It could have been raining.

I could have been wearing black.

Our faces could have been wet with tears.

Instead, on Carson's funeral, it was sunny.

I was wearing jeans and a blue top.

I was watching some sitcom while lazily sitting on the couch.

I didn't know Carson Harris. I knew things about him--his tired blue eyes, his reputation that was given to him for all the wrong reasons, his quiet demeanor--but I never talked to him. I never had a conversation with him. The most interaction we had was once in sophomore year when I tripped down the stairs and he helped me up. His hands had been cold that day.

So I didn't really mourn Carson Harris. That was the case until I got a knock at the door.

Mom and Dad were both at work despite the fact it was a Sunday. I figured it was one of them coming home. The blue uniforms told me otherwise.

I opened the door to greet a policeman and woman. "Hello?" I asked.

"Are you Avery Carter?" a scruffy voice asked. I noticed behind them was a man in a suit carrying a briefcase.

"Yes...," I replied.

"We're going to need you to come with us," he said.

"Why?"

"Do you know Carson Harris?" the woman asked.

I gulped. "He was in my grade, but I wasn't friends with him or anything."

The two cops glanced at each other. "We're going to need you to come with us," the man repeated.

"Why?" I said again.

"Are you sure you have no affiliation with Carson Harris?"

"I'm positive."

"She's lying," the man in the suit lazily said. "She's the only name mentioned."

"Mentioned on what?" I demanded.

"That's why you need to come with us," the policewoman said.

I nodded. No need to make them angry. I don't have anything to hide; I barely knew the poor kid.

They took me in the back of the car. The man in the suit--the Harris family lawyer, I assumed--slouched in the seat next to me. "What's this all about?" I timidly asked. He fought back a smirk. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through something. He didn't reply. "I said, what's this all about?" I repeated.

"You know, I'm not legally obligated to show this," he drawled. "But..." He held his phone out to me. I gaped at the picture. I thought I would throw up. "You sure you don't know Carson Harris?"

I couldn't catch my breath. It was my name. Next to a limp body. Carson, I thought with a feeling of dread. My name. Written out...in blood. AVERY CARTER, it read.

"Prescott, you didn't show her anything, did you?"

The lawyer scoffed. "I would never."

"Pierce, give me your phone."

"You need a warrant for that one, Eliza," Pierce Prescott said with a laugh.

I fought everything in me to not pass out or throw up due to the bombshell that was just dropped on me. I failed.

Carson knows me? I thought. Why would he write my name? "Pull over," I begged.

"We're not--"

"I'm going to throw up; please, pull over. I don't wanna ruin your car."

Eliza gave the policeman a sideways glance. He nodded and parked the car on the side of the road. The cop opened my door and I rushed to the edge of the street. Eliza held my hair and I began to cry. My name. Somebody wrote my name when they died.

"Jesus, Pierce. What did you show her?" Eliza inquired.

"She asked nicely," Pierce replied, peaking his head out of the car with a puppy-dog face.

"You're a sick son of a bitch, you know that?"

"It's not like you weren't going to show her once we got to the station," Pierce replied, throwing his hands in the air. "But I guess I am just a son of a bitch after all the favors I've done you, huh?"

I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know Carson, or why he wrote my name in blood, or why Eliza was holding my hair, or why Pierce Prescott was a son of a bitch.

So this isn't the part where it's revealed that Carson and I had an affair. Or that I loved him. Or that he was my secret best friend or long-lost brother.

All Carson Harris was to me was some boy who went to my school who I probably would never see ever again after college.

But, evidently, Carson Harris knew me. Knew me well enough to write my name out before he died.

Or, should I say, before Carson Harris got murdered.