My friend Rina is a real estate agent. Her 
retouched face stares at me from billboards at 
several intersections in the city; next to her right 
cheekbone is text that reads, “#1 Realtor in the 
Metro Area and the Lakeshore!” followed by a 
regal, cursive logo.
Today, though, I am seeing her face in person. 
We have agreed to meet at a coffee shop at a strip 
mall midway between our two houses. It’s been 
a while: she is always busy posing in a pantsuit 

next to a waterfall marble countertop.
I arrive at the cafe a few minutes before 10 
and walk in the front door after parking my car. 
Rina is nowhere in sight, so I sit in an armchair 
by the window to keep lookout while scrolling 
through content on my phone. A video of an 
attractive man using a watermelon as percussion 
finishes playing onscreen as I hear the muffler of 
a motorcycle veer into the parking lot.
It’s Rina, adorned in a blue sweater and an ath-

leisure bottom, straddling the leather seat. She 
parks, dismounts, pats her pockets and walks in 
through the glass front doors while checking her 
texts. Her low-heeled boots on the concrete floor 
of the cafe are metronomic; after a few beats she 
looks up from her phone.
Rina holds her arms out as she walks toward 
me and rotates her wrists back and forth, jazzed. 
“Sara! It’s so good to see you,” she says. I hold 
out my arms and we embrace. With my nose 
over her shoulder I expect to smell the min-
gling scents of a department store perfume sec-
tion, but instead I’m greeted by something more 
focused and leafy: amplified salad.
“It’s really nice to see you, Rina. It’s been a 
while,” I say. “What are you wearing? You smell 
good.”
“Oh, that! It’s my new lemongrass serum,” 
Rina says. “I’m all natural now. Well, my cosmet-
ics are.”
The last time I saw Rina, and all of the times 
before that, natural was the antithesis of her 
appearance. We met as new reporters for the 
Gazette, but her posture, pasted smile and the 
neutral sleeveless dresses she wore to the news-
room suggested she had higher ambitions. She 
wanted the sense of celebrity that an endnote 
reporting credit couldn’t deliver.
“What’s with the new look?” I ask, referring 
to the lack of pantsuit. “You don’t look much like 
your billboard.” It’s like someone turned her lip-

stick saturation down using a photo editor.
“Well, Sara. It’s all a part of my new motto: 
simplify, simplify, simplify.” Rina sounds like the 
author of a self-help book. “Have you heard of 
Marie Kondo?”
I think about the digital culture article I wrote 
on Kondo back when she became popular. I start 
to say “yes,” but Rina cuts me off and teaches me 
about how to tell if something sparks joy or not.
“Coffee would spark joy for me right now.” I 
put on a flat smile.
“I see you’ve finally gotten good at segues.” 
Rina’s words prick my ego. She leads us toward 
the ordering counter; I look up at the long chalk-
board menus attached to the wall trying to deci-
pher drink names like “Raspberry Sunset” and 
“Zebra Zappuccino.”
Rina orders quickly, and at first I think she’s 
been here before. “Medium coffee, black.” She 
hands the cashier her card.
“Rina Stone!” The clerk looks up from the reg-
ister. “I see your billboard on the way here every 
morning!”
“Well, it’s quite nice to know I’m noticed.” 
Rina stabilizes an elated smile she can’t quite 
contain. “And you are,” she pauses to read, “Car-
son, hmm. One of my exes was named that, but 
now I just refer to him as Carcinogen. What a 
name. Ew.”

Content warning: Descriptions of animal 
abuse, violence, blood, murder and suicide.
Sometimes she daydreamed so intensely 
she would almost turn into a fog. 
Margot was 15. She turned into a fog that 
day, the day that it happened. A girl had 
skipped class because her cat died. Margot got 
to thinking about what would happen if her 
dog died.
She could feel its soft black and white fur 
underneath her hands as she twisted its neck, 
could feel that snap, like the pop of a balloon as 
you watched somebody squeeze it: terrifying, 
but satisfying. She could feel the dog writhe, its 
tail and legs slap against her thighs. She could 
see its blue eyes staring up at her in fear. Fear 
that would never fade.
And then she blinked, and she was in her 
bathroom back at home, washing her hands of 
something.
The cold water had been the thing to wake 
her up, its cold touch seducing her back into 
reality. She wiped her hands on a towel and 
gazed into the sink. Was that dirt around the 
rim of the drain?

Her mother cried into her father’s arms that 
night — their dog had never come home. 
The next day, the whole school was talk-
ing about the “animal serial killer” running 
rampant through the town. First Madisyn’s 
cat, next Margot’s dog. By the time the chatter 
dissolved and people forgot about the whole 
thing, three more beloved pets were dead, and 
Margot had to buy one of those pill organizers 
for her new meds. 
***
“And what?” Nick said, chewing the crust 
of his pizza, wiping his fingers of grease. “You 
think you killed your dog?”
“I don’t know,” Margot said. “I daydreamed 
about it. And then he was gone.”
“Yeah, but you daydream about everything,” 
Nick said. “That doesn’t mean you actually did 
something.”
She was 25 now and a crime reporter. Nick 
hadn’t come out to lunch because he wanted 
to. He came because Margot forgot her brief-
case. And as her fiancé, there was an expecta-
tion that he’d bring it to her. 
Margot had only brought up the dog — what 

was his name again? — because she was ter-
rified. Nick hated it when she brought up the 
story and she knew he had stopped listening 
at this point. But she was scared because there 
was a serial killer on the loose in their town, 
slaughtering victims meaninglessly and mer-
cilessly. Scared because she was wasting hours 
of each day sunk in her daydreams. 
Daydreams that had consumed her, just like 
they had when she was 15.
“But I daydreamed about it the day that it 
happened,” Margot said.
“Did you daydream about the other ani-
mals?” Nick said. His brows were furrowed at 
the center of his forehead, creating lines across 
his face that made him look older.
“Well, no—”
“Then it wasn’t you. Just a coincidence,” 
Nick said. “You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That’s not very nice,” Margot said.
“What?” Nick laughed. “You can barely 
make it to work. You think you could actually 
carry out a murder?”
He seemed to think this was funny. Margot 
felt like she had swallowed worms, and they 
were writhing in her stomach.
“Nick.”
“What? You want me to believe you were 
once some sort of bloodthirsty killer?”
“I want you to believe in something I have 
to say.”
Nick didn’t go up to the office, just kissed 
her cheek and left straight from the pizza par-
lor. Margot went into the lobby and got into the 
elevator. Just as the doors were shutting, her 
editor, Amy, slipped inside.

Red Water, 
Clear Water

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

BY RILEY HODDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

BY OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI, 
STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Design by Kate Shen

Design by Serena Shen

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 // The Statement — 3

