Chapter Seven

Jura takes his towel and asks the girls to meet him in the square in ten minutes. He leaves the place and the girls put their things in their bags and go to the square to wait for the boy.

While they wait, Dayane says:

"What happened between you two? You took too long."

"Nothing. We just watched the sunset together and..."

"And what, tell me, please."

Just as she was about to say, the boy shows up with his pickup truck and says:

"Let's go. It's already seven-thirty in the morning and if we don't hurry, she'll be home late."

They get into the vehicle: Marina in the middle and Dayane in the passenger seat and Jurandir in the driver's seat.

Jura drives off down the road and he is guided by the GPS. In an hour they leave the city and arrive in Teresópolis.

If they don't hurry, she might not get home in time. He asks the girls to hold on tight because he will have to speed up and take a shortcut through Teresópolis.

He starts driving up the mountain and realizes that it is very foggy, so he has to slow down. He looks at his watch and realizes that it is half past ten in the morning.

They decide to make a stop, because it is dangerous to travel with so much fog on the road.

They get out of the vehicle and decide to take a picture and have breakfast, because they didn't have time to eat before.

They have a snack and when it is eleven o'clock, the three of them get back in the vehicle to continue their trip. They enter a mud road and the place seems endless. Jura sees on his GPS that they are twenty kilometers from Nova Friburgo and seventy kilometers from Olaria.

He decides to put on a CD with varied music. One of these songs is called Photograph by the singer Ed Sheran, and he looks at Marina and sings for her to hear. Then he looks at her and says:

"I don't know this song, but it is very beautiful. We'd better hurry, because it's already eleven forty."

"Will do."

He speeds up and in ten minutes they arrive in Nova Friburgo. Marina begins to get distressed as he is driving at high speed.

It is noon and they arrive at the entrance of Olaria and she shows Jurandir where his house is. After another ten minutes, she arrives home and realizes that Miguel's car is already in the garage and she quickly gets out of the vehicle, hugs her friend and when she goes to hug the boy, he pulls her in, gives her a kiss and says:

"I hope to see you soon."

"Me too. Bye."

And she decides to climb the wall that leads toward her room and luckily has a railing that makes it easier to be climbed.

In five minutes she finishes climbing and opens the balcony door and when she does, she is startled to see Sandra in the chair looking at her. The woman turns on the light saying:

"Can you tell me where you've been? And it's no use saying you haven't left town because I saw in the history that you bought a ticket to Sete Lagoas. What were you thinking when you decided to travel alone, huh? Something could have happened to you.

"I'm sorry, but I needed to see my friend. It's not easy for me to be without her. It's not enough to be without my brothers and now I can't even go out too? "

"You had to have asked me. I'm on your guard."

"But I asked, but you wouldn't let me. You know I'm used to seeing you"-she says tearfully.

"At least you're okay, but you'll be grounded for disobeying me. You'll be without your cell phone, your notebook, and you won't leave the house until school starts again. Oh, and don't even try to run away, or the punishment will be worse. Now give me the cell phone.

"Gee, but I wasn't even away from home for a day. It was only a few hours.

"I'm sorry, but you should have thought it over before you went on a sneaky trip. You're lucky I don't forbid you to watch TV, but you'll get more to watch!"

She leaves the room carrying the electronic devices and Marina says, "I hate you!" And begins to cry.

After a few minutes, she falls asleep and dreams about the moments she spent at the waterfall with her friends.

She wakes up to hear Miguel saying, "Marina, come to lunch." And she says, "I'm not hungry."

A week goes by and she is still without her cell phone and notebook and is so sad that she refuses to eat.

***

New Year's Eve arrives and she doesn't get out of bed to eat. She only gets up to go to the bathroom, do her personal hygiene and then goes back to bed. She sometimes drinks a few glasses of water when they are sleeping and rarely eats a fruit she finds in the fridge.

Miguel and Sandra begin to worry about her and his wife enters Marina's room, noticing that she is very pale and full of fever.

Sandra picks her up and takes her to the living room. At this moment, Marina wakes up and tries to get up, but she can't, because she is very weak.

Miguel goes to the kitchen and makes a soup reinforced with meat and says:

"Please feed yourself, dear."

"Okay. I'm sorry for disobeying you guys. I just wanted to see my best friend."

"Forget about that now and feed yourself please- says Miguel worriedly."

"

She feeds herself and slowly her color returns to normal. They spend the New Year watching movies and eating fruit, French toast, snacks, etc.

When it is two o'clock in the morning, they leave the room and Marina goes to her room, but first Sandra calls her and says:

"Honey, I thought better of it and I'm going to return your cell phone. I know you were wrong to travel without telling us, but I understand your side, but you'll still be without a computer and you'll have a schedule to use your cell phone."

"Okay."

Sandra hands him the cell phone and says:

"Today I will let you use it until morning, but the other days you can use it until 10 pm. When school starts I'll release you from detention"-Sandra gives him a hug and says-"Have sweet dreams."

"Thank you. You too."

Marina goes to her room and checks her messages. One of them is from her new friend Jurandir saying that they arrived home fine and asking if everything went well with her.

She replies that yes, but that she was grounded. She wishes her friend a Happy New Year and he sends her an audio.

Marina opens the audio and realizes that it is the song he sang to her in the truck when they were coming here.

She smiles as she remembers this moment and puts on her headset and listens to the song several times until she ends up falling asleep.