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Three months later of being pregnant when her abdomen was an awkward protuberance to hide; Pedro and Laura decided to emigrate to France. Not in search of a better life, but to avoid of the discrepancies that could arise between their parents and Pedro, given the beliefs of that time so demure and male chauvinist with the mentality so bewildered. Only time gave the reason to everyone, that there is something good in life and that not everything is black, but that the freedom exists in all its fullness and Catholic beliefs, in most cases, would be relegated to a background because they were the main basis of those curious beliefs. But that would be later. Not now. Not in Spain. In France, things were seen with another perspective.
... Daughter, you already have the menstruation, and you cannot kiss any boy. But she had already done everything, and she liked ...
Pedro had family in France, and although Gonzalo, Laura's father, was not quite classical, she knew that he could not understand her new situation, even though he would have an open mind. But that was not the whole problem either. She wanted to start a new life in France full of promises.
- "I'm going to emigrate to France," -Laura said, sitting on one of the rocks on the Hornillo beach. There were many of them, arranged as an abstract work of art.
Carmen looked at her with a frown.
- "Really? -Sara asked, lying on the sand.
- "Yes," -Laura answered with a grin that marked the dimples in her pink cheeks again.
- "And, can we know the reason?" Who are you leaving with, with your parents?
Laura shook her head as she climbed to the larger rock. Rachel sat on the rock she had left empty.
- "Then ..." -There was a pause, Sara continued. - "Will you leave us all here?"
- "Do not take it wrong," -Laura said. - "It is an overwhelming force. It is better that I know a new life ...
- "OH! You're in love!" -exclaimed Carmen, pointing her with her chubby index finger.
- "You see yourself in the brightness of your eyes. Tell us. We are your lifelong friends.
Laura swung her feet hitting the heels against the smooth rock, in the background, the sound of the sea.
- "I'm pregnant," -Laura announced softly, and suddenly she felt the sun overheat.
They were all stunned with their mouths open in a perfect O. Their eyes open wide and a look of surprise on their faces. Even the noise of the breaking of the waves against the rocks almost paralyzed.
- "And who is him? -Sara asked. She was the first to break the absurd silence created.
- "How many are you?!" -It was Carmen's voice.
- "And your parents know?!" -It was Rachel now.
Laura got questions like a rain of torpedoes followed by exclamation points. Of concern and interest. Laura began to entrust her secrets to her three forever friends. She knew they would not say anything to anyone, at least until she left. Then they would be a verbosity.
- "His name is Pedro, and he's a boy of my age. He's tall, strong, handsome, brown-eyed and strong-arms. He is very attentive and knows how to win over me with his words. It all started with a basket of eggs hanging from my arm. Pedro asked me what was inside and I answered -eggs-. Without hesitation, he told me these very words. "Laura lifted her right hand, imitating him and said. Before they run out, you'll have to cook me one of those eggs or something, maybe the phrase was shorter, but the message was that, that I would be his wife ...
- "But you can`t marry!" -Sara snapped out of the way.
- "Not here," -Laura said, narrowing her eyes.
- "But in France, you can." -Carmen winked. - "You will make a new life, and you will think no more these moments that we spent together."
- "And you will forget me too," -Laura said, lowering her arm.
- "Bye, Laura," -Rachel said. - "I hope this is not a final goodbye."
Laura shook her head focusing on the negativity.
For a moment, the silence was broken only by the waves, and Laura remembered the bottle with her letter and wondered where the hell it was now.
- "Tell us! What happened with Pedro?" -The silence broke like a sheet of paper in the hands of a child.
- "What happened had to happen." We meet one afternoon, three days later that we met by sight. I did not know his name, but that he worked in the Railroad garage because I saw him there, always having lunch, well, always, only two or three days in which I look at him. It was a magical moment that rose inside me until it came out of my mouth. A thousand butterflies fluttered inside me. I liked the boy from the beginning, and I went that afternoon to see him, under the red light of the last rays of the sun. We gave the first kiss, soft, warm ...
Carmen shuddered in the sand. He remembered his bad experience with James and felt an ingenuous envy. She also knew what it was like to give the first kiss to a man.
- "Wow! The first kiss," -Sara said with enthusiasm. -"And, how was it?"
- "I have told you, warm, soft and full of new flavors. I got very excited like a boiler. It was wet down there." -And they all laughed in unison. How eager they were to live the same, to feel the same strange sensations that Laura was describing.
- "And after that?" -Rachel asked, slither into her pink polka dot dress.
Laura looked to each of them, one by one.
- "What happened had to happen," she said with a halo of mystery in her voice.
- "What?!!" -Sara barked now, getting her feet wet in the clear water of the sea.
- "He kissed me in other parts of the body, and we both surrender to love."
The mouths of all of them were a perfect circle, widening and pressing the wrinkled nose. All were with cross-eyed, under the sun of that day.
There was a long silence and again the rhythm of the sea. Soft and steady. Like clockwork. Relaxing.
- "And that's why you're pregnant," -Carmen said with a curling of her lip and a cold expression on her face. Her dark hair waved in the air to the sea breeze. - "I had a bad experience some time ago. His name was James. We started with the first kiss, and then he wanted to force me to do something that suddenly made me sick ..."
