The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  And that’s when it really locks in.

  I want to do that.

  Imagine me. Off the ground. Into the air. Flipping like that. Flying like that.

  I can do that.

  But I could also think of a million reasons why not.

  For one, the cheerleaders had traditional mothers. Even if they were drugged up on their Vicodin or drunk on merlot. Even if they were lawyering all day, or outsourcing their pajama fundraiser duty, sending their daughter’s uniform to the dry cleaners along with Mommy’s designer suits. These moms filled out forms on time. They showed up to PTA meetings. They had husbands at home. They had calendars they checked. Cheerleaders had someone, a housekeeper, anyone, making them lunches every morning or the night before so they didn’t have to eat the tater tots at the cafeteria. Their mothers did everything for them.

  My mother bought me pencils with sayings like Little Miss Hard-Core Feminist. I don’t have a curfew because she wants me to make the judgment call on my own. She wants me to rebel. To try new experiences and take chances. That’s my mother’s big theory about parenting, that it’s her job to push me to experience life, not wander through it following someone else’s lead.

  My mother smokes hash with her friends. Most of them don’t have kids—they aren’t chained to the suburbs—so they read poems together long into the night because my mother thinks she’s Gertrude Stein, hosting literary salons in Paris for fledgling artists.

  These girls, they would never understand me.

  Except I can’t stop watching them. The way they flip casually on the mat. The way they lifted Chloe Clarke up so easily.

  What do I even want with cheer?

  I want to go up high.

  Backflip into it.

  I want them to lift me up to the sky, above all of them, so that I arch my leg out like a goddamned angel’s wing.

  The Three Chloes and their tight flips, the way they exploded into synchronized spread eagles, pom-poms flying, all that glitter sparkling as the light peeks through the gym windows.

  I can do that.

  I just have to admit it to myself. The decision is already made.

  I can do that.

  Chapter

  2

  The Three Chloes tower over the sign-up table like interchangeable dolls. Their gold pom-poms stacked on top of each other.

  One Chloe drapes an arm over another Chloe. A knee close to a leg. Head resting on a shoulder like a weird experimental fashion shoot.

  Chloe Orbach stares at me from her little circle behind the sign-up desk. Then it’s a ripple effect. One Chloe stares, then they all stare. Chloe Orbach waves, her face lighting up. Then the other two wave, their faces not as excited as Chloe Orbach’s, sure, but it’s mechanical. They fall in line.

  I wave back because I don’t know what else to do. It would seem rude if I didn’t at least move my fingers. I’m staring directly at Chloe Orbach. Staring staring.

  So I force myself to look away, pretend like I’m looking at anything else, anybody else. Jadis has trailed over to Emma Scanlen, who she dated over the summer while I was at a writing camp my mom forced me to go to in Vermont. They broke up because Emma hadn’t come out to her parents.

  It’s better for me to do this without Jadis, and I watch her sneak off with Emma inside the locker room.

  I stroll up to the sign-up desk, the Three Chloes hovering, watching me. And I walk like I deserve to be there, like they need me. And they do need me.

  “How do you sign up?” I say, but it comes out more like a whisper, because there’s such a buzz around the table, because I’m speaking too softly. Usually Jadis is my loudmouth microphone.

  So I blurt it out this time. “How do you sign up?”

  Chloe Orbach locks her eyes on me. “Shade Meyer? You’re signing up?” She practically chokes on her words. Her hair out of the bow now. Like a crown, those blonde waves framing her face.

  Their faces erupt in sly grins. Scanning my outfit: Overalls and a white muscle tank. The tiny rings on my fingers. Broken-in combat boots. Their eyes shift to my face. How my hair is long and curly, but not like Chloe Orbach’s kempt waves. The messy kind. My curls are the kind of curls for girls who have zero control. The kind of girl who has no structure. No discipline. No hair products that work right.

