There are things that need to be seen, or felt, before you really understand them; the warmth from the body of a lover, the freshness of a jasmine candle, or the cold from the bathroom floor at 2 am when you’re desperately trying to hold it together to be coherent the next day in an online interview.

She had wondered if places were meant to be quite so lifeless; the plants seemed to resent their own existence there. Someone had said murder was the only interesting thing to do in this town and she had really wondered if she wandered into an real life Riverdale and should call it quits on the whole adventure and run away. The truth was also this, she found the town arid. She had never liked staring at nature unless it was with a friend or for a meditation; the museum seemed to be fixated on the number of incredibly messed up things the place had gone through, and given that this was the Bible Belt and she was clearly not from here she had been preached to a few times which got old, fast.

Of course, motels have never been known for their homey atmosphere, but this one was the subject of a Netflix show which meant it shouldn’t have been that awful. Given that this was Seher’s attempt to be impulsive (at 3:24 am), she should have expected that it was a Netflix documentary series on murder and that the pool was a popular place to die a questionable death. Arooj, with her boundless capacity for hope, and concern that her friend would go the same way, had encouraged her to see that it was a really interesting spin by the motels social media manager. Aimun and Mariam had told her to not attempt a seance or do a tarot card reading. Sara and Amir had very clearly stated that she should just come home.