The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  “Yeah, then we just started having fun with it,” Chloe Clarke says, oh so proud. “It’s a goddamned art installation.”

  She takes a swig of the vodka, points at a few of her favorites, the way their hair glows in the sunlight. Everyone oohs and aahs from the bed like it’s the Mona Lisa.

  “Art installation,” Chloe Schmidt repeats.

  Chloe Orbach turns the lights off, flicks on a disco ball, and throws on music. Little pink lights stream across the images. Across her face. Pink boxes with an iridescent glow. And I sink into the night, the plush peach rug, one of her dusty pink pillows underneath my knees.

  “You’ve been doing well this week, Shade,” Chloe Clarke whispers, siding up next to me. “Don’t let Schmidt get you down. She can have a temper sometimes, but she’s a softie.”

  “What made you become a top girl?” I say to her.

  “It was Chloe Orbach,” she says, stretching up one of her weed-like legs. “She had this idea that she and I would be the best flyers. We used to watch all these competitive cheer videos and copy stunts.” She fixes the pillow so it’s under her head, crosses one knee over the other. “And all of a sudden, I became a flyer and she didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She laughs. Her face blank, like I’ve asked an absurd question. “She didn’t like falling.”

  The vodka in us and the disco ball spinning, everyone else starts to open up. Keke’s parents are from Nigeria. Her dad is a retired Marine, her mother in the National Guard. “You won’t believe this,” she says, taking a sip of the vodka. “Their last names had to be shortened for their army uniforms. Instead of Lt. Achebe, it’s Lt. Ache.” She has to have a 4.0 and not one dot less.

  Priyanka’s parents, both lawyers, are happy about cheer as long as it looks good on her college applications. Olivia’s parents are happy that she joined cheer, but they’re not happy about her missing family dinner.

  “Wait,” I say. “You have dinner together every night?”

  “We did before cheer,” Olivia says. “Don’t you?”

  “Almost never,” I say. “It’s just me and my mom.”

  “Then how do you eat? Just at the kitchen table by yourself?” Priyanka asks me.

  “I eat in my bedroom. In front of my television.”

  They all look at me with sad faces. They don’t know what to say about my confession. A mother who doesn’t make dinner for her teenage daughter? These girls have never heard of such a thing.

  “I’m on a strict vegan diet. And my stepfather just built a whole CrossFit gym in our garage,” Chloe Schmidt says. “So that would never happen. I would never have that luxury of sitting alone, eating, without my mom watching me. The two of them needling me.”

  This is the first time I’m hearing her talk about this. I knew Chloe Schmidt had a personal trainer. That she had a chef. She’s very #fitnesschallenge #fitnessmotivation #fitspo #girlswithmuscles #eatvegan on Instagram. A thirty-day workout challenge where her trainer takes pictures and videos of her. Schmidt’s father died of cancer when she was young, and I think that has something to do with it, but I don’t ask.

  I don’t want them to quiz me about my mom. I don’t want to say that she doesn’t even know where I am tonight. That I make up my own curfew. That the last time she checked my marks was when I was in the fourth grade and even then she ripped up my report card because she said fourth graders shouldn’t have report cards. Now I know it’s not just them born with this drive, it’s their mothers’ drive too.

  “Stop talking about all this depressing crap and especially stop talking about mothers,” Chloe Orbach says, and jumps on her bed, wobbling, little obedient Olivia and baby Zoey at her feet.

  “Don’t let me fall, bitches!” she says.

  “Never!” they yell, laughing.

  She changes the track, grinding down hard to Latin trap music. We all follow, flowing back and forth like we didn’t just push our bodies to the limit at practice a few hours earlier to be ready for our game tomorrow.

  Chapter

  9

  After, we race into Chloe’s kitchen like animals. Ravaged with hunger, all those burned calories searching for replenishment. Tearing apart her pantry for snacks, eating out of boxes and drinking sodas from the fridge.

  Chloe Schmidt stuffs her face with diet potato chips, then turns around to everyone, her mouth full. “Don’t any of you take pictures. Understand?” Everyone understands.

  Suddenly, it becomes so wholesome and all-American and innocent. A perfect squad of girls, dancing and sharing secrets, the kind of girls you’d want to come and raid your pantry.

  Then Chloe’s mother walks in. She’s beautiful like Chloe, except with a lot of eye makeup and lipstick. Her blonde hair, too brassy. A spray tan, too orange. Long white nails like she’s trying too hard.

