Keep Your Friends Close

The swimming pool is a central symbol, representing the beautiful, placid surface of the characters’ privileged lives that conceals deadly truths. As an emblem of wealth and leisure in Beverly Hills, the pool is the perfect setting for Kiersten’s lavish “moms’ night out” (6), an event celebrating the characters’ curated images of success and happiness. However, its glittering water becomes a crime scene, a metaphor for how a perfect facade can hide terrifying dangers. Kiersten, an expert swimmer, appears to drown in her own pool, a starkly ironic event that immediately signals that nothing in this world is as safe as it seems. The discovery of her body transforms the symbol of status into a site of horror, underscoring that the very symbols of the women’s success are intertwined with their capacity for destruction.

Brooke’s initial, detached perception of the scene introduces the theme of The Unreliability of Perception in a World of Deceit. As her friends panic, she observes Kiersten’s body, thinking only of “how buoyant she looked. The way she just bobbed in the water like she was doing the dead man’s float” (3). This disconnect highlights the gap between appearance and the horrific reality of the situation, securing the pool as a reflection of the characters themselves: clear and inviting on the surface, but obscuring the moral decay and violence lurking just beneath.

The resolution of the mystery cements the pool’s association with deception. Early in the investigation, it emerges that Kiersten was killed by a blow to the head, and Jade ultimately reveals that after striking Kiersten in a panic, she placed her body in the pool in an effort to conceal her cause of death. The pool itself thus serves the characters’ lies, albeit in a way that ultimately unravels.