The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  And then it happened, right before I came home. Like a gift from the gay heavens, the three-week whirlwind with Emma was over. Jadis was devastated and I was a terrible, shallow best friend because I was so happy that they broke up.

  We made a pact to just date people (though I never really dated anyone—too many daddy issues) and never commit to any one person except each other. It was too painful to be apart, and it was too painful to be broken up with. We’d simply avoid heartbreak altogether.

  That was the first time Jadis did a stick and poke on me, the two of us in my bed, her clothes and my clothes mashed together. Each of us with one half of a tiny jagged heart on our ankles. Puzzle pieces that would fit each other forever. Best friends for life.

  But now it’s different. Now I’m relieved. A rekindled relationship with Emma means maybe it’ll soften the blow when I confess to her about cheer.

  “Good for Emma for coming out,” I say.

  “Okay, yes, but what took her so long to come out to her parents?” Jadis says.

  “Don’t be so judgmental, Jadis. We don’t know what her parents are like.”

  “Her mom is a therapist. They’re close.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “sometimes it’s hardest to tell the truth to the person you love the most.”

  I suddenly realize that I could just as easily be talking about myself.

  “So what’s your secret?” she says.

  I imagine the Three Chloes taunting me in the hallway if I don’t show up to the practice tomorrow. Their arms folded across their chests, shaking their heads. Hissing loser under their breath.

  “I think I’m going to stop by the cheerleading practice tomorrow,” I say, feeling myself blush.

  Jadis stares at me, holding the cigarette in her hand so elegantly, her mouth wide open in disgust.

  “You can’t be serious,” she says. “I went to the locker room to make out with Emma Scanlen for, what, all of ten minutes? And within that time you not only got sucked into the cult of the cheerleaders, but you’ve committed to practice on a Saturday morning?”

  “They didn’t suck me in. You know I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Why do you think I drag you to all these pep rallies?”

  “Liking a pep rally is one thing, but to be down there with them? Clapping? Smiling? You don’t even know how to smile, Shade. Your mouth doesn’t work like that.”

  “Oh my god, I can learn how to smile,” I say, though I doubt I really could.

  “You’re an artist, Shade. Not a cheerleader. You’re nothing like those girls. They’re cookie cutters. They’re dolts. They’re robots. And what? You’re going to change your name to Chloe too? Because that seems to be a requirement.”

  When Jadis is angry, her face has a particular glow. It’s as if her insides are exploding, all the fireworks—the blues, the reds, the pinks—translucent through her white skin.

  But I’m angry too. I’m angry that she’s dumping on the one thing I want. Because this is something I want. Or at least I want to try. It’s something I’ve wanted for a while, but I’ve ignored it. I’ve pushed it down. And I don’t want to ignore it anymore. I want to prove to the Three Chloes I can do it. I want to prove it to myself. And now I want to prove to Jadis that I can accomplish something without her. That I don’t need her inflating my ego. I don’t need her holding my hand.

  “You’re the artist, Jadis,” I say. “I’m just the artist’s muse.”

  The smoke cloud hits the night, weaving between us, and she tosses the cigarette butt down on the sidewalk, crushing it under her foot.

  “You could come if you want. Like sit on the side,” I say, and try to laugh. “You know, cheer me on.”

  “Uh, no thanks,” she says. “The Three Chloes . . . and Shade. It has an interesting ring to it.”

  “It’s just one practice,” I say. But we both know that’s not true. I know joining the cheer team is like a shot through the heart. It’s like I severed a limb.

  “If you really don’t want me to go—” I say.

  “What? Please. What, am I in charge of you?” She gazes down at the cigarette butt and instead of picking it up and putting it in her pocket she smashes it until it’s in tiny particles, mostly disappearing into the sidewalk.

  “Soon you’ll be sipping tequila at the country club, saying, Those were the good old days. Maybe you can finally date Trey. Maybe you and Trey will get married and in twenty years, you’ll be at the country club chasing after a kid named Trey IV and then a kid named Trey V. Botox between the eyes, fillers. All of it.”