- "What?" Sara's face was a real poem.
- "I'm glad for you, Laura, that everything went well for you and that you enjoyed the most crucial moment of a woman's life."
Laura closed her eyes and nodded.
That day they all had a secret to tell and to keep as much time as possible.
- "And did your father find out?" -Asked the uneasy Sara, who was now sinking one foot into the soft sand that remains when the sea water moves away.
- "He was waiting for me with the belt in his hand." They all let out something like a squawk, a noise and then a whisper.
- "But I never told him the truth," -Carmen said, her face listless and disheartened for the sadness.
And the thing stayed there, for that day until the day of the farewell.
Laura was wearing the same blue dress as always, but it was clean and dry, and Pedro had bought her a pair of decent panties, which Laura hid under her dress. Laura did not want to hurt her parents, but with this goodbye somehow was making them some harm, much hurt bitterly thought, but love was more intense than the other emotions and already think how to reward them in the future. This trip was not part of her plan, but she could adjust it to her fundamental principles, be happy and establish an assurance in the couple.
Her three friends knew the day Laura was leaving, and they were there, ready to say goodbye to her with her eyes on the ground and a straight line on her lips.
The farewell was brief, and at last, they met Pedro. They did not say goodbye with a kiss from him, but with a soft touch of the hand and a small bow bending the knee slightly. Laura had tears in her eyes that began to roll down her cheekbones; her cheeks dimpled to smile forced and somewhat frightened by her future destiny. She hugged them all one by one, with a soft touch in their hands. It was cold since winter had entered. And Laura with her baggy-eyed just said the word "good-bye" three times before the train left with a squeak of metal wheels and smoke coming out of the fireplace into the open sky. An extensive line of black smoke that was lost in the cold morning until it faded into nothingness like an invisible mirror of fog. Her hands fluttered in the air. The machine of the train began to drag the wagons, and the tracks of the train trembled when beginning the march that would take them in a first step until Murcia. Then, they had to take another train to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Gerona and from there to Montpellier. This was the last time she saw them. She did not want that, but it had to be that way. - "Goodbye", -she whispered again as the train pulled away from the Aguilas station.
Pedro watched with nostalgia the Railroad garage after disappearing behind the windows of the train, which drew in motion the place where he had worked for several years and where he met Laura, but nevertheless, he was happy in the heart.
Laura's parents did not know anything until the night, that was evident. And their faces drew a picture on their faces. Their only daughter. Their daughter, Laura, where was she? The Civil Guard questioned the three friends, but they did not say a word, and everything was cleared a week later when they received a letter from Laura, sent from Toulouse.
In the meantime, Pedro and Laura were sitting on hard wooden benches on the train that took them to Barcelona, and it was advancing restlessly slow. The scenery was not a blur through the window panes, but you could appreciate every detail of a tree, a house, a horse-drawn cart in the field, people. Even they were far from their parents. Pedro´s parents, whom, if they were harsh and brutish, had not given their hand in front of that woman who had in front with the fat cheeks and short curly hair, giving them a look like a curly endive on her head like a ridiculous hat, the young couple later said with laughter.
The intervenor entered the wagon where they were and before he said anything, they all showed their train ticket as if they had agreed. Laura made a gesture with her eyes at Pedro as telling him; now you'll see what awaits us.
- "Are you brothers?" -The lady's meddling in her forty-plus years did not surprise either Pedro or Laura, who was waiting at any moment for her torpedoing of questions.
- "Yes," -Laura said, pulling a little more away from Peter even though it was heavy on her soul.
- "I imagined it," -said the lady with big breasts. - "You´re very young, right?"
- "Well, we're, both, full age," -Laura lied, being keener than she was.
- "And where are you going, guys?"
- "To Barcelona. With my aunt. To work" -Laura knew all the tricks, and Pedro was constantly changing color, from red to white and vice versa and was impressed by Laura's answers. His wife, as he always said.
- "Yes, there is a lot of work here in Murcia" -The overweight woman was proving to be weary already. - "This is the orchard of the world!"
- "I see! But we go to my aunt because our parents are sick." -She paused for a moment to hear the train rattle and continued. - "But we'll be back soon. It's not the first time."
The narrow-lipped woman frowned at them.
- "It happens to me more or less like you. I'm going to take care of my older sister." -She narrowed her eyes until put them all white. - "And above all, she`s nagging all the time Sometimes; you do not know what's best ..."
- "Ma`am!" -Laura shut her off before the stunned look of Pedro. - "We are tired and would like to take a little nap during the trip."
The lady with large hips and spare tires in the lower back wrinkled her lips in a grunt and continued talking.
- "Well, with this loud noise and the clattering, I do not know if you can sleep at all ..."
And like that was until Valencia, at which moment, the heavy body of the lady was slowly getting off the train. Had she told she was going to Valencia? And Laura laughed.
Then when the figure of the lady disappeared among the people, he shook Laura's hand, crisscrossing his fingers with hers, and did not let go until they reached Barcelona. There they had to take a train to Girona and then another to Montpellier.