by Rute Canhoto
CHAPTER THIRTY
Marina listened attentively to the Informatics teacher's explanations about the wonders of Power Point. She thought that it was funny making presentations. This was the matter she liked the most on the subject so far, but not even that cheered her up. She sighed and stared at the vacated place at her side. She was already accustomed to seeing it like that, but the empty chair always made her feel hollow. The last time she had seen Lucas was nine weeks ago and, since then, heard nothing from him. In the first weeks, she had passed by the back of the canteen every day at lunchtime, and had also visited the skate park. Other times, she passed by the alley where she had helped him, but there was no sign of him. Since he hadn’t really talked to anyone else in school, it was as if Lucas didn’t exist and had never been there. He remained alive only in her memory, while, for others, he was a ghost lost among the webs of forgetfulness.
To prevent her from going crazy, Marina had numbed her feelings for Lucas. Notwithstanding, she continued to follow the plan she had drawn, and persisted with the research on how she could release him from Barbatos’ domain. The Internet allowed access to a wide range of information, but the texts she found on Lost One’s were just a repetition of what she had read before. She had reached a crossroads and she didn’t know which direction to take.
Barbatos had accomplished what he had said about her relatives, and the attacks against her eased as well. Sofia had recovered well and they even got along better: now, whenever Marina sent a text message, Sofia answered quickly and she even sent texts on her own initiative. As for the relationship with her father, it was the same: he remained locked in his own little world and didn’t seem to care about her. In what came to her mother, Luísa had changed. Noting that the ex-husband had continued with his life, she decided it was time to move on: she adopted a new hairstyle, more modern, and she renewed a good part of her wardrobe. She was now open to relationships, and a week ago, she had ventured out on a date, the first since she got divorced.
The loud noise of the bell announcing that they could leave, woke her to reality. Marina shut down the computer and left the Informatics room, heading to the locker. She exchanged books and headed to the classroom. As she was waiting for the teacher, Joshua arrived. Lately, he had been a good friend, always trying to cheer her up and, sometimes, he was successful. He often insisted that she should have more fun, so he kept inviting her repeatedly to go out, but she rejected. However, his effort was commendable and his friendship was precious, thus, that night, the four friends were going to a film session in the Municipal Auditorium. There were no big expectations, they would just hang out.
The Translation teacher came to the room at the bell. They went in and, as Ana didn’t attend that subject, Marina and Joshua sat side by side at the same desk.
After putting his stuff on the table, Joshua turned to her and inquired, “Will you go down town with me?”
Marina assented. She would go with him to the usual spot and then she would go off alone. She intended to walk by the river wall, since she could see the skate park from there. Who knew if that was her lucky day and she would find Lucas there?
The professor wrote the summary in the blackboard, and asked them to open their books on page 143 and to translate the text in pairs. Marina snorted - in pairs... Joshua was an expert in English; it wasn’t fun to translate with him, because he knew everything. What the teacher had said meant that Marina would do the translation alone, just like Joshua, and later she would show him the final product so that he could fix it and explain what she had done wrong.
The text was huge and it was written in tiny letters, therefore they took almost the whole hour to translate it. They were about to correct the result when the bell rang for end of lesson. Shouts of joy echoed through the corridors, indicating that the weekend had officially begun. As Marina didn’t have to go to the locker, she and Joshua rushed to leave school.
The weather in recent days reported low temperatures accompanied by lots of precipitation. At the moment, it was cold and drizzling, so they had to take their umbrellas out from their backpacks. They walked as close to each other as their umbrellas allowed, just in case if one slipped, the other could help promptly.
When they reached the point where they should separate, Joshua quizzed, “Do you want to come to my place? We can do homework and you can have dinner there. After that, we could go straight to the cinema. What do you think?”
The girl appreciated everything he did for her, but she would have to decline that invitation. She shook her head and answered “Thanks, Josh, but I have some things to do. Besides, we’ll meet shortly after.”
“Okay. I’ll stop by your place at nine, don’t forget.”
“Of course,” assured the girl.