  “And where are you?” I say, quietly.

  “That’s a good question,” she says, and looks away.

  I hold my pinkie out for her to clasp on to it. She hooks it lightly. I look down at the matching tattoos on our inner arms, perfectly mirroring our fingers.

  “It’s not going to change anything between us, Jadis. It’s just a practice.”

  “Those are some famous last words,” she says, laughing, throwing her head back. “Nothing will change means that everything will change. You’ve sealed our fate with those words. I hope you know that.”

  She stares at me blankly, and I don’t know if she’s serious.

  Jadis and Shade, the two of us against the world.

  “Our fate was sealed a long time ago,” I say, and embrace her, hug her tight, feel her bony shoulders against mine.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  That night at home, I do about an hour of reps that I find online. I google cheer conditioning drills and find fit women who train you to do the hardest cardio kicks, handstands, push-up holds, bridge holds, and squat jumps that you’ve ever seen. Engage the core, squeeze the glutes, arch the back, lower the shoulder blades.

  I look down at myself, my little paunch belly, and squeeze it, making tiny dimples in my skin.

  Chloe Orbach texts the whole team: Go full Rocky. Run stairs. Get your abs Gabi Butler rock solid.

  I’m on my fifth set when my mother bangs on my door. She and her friend Esthere, who is in from Paris (but not exactly Paris, as my mom says, thirty minutes just outside of Paris, which is not the same thing, according to her), are playing Donna Summer records and dancing in the hallway. She wants me to come out and dance with them.

  My mom is very beautiful and very young-looking, to the point that once a supermarket clerk looked at us blankly and said, “Sisters?” This wasn’t a flirtatious gesture. My mother looks that young. It’s not something I’m exactly proud of, that she’s more beautiful than me. Just something else I have to contend with.

  I walk out there with my little sports bra and sweats, and she instantly stops dancing and stares down at me. I know she’s high, I can see how glossy her eyes are.

  She told me when they made weed legal in the state that she was no longer going to hide it from me. That she was going to openly smoke or eat gummies or do whatever she wanted to because she was an adult. She said it was just like drinking a few glasses of wine, like the rest of the mothers do around here. The country clubbers are all alcoholics, according to my mother.

  Everything she does in her life is in spite of the country clubbers.

  She and Esthere twirl toward me in white caftans. “Esthere brought back caftans from Morocco, aren’t they wonderful?”

  “Wonderful,” I say.

  “Esthere,” my mom says. “Did you know Shade decided to become a cheerleader?”

  Esthere practically chokes. “A what? Like a sis-boom-bah cheerleader?” She laughs. “That’s so American. So quaint.”

  I think about how my mom showed up to back-to-school night once with fuck you painted on her stiletto nails because she said she was just too tired to scrape the glue off.

  “Jesus, Mom, can’t you just be a normal person?”

  “Normal is about fitting in with
the crowd,” Esthere says. “You know your mother does not fit in with any crowd, my darling.” Esthere reaches in and gives me a kiss on both cheeks.

  “I think it was Maya Angelou who said, ‘If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be,’ ” my mom says.

  She’s one of those people. Filling up her social media with quotes she swears people love to read.

  “I’m going back in my room,” I say.

  “What is a cheerleader anyway?” my mom says as I turn away from her, but I’m familiar with these kinds of open-ended questions from her. It’s one for the wind and the sky, her exaggerated opinions about my life and the world. “If they had a dance team. That I could see. A dance team would make sense.”

  “I thought too many eating disorders come with dance, Mom,” I say, and she sneers at me. Esthere tries to get her off the subject. Go back to their little disco party. To let me live my life. That’s how the French do it, she tells my mother. The children have to be themselves.

  I go back in my room and slam the door. She shouts from the hallway, “I watched that cheer documentary, Shade. The girls were unnaturally obsessed with their bodies. I’m sure the girls in your school are nothing like that.”

