The Samantha Project (8 page)

“I don’t want to see anyone.”

“What about Colin? He’s been by twice now.”

“Tell him I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Allie came by. And that girl you work with at the coffee shop.”

“I said I don’t want to see anyone!” I yelled at him. “Just leave me alone!”

He tried giving me a hug, but I pushed him away. “Okay, Sam. I’ll let you sleep.”

Dave didn’t come back the rest of the day. I spent the afternoon and evening in bed, tossing and turning. I kept imagining my parents’ car going off the road, with me watching from afar, unable to help.
 

Eventually I drifted into a deep sleep and saw vivid images of the accident scene. It was like I was right there watching it. I could see a couple of tow truck guys trying to get my parents’ car out of the ravine. It was daylight and I could see the car, but it was so twisted and burned that I barely recognized it. The doors had been torn completely off in an attempt to get my parents out, even though the impact of the crash had already taken their lives.
 

“I ain’t no detective, Joe, but I can tell you, that was no accident,” the scruffy old tow truck guy said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That car was messed with—no lie. Someone didn’t want those two around.” He cocked his head to the side as if trying to imagine how the car ended up in its current condition.
 

“Think we should say something to the cops?” asked Joe, a younger version of the old man.
 

“Course not. Have I taught you nothin’ all these years? Cops bring trouble. And we don’t need no trouble. Play stupid and pretend you know nothin’. That’s how you survive.”

“You’re smarter than you look, Mr. McComb.” A man in a dark suit came out from the trees holding a gun at the old man. “But your son’s not too bright. And that’s too bad. For both of you.”

A shot fired and the son fell to the ground. The old man rushed to his son’s side. “What did you do?! Joe!” Another shot rang out. The old man collapsed over his son.

I woke up sweating and short of breath. It’s only a dream, I said to myself. Just another dream.
 

Over the past few months, my dreams had become more and more lifelike and I often woke up confused, wondering if I was in the dream or real life. I looked around and found myself still safely in bed.
 

As my breathing returned to normal, the images from the dream continued to fill my head. Something about the dream seemed oddly familiar. I pictured the scene again. The man with the gun. It was like I knew him. But how? I thought hard, then instantly I knew. It was the man from the coffee shop. The guy that came in the day before Thanksgiving, right before we closed, when I was all alone.
 

I felt sick to my stomach. It can’t be, I thought. It was just a dream. And the car crash? It was an accident, I told myself. It was night. It was dark. It was just an accident.
 

After an hour or so of telling myself that, I finally fell asleep again around 2:30 a.m.
 

Unfortunately the dream picked up right where it had left off.
 

“I’ll take it from here.” The man in the dark suit grabbed a file from a young police officer and pushed him aside.
 

“What are you doing? I have to finish that report.” The young officer yelled, but then lowered his voice upon seeing the police chief walk in.

“Let him take it, John. This is Mr. Roberts from the federal transportation safety office. That construction company doing the road work out on Stevens Point has been in trouble for years for not following safety procedures. They win government contracts with their cheap bids, then take shortcuts so the owners can pocket the cash. They built that faulty bridge over in Dodge County a year ago and got off with a fine. I got a feeling this latest accident is going to be the end for that company.”

The young officer looked puzzled. “You’re the boss, chief. Let me know if you need me.” He turned and walked away as the senior officer and the man in the suit walked into a side room.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s just a kid. He doesn’t suspect anything,” the senior officer said, looking fearful of the other man.

“I’m trusting you to keep him quiet. And keep him away from the scene. I don’t want any rumors starting. And figure out a story for those tow truck guys.”

“Yes, sir.”
 

The man walked away as the senior officer slumped into his chair and mumbled, “How the hell am I gonna cover up two more murders?”

I woke up to a loud beeping noise. “Uhhh,” I moaned, seeing the glowing 5:45 flashing on the clock. It was Monday morning. I had forgotten to turn off my alarm.
 

As I rolled over to shut off the annoying beep, my cell phone rang. I reached over for the phone. It was Colin.

“Hello?”

“Sam, it’s me. Are you up?”

“Barely,” I mumbled.
 