Joshua gave her a farewell kiss on her forehead and each followed their own path. At first, Marina had found the kiss on her temple not funny at all, nonetheless she had got used to it. It was just a gentle way of saying goodbye, a gesture of protection and comfort at times. She had learned to accept it willingly.
To her dismay, when she passed by the rail in front of the skate park, she found out that Joshua was still absent. In a way, she already expected it, but hope was the last thing to die. As the drizzle intensified, Marina accelerated her pace. She didn’t take long to get to the plaza in front of her house. She crossed the street, climbed the arcade stairs, and took the keys out of her rucksack. As she slid them into the lock, she analyzed all the chances left: the next thing to do was to find websites, blogs and forums for fans of the occult and to ask them directly if they knew how she could get rid of a powerful demon. It was better to deal with this issue before going to the movies, otherwise she could return too late in the late to do that.
Marina went straight to her bedroom. She put the backpack beside her at the desk, picked up the books and did homework. Next, she grabbed the laptop and devoted to what she had thought about doing. Her mother arrived meantime, passed by her chambers to greet her, and disappeared down the corridor toward the kitchen.
The search wasn’t going well, which exasperated her. She found several blogs and forums, but they all seemed exaggerated and morbid. She couldn’t distinguish a thread of truth in such madness. It would be a long quest, mined by filtration of coherent information.
With the dinner ready, her mother called her. Marina turned off the laptop and went to meet her. It wasn’t worth leaving her computer on; when she finished tidying up the kitchen, it should be time for Joshua to pick her up.
Her predictions didn’t fail. After cleaning the kitchen, she had just enough time to brush her hair, dab a bit of perfume and dress in a coat. The sound of a car at her door with the engine running announced Joshua even before he knocked at the door. Marina yelled to her mother that she was leaving, crossed the doorjamb and went out. Her eyes couldn’t help but shine of satisfaction when she found the boy waiting for her. Joshua looked wonderful and was the mirror of perfection: he seemed to have come straight out of the bath, and his hair shone in the few moonlight rays escaping through the clouds. His clothes fitted him very well, and he was wearing a new perfume that smelled really good. Joshua received her with the customary kiss on the forehead and opened the door of his father’s sports car, so that she could join Dennis and Ana.
The route from Marina’s home to the Municipal Auditorium was rather short, so they didn’t take more than two minutes to get there. Before saying farewell to his father, Dennis told him that he would phone when it was time for him to pick them up, since he didn’t know if, after the film, they would pass by ‘Kupido's Bar’. Marina wrinkled her nose to the comment, but decided not be a spoilsport: if her friends wanted to go to the bar, she’d go with them.
The four entered the auditorium to buy the tickets and found a queue a little longer than usual. The film should be appealing, so it called to more people. Dennis and Joshua got in line to purchase the tickets, while the girls went to the bathroom. Ana didn’t need to go to the bathroom,
she just wanted to talk to Marina about Dennis. She washed her hands and dried them while trying to decide on how to approach the issue.
“Marina,” she started, “I know that the ‘boyfriend’ topic is forbidden between us, but you're my best friend and I need to talk to you.”
Marina wanted to cut the conversation right there, since she didn’t feel like discussing matters of the heart when she had put hers asleep. However, Ana was right: she was her best friend, and her role was to listen and advise her. That was what she would do, even against her will. Marina leaned against the tiled wall and made her a sign to carry on.
“Dennis and I’ve been dating for two months. At first, everything was going just fine, but - I don’t know if you noticed - in recent times, he has been more distant. The truth is that he’s like that, because...” Ana hesitated, “…I put the brake on him.”
Marina scowled and said, “How so? I don’t understand.”
Ana seemed ashamed and her face went as red as a chili pepper. She began to gesticulate in exaggeration, as she explained, “What I mean is that he wanted to do ‘that’.”
Marina expressed an interrogation. ‘That’ what? And how would it interfere in their relationship, cooling it down? She shook her head as if she didn’t get anything of what her friend had told her, so that she would have to give her more details.
Ana rolled her eyes and showed her tongue. Would Marina be playing dumb or what? It was impossible that she didn’t know what she was referring to. On second thoughts, it was Marina whom she was talking to, a girl so Puritan that the only guy who she had ever kissed was Lucas, and it had happened very recently. Ana let out a moan and tried to speak as open as possible to avoid any doubts, “Dennis wanted to go to the next level, meaning, he wanted to have sex with me.”