  I rub my hand across the back of my arm, scratching it. Better than playing with my hair. A nervous tic.

  “Shade Meyer is here to sign up for cheer?” Chloe Schmidt says. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Shade Meyer, former gymnast, you mean,” Chloe Orbach says.

  “I remember how good you were in junior gymnastics. You had a killer back handspring,” Chloe Clarke says.

  “I was so angry that you could do a back tuck on the balance beam before me,” Chloe Orbach says. “I was stuck on back walkovers and you landed it like it was no big deal. You had some weird, natural agility. I really hated you for it.”

  “Yeah, well, it seems like you caught up,” I say. Not mentioning that it was her fault, all of their faults, that I quit.

  They smirk at me. Their feral grins. Eyes blinking madly.

  What am I doing here?

  I look behind me to see if Jadis has reappeared from the locker room, but she’s nowhere.

  “What do I have to do?” I say.

  “Nothing. Just sign your name on the line,” Chloe Orbach says.

  “Literally, nothing?”

  “Just show up. Just come to practice. You can come to practice, can’t you?” That’s Chloe Schmidt. The meanest one. With her tiny waist and her angry pout and her Instagram account. I heard she pays for followers.

  After Jadis picks herself up from the ground once she hears that I’ve up and joined the cheerleading team (will they have to restrain her?), she’ll preach some lecture to me about how I’m signing my life away, that I might as well be joining a cult.

  “What else do I have to do?”

  “You have to commit,” Chloe Orbach says, tapping at her skull. “In your mind. You have to put everything to the side. Everything. Are you ready to do that?”

  Everything. What does everything even mean? If Jadis was standing here, she’d be the first person to ask that question. Define everything, she’d say. Surely they don’t mean I should give up the rest of my life for this stupid team.

  But maybe they do mean everything. Maybe that’s exactly what they mean.

  “We were wondering,” one of them says, her tone softer. More curious than defiant.

  “Can you do it?”

  “You know. A back handspring? We could use some more tumblers.”

  “I thought back handsprings weren’t a prerequisite?” says Sasha Chandler, a sophomore with big shoulders like a swimmer. She’s standing to the side, her lips trembling. I want to shake her. Don’t you know not to ask questions like that? Don’t you know worrying sparks weakness? She doesn’t know that the Three Chloes were once eleven-year-old vipers.

  “Yeah, I can still do it,” I say. Of course I can do it. I’ve been waiting years to do it.

  “Can you show us?” Chloe Orbach says.

  “Now? As in right now?”

  “Well, not later. We’re all here now. Now is as good a time as any.”

  It’s a dare. And if I don’t take it, I’ll look cowardly. All of them staring at me, waiting for the magical back handspring. But I’m not warmed up. I’m not stretched out. I’m in my overalls. Combat boots and rings. Jesus, I’m going to crack my head open on the gym floor, aren’t I? I don’t need to prove anything to anyone and I know this. But I want to do it. Just to show them I can.

  Slip off rings. Untie boots. Socks off. Bare feet on the ground.

  I’m fine. I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine at all. But I’m going to tell myself that I’m fine. I suddenly feel this rush of energy, and I’m ho
pping up and down on my toes the way I used to.

  I stretch my arms out straight in front of me. Rock my hands down to my sides. And then propel my arms up to the sky, my back arching and my legs firm until I feel so much power in my thighs, so much power in my calves and in my feet that my body can’t do anything else except spring backward so hard, so fast, like a rush, until my hands are down on the ground behind me, my legs up in the air and then over my head. One time, two times, three times. My feet stick down hard onto the gym floor. Breathing heavy.

  I turn to Chloe Orbach, because she’s the only one who matters, and she’s walking toward me with a slow clap.

  “Damn, girl. Damn,” she says. She turns to the small group who have lined up to sign their name on the dotted line.

  “You bitches better buck up. Because here’s what you’re going to have to work toward. This girl. Magic. Here she is. In flesh and blood.” She rolls out her hands like she’s rolling out a red carpet.