“I had a feeling you would be. Forgot to shut off your alarm, right?”
 

“Yep.”

“Sooo, how are you feeling today?” he asked cautiously, sounding even more concerned than the last time I had seen him.

“I’m tired. I keep having these dreams that wake me up.”

“About your parents?”

“Yeah. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Hey, I was worried about you yesterday. Dave said you didn’t even leave your room. Did he tell you I came over?”

“I heard you guys talking downstairs.”
 

“I’m gonna stop by and see you before school.”
 

“You don’t need to.”

“It’s not about needing to. I want to. I’ll be over in a half hour, okay?”

“No. Really, I get that you’re concerned, Colin, but like you said, it’s just gonna take time.”

“I know. But I want to be there for you. Tell me what I can do. Anything.”

“Just give me some time. That’s what I need from you right now.”

He hesitated. “Well, okay. At least you asked for something.”
 

“Get to class. And don’t miss basketball practice this afternoon.”

“I wasn’t going.” His voice trailed off as he remembered his recent commitment to me. “Yep, basketball. I’ll be there.” Colin paused for a moment. “You sure you don’t want anything else?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll talk to you later.”

It was still dark outside. But I was sick of being in bed, so I took a long shower, then got dressed. When I went downstairs, Dave was in the kitchen pouring himself some coffee.
 

My appearance took him by surprise. “Sam, you’re up. And it’s so early. You’re not going to school today. It’s too soon.”

“I know. I just thought it was time to get out of bed.”

“I have to go into the office this morning, but I’ll be back by lunch time.” Dave seemed rushed as gulped down the coffee.

“Can I do something while you’re gone? You said the other day that I could help with Mom and Dad’s service.” I felt weird just saying the words.
 

“Sure, honey. But only if you feel up to it. When I was talking to the minister, he said it would be nice to play some music that they liked. Could you help with that? Go through and find some songs? And maybe look for some photos to display?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

He started rinsing out his coffee cup in the sink. “You’re sure you’ll be okay while I’m gone? I could have Jean come over.” Jean was the elderly woman next door. She was very nice and a great baker, but I didn’t need a babysitter.
 

“No. I’ll be fine. You should get to work.”

Dave left and there I was—alone in the house. I had been alone in that house millions of times, but this was different. It was painfully silent and felt colder than normal.
 

My mind wandered back to the dream that I’d had. The dream in which my parents were murdered, their crash made to look like an accident. I decided that the dream must have been a form of denial, my inability to believe that my dad could have somehow been careless enough to lose control of the car.
 

I couldn’t 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 able to clarify how Dave’s theory could actually work.
 

Put simply, the body is made up of cells, which have chromosomes. And those chromosomes have genes that carry genetic codes. The codes are various combinations of four nucleobases, or bases for short. The bases are guanine, cytosine, thymine, and adenine, which are usually just abbreviated G, C, T, and A. The way in which those bases are paired up and sequenced determines things like how we look or whether we get a certain illness.
 

Computers work in a similar way but use the numbers 0 and 1. How those 0s and 1s are put together determines what the computer will do. By using both the genetic code and a software code, Dave theorized that you could basically tell genes how to act by inserting software into cells via computers the size of nanoparticles. For instance, you could tell a healthy cell to stay healthy and not turn into cancer.

The concept was fairly simple, but Dave had never been able to explain it in a way that made sense to investors. He wasn’t even sure if his idea was possible beyond theory. But with my father’s help, he was able to show that it actually could work. He formulated a business plan describing his research and took it to banks, hoping to get the money he needed to keep the business afloat.
 

Just as this was all happening, GlobalLife Inc., a huge multinational corporation, offered to buy the company from Dave. A GlobalLife executive was on the board of one of the banks and read the business proposal. He made Dave a deal he couldn’t refuse. Dave would get millions for the business and would stay on as Director of Research and Development.
 

Soon after the sale went through, things turned south. According to my dad, Dave became consumed with work. GlobalLife Genetics, the division of GlobalLife that took over Dave’s company, had research facilities around the world, diluting Dave’s job and making him one of many Directors of Research and Development.