“Ouch! Too much information. And sex? We’re going to talk about sex?”, screeched Marina.
It was too personal. Even if she had already tried it, she'd rather keep it to herself instead of sharing it with Ana. Marina hesitated about what to do. She decided that, if Ana was exposing herself in such a way, the least she could do was to listen to her and answer sincerely. After swallowing hard, Marina ventured, “Given what you mentioned, I can guess that you told him you wouldn’t do it.”
“Exactly. I mean, I like him and everything, but I have some doubts about if I should do it with him.”
“And what questions do you have? Maybe I can help you to come to a conclusion.”
Ana took a few steps from one side to another, as if she was trying to sort the ideas to pass them into speech. After some thinking, she girl tried to justify, “First of all, I’d like my first time to be with someone I really love. Second, I want it to be special; and third, I want to be sure that, with whom I do it, he isn’t with me just for that reason and that he really likes me.”
Marina grimaced at that verbal chaos exposed in such an abrupt way. What a jumbled-up! She would have to make an effort to unravel that one. After that, maybe she should consider becoming a psychologist, since she still hadn’t thought about her future career. She would add psychology to her list of probabilities.
She tried to study her friend’s phrases point by point. She understood that she wanted her first time to be special, she wanted the same; still, she thought that Ana was questioning more about the stability of her relationship, the trust she had in Dennis and their future. Maybe she could help if she put some questions to her and she answered each one individually, instead of mixing everything into a terrible mess in her mind.
After a deep breath to focus, Marina fired, “Okay, going by the same points you have presented, I’m forced to ask if you really like Dennis.”
Ana didn’t reply right away and thought about it for a while. Besides being the most enduring relationship she ever had, there was no doubt that Dennis was an amazing guy. She loved being with him, and she’d like to have him around for a long, long time.
Ana nodded, so Marina insisted, “But do you love him so much to the point of wishing your first time was with him?”
A new break for meditation. Ana had already had other boyfriends, but she had never gone beyond kisses and hugs. The predecessors of her current beloved weren’t worth the experience, so she had saved herself for someone special. Yes, she liked Dennis, but as for him being her first... “Yes, I’d like him to be my first,” she ended up admitting. “I like him very much and I think he will respect me.”
“So, what's the doubt? Do you think that he doesn’t like you? Don’t you trust him?”
The first step for that relationship to move forward had been given by Dennis. He had always done everything she had requested, and was always available when she needed. In Marina’s opinion, he liked her for real.
Ana turned to agree with her head and affirmed, “I believe that he likes me, after all he already gave me enough proof. The problem is that I'm afraid that things will change between us after doing ‘that’."
“And have you talked to him about your fears?”
“Yeah...” Ana hesitated. Marina gave her a serious look and she confessed, “Kind of. He was upset with what I said, because he thought that I didn’t trust him. I do, but there are things we don’t control, we just feel them.”
Marina didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t going to state ‘Yeah, go ahead and have sex’ or ‘No, you're losing your mind. Quit playing dangerous games’. It was a personal matter and only Ana could decide what to do. Besides, what was the rush? After sighing, Marina verbalized, “Honestly, only you can decide if you want to advance to the next level with Dennis or not. I cannot decide for you.”
“I know...” mumbled Ana.
“About being special, you can control the environment, using candles, rose petals, romantic music... I don’t know, I never thought of that! I think that, when it has to happen, it does. Do you want my honest opinion? Talk to him first about your fears and then let things roll. If your first time is destined to be with him, it will be.”
What else could she add? It was what she would do if it was her case. She had never thought on the subject of virginity. Plus, her love life was temporarily frozen and stopped in time, so it wouldn't be necessary dwelling on it.
Ana was brooding, shaking her head once in a while, as if having a conversation with herself. It was possible that she was, after all she had a lot to consider.