  Then Chloe Clarke, the flyer with the dark hair, the one who is more talented than any of them, takes a few steps toward me. “Impressive,” she says.

  Next comes Chloe Schmidt with her bitchy tone. “I’m not sure I could do that in overalls,” she says, wincing. Like it hurts for her to say it.

  Suddenly, I feel silly. Happy even. Not self-conscious or awkward, like I want to crawl to the back of the room. I rocked it. Those flips, my body up in the air like that. I could still do it. I could still own it.

  I slip my socks back on, my boots and my rings. Proud of myself for the first time in a while. Beaming inside.

  And then it hits me, that sinking feeling. I’m going to have to tell Jadis.

  Chapter

  3

  I’m waiting outside by Jadis’s car, my muscles still shaking from those back handsprings. My arms feeling strong in my muscle tank. I tighten up my boots and I can’t get the Three Chloes out of my mind. The way the three of them stood there like one person, chained to each other.

  Something about that loyalty reminded me of Jadis, specifically this time in the eighth grade when Fiona Campbell told everyone I stole one of those fuzzy pink wallets you get at the mall out of her locker. Me. With a fuzzy pink thing? It was ridiculous. Jadis went after Fiona, dragging her by the hair into the bathroom and telling her she was going to scratch her eyes out if she ever said anything about me again. During lunch, Fiona Campbell apologized to me in front of a crowd of people, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  I never felt so loved and protected. Having someone like Jadis on my side, as my family, meant everything to me. It still does.

  Jadis drives us to the diner with the neon sign that says EAT HEAVY, and I don’t say anything about cheerleading or the fact that a stream of frantic texts about the practice schedule light up my phone because Chloe Orbach added me to their group chat.

  Jadis and I crawl into our favorite big booth with the old jukebox from the 1980s. You have to put in a quarter, but only one song plays. Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” and it skips three times on the line Alison, I know this world is killing you. So we hold each other’s hands across the table and sing the line over and over into each other’s eyes. We order black coffees and disco fries, and I watch her as she draws with her mechanical pen on the white placemat.

  “This is the new tattoo I want to do for us,” she says, and shows me two sparrows. One for her and one for me. We’ll put them on our hands, right between the thumb and forefinger, she tells me.

  Another text from Chloe Orbach comes in, buzzing against my thigh: Be there at 8am bitches.

  And then one after that, just to me: Don’t wear overalls to practice, Shade.

  The disco fries come, and the hot gravy and mozzarella cheese shimmy all over the plate and we tear it apart like vultures.

  “So are you gonna tell me who’s texting you or what?” Jadis says, her mouth full of fries.

  “Group project,” I tell her. And that stops her from any more questions. Everyone knows how irritating group project texts are. It gives me a little time until I can figure out how to handle this.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  After disco fries we go to Dave Sozo’s garage to play Ping-Pong. Even though he’s captain of the wrestling team, he’s also a big fan of Sylvia Plath and somehow he and Jadis bonded in AP English Language. We play doubles against Sozo and Trey Wheeler. Trey stands for the third of something. I have no idea what his real name is. Trey also has this never-ending crush on me. He’s a cute boy with a sweet face and blond, nicely cut hair, and I’m sure some girl somewhere will fall in love with him, but I’m not at all interested.

  Sozo asked me about it once, why I wouldn’t give a nice guy like Trey a chance. All the girls like Trey, he said. How do you explain it when someone isn’t your type? How do you explain it when you don’t like guys who stare longingly at you in the hallway like stalkers?

  I told Sozo that I don’t date country clubbers.

  And now look at me. Cheerleaders are basically honorary country clubbers. They belong in the same animal genus. My stomach turns thinking about it, or maybe it’s the disco fries, and I completely miss an easy point.

