Play

Cameras were flashing, people nervously raised their hands to ask questions. Everyone was excited about the book that now, for the first time, she was presenting. Her novel was finally being published. She felt nervous and full of anxiety. She couldn’t believe that those sound tapes she found 6 months ago had led her to where she was now.

6 months before…

 In the underground, listening to her iPod, Jane thought about her new job. She had just started to work at a newspaper. For the moment the only thing she did was make coffees and run errands for other people, but she was desperate to start writing. It was Sunday, so she got out at Broadway Station and went to her favourite place in NYC. The same place where she went every single Sunday: the Strand library. The perfect place for her, a book-lover, to be, surrounded by 18 miles of books.

 Once there, she walked around the different bookshelves wondering what stories might those books contained. Then, she noticed that the classic books section was open, it had been closed for months due to some reforms that were taking place. She scanned through the bookshelves and a musty, square-shaped book caught her attention. It was small and had a thick, red, leather cover. She leafed through it and noticed that the back cover was cut at the inside. Jane opened the cut and a small cassette tape fell from it. She looked at it; it was really strange, what was that doing there?

 She walked around the classics section with the cassette tape on her hand, wondering what it could mean. The cassette tape was black and had a square white label stuck to it. The label didn’t have any song name written, just CXXIII, number 123 in Roman numbers. At least that’s how Jane understood it. She was walking around the library when she noticed that in the classics section, the books were numbered by roman numbers. Right away she started to search for the book number 123 as the tape said.

 She finally found it. It was in one of the highest shelves. She had to stretch her arm to reach it. Jane turned to the back cover to try and see if it had a cut as the other one did, but it didn’t, there was no cut. She inspected the book over and over again but didn’t find anything. But when she was going to put the book back on the shelf, she touched something hard and squared. Where the book was supposed to go, there was a cassette tape, but this time it had nothing written on it. It was there, lying on a shelf in an enormous book store, in a gigantic city, waiting, waiting for her, for Jane to find it.

 She hurried back home, and once she was there, she asked her neighbour Mrs. Rodgers to lend her her cassette player so that she could listen to the tapes. Jane introduced one of them in the player and pressed play. At the beginning, music played, then after a few words, it stopped. The same happened with the second tape, when she introduced it in the other compartment. First it was silent and then it started to play.

Jane was confused; she didn’t understand what all of that was about. Then, by mistake, trying to stop the tape that was playing, she pressed “play” on the other tape, and both of them started to play at the same time. It was like a conversation between them, one played something and then the other one responded. They played a few words and many numbers composed by the mix of many songs. Jane wrote them all down, she had no clue of what they meant, but she was decided to find out. After searching for those two words and seven numbers on the phone guide, the newspaper and internet for hours, she finally obtained a result. Apparently, according to Google maps, it was an address. The coordinates, number and name of a street, which turned out to be in New York. She planned to go there the following day, even if that meant that she would have to miss work.

 The next morning she got a taxi to the address the tapes told her. It turned out to be a small, old, corner-book shop. She entered and saw that the books were “organized” in piles all around the floor. It was very messy and it smelled like incense. An old man with a considerably long white beard approached her and introduced himself: - Hello, can I help you? I’m Mr. Johansson, the shop owner. Surprised by the shop owner’s appearance from nowhere, Jane answered stammering. -Erm… Hi, I’m Jane. I’m looking for some cassette tapes that might look like these ones.

Mr. Johansson saw the tapes Jane showed him and took her to another room of the bookshop. Once there he opened a wardrobe and from a drawer he got a package. He turned and gave it to Jane. She stared surprised at the package that was wrapped with brown paper.

 - I know nothing about the package, but many years ago, a man asked me to keep it and give it to the person that came and asked for it, as you did today. The man seemed loyal and mysterious, so I’ve kept the package since then. Now it’s yours.

 Jane thanked him for everything and back at home discovered the mysteries that the package had to show. She carefully opened it, inside it there was a letter and a cassette tape. Jane read the letter out loud.

 Hello, my name is Edward O’Donnel. If you are reading this I’m probably dead. This voice cassette will show you why. It will tell you the story of my life.I decided to tell my life story through my two biggest passions, books and music. That is why I’ve hidden it through them, in music codes and in my favourite novels.Sorry if it turned out hard for you to find this last tape, but I wanted to be sure that the person that found them would be worth of knowing my story, as well as intrigued and interested, so he or she would carry on looking for the other cassettes. Please listen carefully and make good use of it, otherwise please return the tapes where you found them. I truly believe in fate so I hope that you are the right person to tell my story, Thank you! 

 P.S. Please tell my wife Rosalie I will always love her and give her this package once you’ve finished.

 After reading the letter Jane spent hours listening to the tape. She had finally decided what she wanted to do with her life, which wasn’t running errands or making coffees for her boss, but…

Today…

 Jane took the microphone and started to enounce her speech: - Thank you all for being here. I hope you will enjoy my novel, which is about Edward O’Donnell’s life. This story is an example of love, fraternity, unity and family values, in a dark background of hard times and violent situations. Edward O’Donnell is a great role model, and I hope that by this novel you will learn how you can go on with your life, and find the bright side in the darkness of life.

Claudia Cardona, 4º E.S.O