Since they were in the bathroom, Marina took the opportunity to use it, to avoid having to leave the film halfway. When she left the cubicle, she went to the sink to rinse her hands. While was drying them, Ana got up from the floor and went up to her with a cautious air, which made her arch her brows in suspicion. What would come out of her this time?
“There is something else we have to talk about,” she announced solemnly.
“Something else? Holy Mother! What is it this time?” shot Marina, getting tired of ‘conversations’.
Ana leaned her back against the tiles on the side opposite to where Marina was. She didn’t drop her mask of seriousness for a single second, which made Marina hesitate. Would she like to hear what she had to say? She went straight to the point, “You know that Joshua likes you, right?” Marina wanted to stop her right away, but Ana didn’t let her and carried on, “I heard him talking with Dennis, and he was telling his brother that, at the film, he wanted to risk a little more and to hold your hand. I know it doesn’t seem anything special, but it sounded an important thing for him.”
Marina put on a poker face while deciphering the code of those phrases. It wasn’t the first time he held her hand, in fact, he did it many times, for example when they walked down the street or when they were at home studying. For her, it was something to which she got used to, just like the kiss on her forehead when they said farewell. If he wanted to hold her hand in the movies, he could do it at will. Where was the news?
Seeing that the Marina shrugged to what she had said, Ana persisted, “Be aware: for him, this is something very valuable. If you don’t wa
nt to give him false hope about you two, you better keep your hands hidden throughout the night.”
Marina still saw no harm in him holding her hand while watching the movie. Still, she would take into account Ana’s recommendation.
A whistling sound made them jump up: it was the first call for the movie. They ran out of the bathroom and found the boys waiting for them next to the entrance to the auditorium.
Dennis received them with an ugly face, as he joked, “I wish I knew what women do in the WC that's so special for them to go in pairs and to linger so long inside…”
And you can’t even imagine we were talking about you, thought Marina to herself. They had also talked about Joshua, but the main issue was the next step between Dennis and Ana. What would he do if he knew? He could get upset and yell at his girlfriend, telling her that she couldn’t talk about their intimate things. Hmm, it was better to keep her mouth shut about their ‘little chat’.
They prepared to get into the room. The queue was enormous and they were among the last people, which made it harder for them to find four places in a row to stay together. The movie should be really good. Thinking of it, made her feel stupid; she hadn't asked what they would see. She turned to Ana and questioned in a low voice, so that the boys didn’t hear her, “What are we going to watch anyway?”
“It’s the third movie of that vampires and werewolves saga. Basically, it’s romantic, although they say that this one has more action than the movies before”
Marina gulped. Romance? Maybe that was why it was so important for Joshua to hold her hand: symbolism allied to a romantic charge. In an unconscious impulse, Marina crossed her arms. Ana noticed it and winked her eye by way of agreement.
“What did you think of the previous films?” asked Joshua.
Ana thought a little, given that she didn’t remember the details of the previous ones. She half raised her shoulders and said, “Huh, I think I liked them. What girl doesn’t like a good love story?”
“And you, Marina, what did you think about them?” insisted Joshua.
“I also liked the others, but, quite honestly, I prefer the books. The scenes in the films don’t quite correspond to what is described in the volumes and that disappointed me a little. I think I ended up separating things: books are books and have their own history, while the movies are a parallel story that has value by itself. Do you know what I mean?”
Joshua brought a hand to his chin, making her remember the statue of a very thoughtful David. Then he said, “Yes. I’ve also read books, and when I watched the movies, I found them very strange, because the scenes didn’t match.”
Marina nodded and added, “That’s why I don’t watch the movie if I've read the book before. Only if it is a book that really pleased me very much, I dare to watch the cinematic production, and just by curiosity.”
Ana rolled her eyes in her sockets with irony. So much intellectuality just to say if she liked the previous versions released in the cinema or not. Geez, her friend had to learn to loosen up and to drop such deep thoughts.
Their delivered the tickets and went into the auditorium. They peered into the room, looking for four empty seats, but only found two in a row: a pair near the front row on the left side, and another pair over the middle. Dennis and Ana occupied the first seats, while Joshua and Marina took the others. There was a new tone and, five seconds later, the lights began to dim gradually, fading away, while the red curtains of the stage opened and the film began.