  She waits for a response. I can’t tell if it’s a dig or if she’s being sincere. So I say nothing, letting her walk away.

  Chapter

  4

  In the locker room, all the girls are wearing booty shorts and sports bras. Their tiny waists wafting in the air. Everything, arms, belly, legs, all of it on display. Tanned and oiled. Scrubbed. Smooth, supple skin over bulging muscles. So comfortable with their bodies. How do they know how to do this? To be so tanned and manicured? Did their mothers teach them? An older sister? Did they study magazines? How did they get their elbows to shine? Their eyebrows in a perfect arch?

  What am I doing here?

  This is the biggest mistake of my life.

  There’s a strict school dress code where they send you home if you’re not wearing a bra. If the vice principal measures your shorts and they’re too short, you get sent home. Just last year, you couldn’t wear leggings to school. Too provocative, they said. But over here, in the locker room, there are different rules. Everyone is on display.

  I’m wearing my old sports bra that barely holds me up. A pair of gym shorts rolled over two times. My mother’s black T-shirt that says CLUB MED 1993. She got it from Goodwill because she believes in sustainable fashion. The T-shirt covers my ass; I’m swimming in it. It’s 85 degrees, and I’m baking. The hot sun plows through the jail cell–like window.

  Standing in front of the hazy glow, the rays of light streaming around her, is Chloe Orbach. Her hair in a high bun. Booty shorts and a purple tie-dyed sports bra. A lapis heart necklace lined with diamonds gleaming in the light.

  “You can’t wear that T-shirt, Shade,” she says. “It’s not part of the uniform.”

  “You just said not to wear overalls,” I say.

  Just as I think Chloe is going to tear into me about not being a team player, she softens, exhales like she’s a flower opening her petals to me.

  “We have to see your body, Shade. How can we see you move, and correct your positions, if you’re wearing enormous clothes?”

  Her face is so gentle and kind now. Sweeter than I ever thought she could be. This is the girl who destroyed my gymnastics career. The girl who tormented other girls just for shitty cartwheels. For sloppy dismounts. Who humiliated girls in front of an entire gym while coaches watched in glee. She scans my body. Her eyes all over me. “You’re a little powerhouse, Shade.”

  And something lights up in me. Maybe it’s just shock that she’s not trying to harass me right off the bat. But I sink into it, feeling fuzzy and warm in my chest.

  “You have a sports bra on under there?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Then take your shirt off.” She doesn’t stammer.

  “Right here? I’m not taking my shirt off right here.”

  “Do you have like body dysmorphia or something? You have a great body. Big boobs. Tiny waist. What’s your problem?”

  My problem is I’m not used to being the center of attention. I’ve always reserved that spot for Jadis.

  So I hold in my stomach and pull my shirt off. I feel like I’m being inspected by my Jewish grandmother who always wants to see how “skinny” I am when I visit her.

  “You don’t have to suck it in so hard. You’re tiny. Just get used to it.”

  “I’m really out of my comfort zone here, you understand that, right?” I say.

  “I know,” she says, and takes my hand, guides me through the locker room like I’m hers. Her face straight ahead, walking me toward the five other new girls. Kaitlyn Frazier, Priyanka Laghari, Olivia Cohen, Sasha Chandler, and Zoey Potter. There’s eleven of us on the team in total. All of them screaming over each other, with Chloe Schmidt and Chloe Clarke sandwiched between them all, their bodies so muddled and tight together like they know how to do this. They know how to be a group of giggling girls, happy and cute, the kind of girls you walk past and wonder what they’re whispering about.

  Chloe Orbach turns to me. “Loosen up,” she commands.

  It makes me more tense.

  When Chloe Schmidt and Chloe Clarke see Chloe Orbach, they abandon the new girls and march over to us, like soldiers.

  “Tell Shade she looks amazing. Tell her something nice,” Chloe Orbach says.

  “You’re not very tan. You should probably sit out in the sun,” Clarke says, and grins.

  “That’s not a compliment.” Chloe Orbach sneers and flicks her arm. “Be nice.”

