mickey Mouse comics. And for my part, thinking, that’s also something, I closed my eyes. Maybe, looking at pictures of the adventures of the Hollywood mouse, Anyechka will at least replenish her knowledge in zoology.