Stranger At My Door

7. A Name Carved In Fear

The days after the break-in passed in a blur, one blending into the next. On the first day back at college, during registration, the announcement came: Brad's body had been found. It felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room, and that heavy, oppressive feeling clung to everything.

Later, the six o'clock news confirmed what we were all thinking: the police were treating Brad's death as suspicious. His parents made a desperate plea on TV, begging anyone with information to come forward. Brad's face was everywhere—plastered across papers, noticeboards, and TV screens. There was no escaping it.

I hadn't told Amber about the break-in. With Brad's death casting a shadow over everything, it didn't seem important. But by the fifth day, the secret had started to eat away at me. I'd never kept anything from Amber before, and the weight of it pressed against my chest like a stone. Still, I hesitated.

"Who the hell is Casey Malone?" Amber asked, her voice sharp as she crumpled her empty crisp packet and stuffed it into her pocket.

"Shhh," I hissed, glancing around even though there was no one nearby. We'd just walked down from college, planning to grab lunch before heading back to hers to study. Sally's Bakery was our usual spot—fresh food, warm atmosphere, and always packed during the lunchtime rush.

Amber frowned, pulling a cigarette from her pocket. "I'm serious, Sam. None of this makes sense." She struggled with the lighter, the wind refusing to cooperate. Her face scrunched up in exaggerated frustration, the cigarette bouncing between her lips. Her usual expression of playfulness was still there, even in the middle of this chaos.

"Here, let me," I offered, taking the cigarette and lighting it for her. "What doesn't make sense?"

She took a drag, exhaling slowly. "This bloke breaks into your house, right? Trashes your mum's room and then carves a name—Casey Malone—into your door. And your mum just brushes it off? Doesn't want to call the police? How does that add up?" Her eyebrows shot up theatrically, as though she was delivering the punchline to a joke that only I didn't get.

I sighed, feeling that familiar knot of tension coil in my stomach. "I know. It's... strange."

"Strange? It's downright weird." Amber's eyes widened, and she gave me a mock-serious look, her mouth twisted in disbelief like she couldn't believe I wasn't reacting the same way she was. "I mean, I get it, everything with Brad is a mess, but still. If someone broke into my house? We'd call the police without thinking twice." She puffed on her cigarette like she was Sherlock Holmes, investigating a mystery.

"I know," I repeated, sharper than I intended. The frustration was bubbling up again.

Amber narrowed her eyes, tilting her head to the side and giving me a comically exaggerated look of suspicion. "Unless..." She paused for dramatic effect, her eyes darting around like we were in some kind of spy thriller. "Unless the name isn't random."

I blinked. The knot in my stomach tightened. "What do you mean?"

She took another slow drag, her expression deadly serious now, though the twitch of her lips betrayed her usual jokey tone. "I mean, what if that name—Casey Malone—means something? You don't just carve a random name into someone's door for no reason." She raised her eyebrows, wiggling them at me as if to say, Come on, this is obvious.

Her words hung in the air between us. She was right. I hadn't thought about it like that before, but now the idea gnawed at me. The name wasn't random. It couldn't be.

Amber flicked the cigarette to the ground, crushing it beneath her foot with an exaggerated stomp, as though she were putting out something much bigger than a cigarette. "What did you find when you Googled the name?" she asked, her tone laced with curiosity, but her eyes held that spark of mischief she always carried.