  “Isn’t that what a cheerleader is supposed to be?” I say, taunting. “Aren’t you all nice? Aren’t you all sweet?”

  “I don’t know what we are,” Chloe Schmidt says, her eyebrow arching. “But we’re not sweet.”

  Chloe Clarke rolls her eyes. “Okay, I’ll go first,” she says. “You have a great body, but you slouch your shoulders too much.”

  “Thanks?” I say, sending my shoulders back. Every part of me wants to crouch down and crawl out of here. But that’s the point of this little game, isn’t it? To test me. For me to wilt. I don’t wilt.

  “You need new shorts,” Schmidt says. “Those are too loose. You need cheer shorts.”

  “Chloe likes ’em tight,” Orbach says, and Chloe Schmidt smirks.

  “I like your tattoo,” Clarke says. “It’s pretty.”

  My tattoo. The pinkies intertwined. Two delicate fingers. Me and Jadis. What would Jadis think of this, them undressing me? God, she would hate it so much.

  “Who’s the other pinkie?” Chloe Orbach says. But she knows exactly who it is.

  “Jadis Braff.”

  “Are you together?” Chloe Schmidt asks.

  “No, she’s with Trey Wheeler,” Chloe Clarke says.

  “I am not with Trey Wheeler,” I say; it’s the only thing that comes out of my mouth with clear intention.

  The question about Jadis, on the other hand, isn’t so unusual. People ask me this. Jadis’s private art teacher and even Jadis’s brother, Eddie, recently. My own mother asked me; she was excited to tell her friends that she had a queer daughter. They would have been so impressed, she said, because in her day, that sort of thing was so taboo. It’s such a beautiful thing, how inclusive your generation is, my mom always says. I know, I told her, I know.

  But Jadis and I have never been together. Plus, I’m straight. We’re best friends, and that’s it.

  When Chloe Schmidt asks me about Jadis, that twinge in my stomach comes up, the nervous tightening of my belly. I would hate it if Jadis joined the landscape photography club, or if she decided to be a stagehand for the school play. I would see it as her choosing something over me.

  I’m a terrible person.r />
  “No,” I say to the Three Chloes. “We’re best friends.”

  “Jesus, Chloe. Really?” Chloe Orbach says. “Shade’s personal life is none of our business.”

  “She didn’t seem to mind that I asked,” Chloe Schmidt says.

  “I don’t care. It’s rude,” Chloe Orbach snaps, and then she smiles at me contentedly and blows a big bubble with her pink gum, before it cracks across her lips.

  Chloe Clarke grabs booty shorts from her locker. “Put these on,” she says, and chucks them at me.

  “We’ll wait while you change,” Chloe Orbach says.

  “You ready to do this, Shade?” she says.

  Suddenly everything seems so hopeful—and I almost forget that five seconds ago I felt guilty about joining the team. About leaving Jadis. I’m being included in something that’s imperfect and filled with sexist stereotypes, as my mom would say, but it feels good to be included.

  “Uh, sure?” I say.

  The three of them laugh, groan.

  “Oh, my god, this is going to take so much work,” Schmidt says. “She needs an entire transformation.”

  “Let’s try it again,” Clarke says, her body solid in front of me. Arms down. Shoulders back. Then, in a peppy cheer command: “You ready to do this?”

  Their eyes. Heavy on me. Peering into me. I know what they want. They want some corny drill sergeant YES MA’AM out of me. I have to decide if I’m too cool to give it to them or if I’m going to jump into this role, because here I am at cheer practice. What have I got to lose?

  “I’m fucking ready,” I say.

  We walk out of the locker room, the four of us together, and I pass the mirror, slow, like it’s watching me. A panicked little girl’s voice in my head, I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here. Yet here I am, my curls, my bare stomach, my legs, my shoulders. All of my body on full display. My belly button, for the first time in years, seeing daylight. The little pooch underneath it. Here with all these girls and their tight abs, their stand-up postures. I want that to be me.