Free The Samantha Project by Stephanie Karpinske Page A

take the deafening silence of the house anymore. I needed to find a distraction from my thoughts. I turned on the TV for background noise. Game show contestants were screaming and jumping up and down in the hopes of winning a car.  
    I watched a few minutes of the show to see if the woman on stage would win a bright red pickup truck. She had to guess all five numbers in the price of the car. She wrote out the first number, a 2. The audience cheered. Next a 7. The audience turned on her, indicating their disapproval. “More!” they screamed. “Higher!” She quickly erased the 7 and wrote a 9.  
    “Just pick the numbers already,” I said aloud to the TV. The host seemed impatient as well. “32,416,” I said, talking to the TV. It’s almost like I could see the numbers in the host’s head.  
    Time was up and the lady finally wrote her numbers, $29,350. “No,” said the host. “You’re incorrect. It’s $32,416.”
    32,416. My numbers. How did I know that? I was clueless about car prices, especially pickup trucks. Lucky guess, I thought.  
    I turned the TV off and opened up the cabinet where Mom and Dad kept their CD collection. On the top of the cabinet was a really old CD player. My parents called it a “boombox,” which I always found funny. Something from “their generation,” they said. They refused to buy an MP3 player, saying music needed to be tangible, something you could hold—not some digital download. They even had old records and some ancient turntable.  
    Just seeing their music made me start to cry. I can’t do this, I thought. But I kept looking anyway. Most of their music was from the ’80s. The first CDs I found were heavy metal bands—not appropriate for a memorial service. I flipped through and found some more mellow options.  
    I started playing one of the CDs. Hearing it brought back memories of Mom and Dad, and more tears came streaming down my face. I turned it off just as the phone rang. It was Dave calling from work.
    “Sam, how are you doing? You need anything? I won’t be home until tonight. Some problems came up at work that I need to take care of.” He sounded stressed.
    “Um, I’m okay.” I tried to hide any evidence that I’d been crying but it didn’t work.
    “Sam, you’re crying. I’m gonna get someone over there. You shouldn’t be alone. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wish I could leave here but—”
    “Uncle Dave. Don’t worry about it. I don’t need anyone here.”
    “Yes, you do. I’ll try to get out of here sooner. Maybe I could bring some files home. I’ll see what I can do.” He spoke fast. I could barely make out what he was saying.
    “No, don’t rush home. Allie sent me a text this morning saying she’d be over later.”
    “Well, I’m still gonna see what I can do to get out of here early. I’ll call you later, okay?”
    “Okay. Bye.”
    I felt sorry for Dave. He had stress both at work and at home. Dave’s job had always been stressful, but it seemed to be making him even more miserable the past few months. He was edgy, nervous—almost like he was in some kind of trouble.  
    Back when he was younger, Dave owned his own company. Although Dave’s undergraduate degree was in genetics, his first love was computers and he was a genius at programming. So he got a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT and started HeliCode Technologies. It was a biotech company that did genetic research.  
    Three years after starting his business, Dave was bankrupt. He was ready to shut down the company until he met my dad, then a young professor of genetics. Dad was doing some research that was funded by a grant from HeliCode Technologies. Dave and my dad met often to discuss the project and quickly became friends.  
    Dave was a risk taker and an innovator. At the time, his company was trying to find a way to program genes the way you would program a computer. People thought he was crazy, but the idea clicked immediately with my father, who was