  “Wake up, Shade,” Jadis snaps at me, “you want to lose to a couple of boys?” And then I serve an ace. Sozo and Trey scream at the top of their lungs, doing some weird rage thing because they’ve been beaten by a girl.

  Jadis and I leave when the rest of the wrestling team shows up. Sozo tries to get us to stay, but Jadis answers him in a typical Jadis way. “Too much toxic masculinity in this place, sorry, Soz,” and she blows him a kiss.

  He laughs and yells across the room. “Love that girl.”

  This is why it’s not always easy being Jadis Braff’s best friend. She’s everything for everyone. She hangs out with the jocks and the punks. She can cut school and still get a 1400 on the PSATs. She can draw the most delicate art on paper, or tattoo it on your arm.

  Sometimes I want to eat her alive.

  Sometimes I want to build a wall between us so I can breathe.

  Sometimes I hunger to be defined as more than Jadis’s best friend with the curly hair.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Outside it’s chilly, and I’m still just in a muscle tank and my overalls.

  “Let’s walk,” she says. She wants to leave her car here at Sozo’s and get it tomorrow.

  “I’m so tired. It’s been a long day,” I say, and I think about all of the group texts piling up.

  “It’s a full moon,” she says, and pouts.

  So we walk, just two girls strolling down a dark road, past the old willow trees, past the FOR SALE signs, past the old metal windmill and the crumbling garden apartments.

  “One day they’ll knock it all down and build more garden apartments,” Jadis says. “And we’ll never remember what this place looked like. At least I hope I don’t.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you so out of it?” she says.

  How do I tell her that something major in my life happened today and I haven’t even shared it with her? Where do I even begin? I just shrug as we stomp through the dried-up grass at the old farm, and it crunches under our boots. This beautiful wasteland, just abandoned here by the town because someone said they’d do something with it, donate it to an open-air project, but no one’s done a thing.

  It’s so bare in the moonlight and all of the energy I have today just takes over, so I race into the field and flip into three back handsprings in a row. Jadis watches me, her vape cloud rising into the sky, clapping and whistling.

  “It’s like watching a beautiful angel soar,” she shouts.

  “So I have to tell you something,” I say.

  “That’s good, because you’ve been acting like a weirdo and I have to tell you something too.” She lights a cigarette and hands it to me because she knows I won�
�t inhale any of that toxic vape.

  “You first,” I say. “Did you and Emma talk?”

  “We did more than talk. We had a full on make-out.” She dances around in a circle.

  “Wow, does that mean you two are back together?”

  “You know how lesbians are,” she says. “We’re not good at breaking up.”

  Emma apologized for not telling her parents about the two of them during the summer, Jadis says. Apparently she came out to them recently.

  I was allowed two phone calls a week while I was up at camp and I used them to talk to Jadis. During those calls, I got all sorts of details about their sex life. And while I was happy for her—because you’re always at least supposed to act happy for your best friend when they’re falling for someone, aren’t you?—I worried that when I got home from camp, Jadis and Emma would still be tied together in their perfect love match. It started to make me sick to get her phone calls. I even considered scheduling a phone call with my mom, and I never want to talk to her.

  I hated the way Jadis talked about Emma. How Emma’s so good at surfing. How Emma’s got an art studio in her basement. How Emma is so easygoing. Was that her way of telling me I wasn’t easygoing? Was it her telling me that I didn’t do anything adventurous or athletic? What didn’t she and Emma do together? Ms. and Ms. Perfect.

  I became distracted, writing short stories about jealous best friends and dramatic fights between lovers. I wrote a poem about a lizard that I thought would never hurt me until one night it hurled itself out of a cage and bit my neck. After class, my poetry teacher asked me if I was dealing with anything abusive at home or in a relationship that I wanted to talk about. The lizard poem, he said, was so symbolic of deception.

  I felt ashamed. My best friend had a girlfriend. How do you admit that’s what’s wrong with you? That’s what’s making you unfold from the insides?