밤의 라디오

The Box Under the Roof

The summer Dana turned fourteen, the rain fell for nine days without stopping. Her town, Harlow's Bend, sat in a green valley where nothing ever seemed to happen. The bus to the city came twice a day, and everyone knew everyone's business. Her best friend had moved away in June, and the weeks ahead looked flat and empty. Dana believed that real life was happening somewhere else, far beyond the wet hills.

On the ninth rainy day, her mother sent her to the attic for candles. Behind a wall of dusty boxes, Dana found something wrapped in a wool blanket. It was a shortwave radio, heavy as a stone, with a cracked leather handle. Her grandfather's initials were scratched into the metal beside a row of mysterious dials. When she plugged it in downstairs, the panel glowed a soft, dusty orange. Her mother laughed and said the old thing probably only played ghosts now.