  “Stuffing your faces with crackers and chips, girls? Really? Chloe, it’s so unlike you,” she says to Chloe Schmidt, who sinks back into her self-loathing, spitting chewed-up chips into her palm. “And so unlike the two of you,” she says, pointing to the two other Chloes.

  “You’re all going to break out eating this crap. Cellulite on your precious thighs. Bloated for your game tomorrow. An away game too? Oh, the home team will judge.”

  Everyone backs away. Collective shame, fear of varicose veins and thoughts of strangers in bleachers staring us down.

  Chloe’s stepdad comes up from the basement, out of his slumber, and Chloe’s two younger brothers follow. They all have the same sporty look. Track pants and hoodies. Hair shaved in the back, short on top. They’re an athletic catalog.

  Then something happens. Chloe’s mother claps her hands, her legs firmly together. “Let’s do a cheer,” she says, and smiles at Chloe.

  Chloe doesn’t even blink. “Let’s not.”

  “I was a cheerleader just like you girls. I’m sure Chloe’s told you about me,” she says.

  Everyone shakes their head no. But I’m not surprised, because of course she was a cheerleader. These are the women my mom has warned me about. Chloe and her mother. Mommy and daughter in all their pageantry.

  Chloe looks like she’s been punched in the gut as her mother beams.

  “Chloe hates when I make her do a cheer with me.”

  “I never said hate, Mom.”

  “I know, I know. I’m just the old-school cheerleader. I’m the cheerleader has-been. My daughter can’t even bear to do one little cheer with me.”

  I cringe for Chloe. Her mom’s desperate plea is so uncomfortable. She’s too needy.

  “I was on a competitive team too, did you girls know that?” She points to a photo on the wall, grainy, a squad of girls stacked into a three-level pyramid. “That’s me at the top. We went all the way to the state finals. We worked as hard as you girls do. Maybe harder. I haven’t seen your team make it to any state finals. I haven’t seen your team at any regionals.”

  “We’re doing a new routine for homecoming,” Chloe says, and points to me. “Shade’s our new flyer.”

  I wave awkwardly.

  “Cute,” she says. “I’m sure your routine will be adorable.” Her husband takes her hand, gives her a little pull, but she doesn’t take the bait. She’s still waiting in her cheer clasp. Hands tightly squeezed together. “You can’t do one little cheer with your mother? Just one little eensy bitsy cheer.”

  How do you back down from your mom . . . in front of all these people? You don’t.

  “Sure,” Chloe says, with utter dread.

  They stand together. Clean. Chloe’s mom gives her a deep “Ready, go.”

  Arms up above their heads, then a switch to a K clap. “Let’s go. Panthers, get psyched. Let’s go.”

  Left high V. Clasp. Bend knees down.

  “Let’s GO. Groveton, get PSYCHED. Let’s GO.”

  Tuck jump. Clean. Right
there in the kitchen. Both of them exact. Like they’ve been practicing it forever. Chloe’s mother rising high in the air. Higher than her daughter. She basks in it. All of us, clapping because we’re left with no other choice.

  I feel so bad for Chloe because you can tell that she hates this with every ounce of her body. There’s a part of me where for a brief second, really, so brief, it just passes through me, I appreciate my own mother. Where I appreciate her for all of her feminist bullshit. For all of her preaching about living a single and free life. For all of her parties and her boyfriends and her friends coming in from Morocco and drinking too much wine, prancing around in their cliché caftans and waking me up at three in the morning because they’re fighting about politics.

  My mom is nothing like Chloe Orbach’s. In all of her worst mothering, as much as I’ve often hated her, underneath it all, she’s magnificent. She does a coconut oil hair mask every Sunday to make sure her hair doesn’t frizz. She doesn’t believe in heavy eye makeup, just a bold red lip. She isn’t afraid of her age and doesn’t try to cover up sun spots with massive amounts of foundation. Chloe Orbach’s looks like she’s wearing a Halloween mask. You could cut a knife through her blush.

  My mother isn’t an American beauty like Chloe Orbach’s once was. My mother is still growing into her beauty, and I know that not just because people stare at her at the market, or because I hear men and women telling her how beautiful she looks, but because I can see it myself. When the sunlight hits her, when she sweeps her hair away from her face, or even when she drinks coffee in one of her caftans, she isn’t trying for anyone, and that is the most beautiful part about her.

  No one says anything for a couple of seconds, and Chloe’s mom does a big goodbye wave like she’s on a float in a parade with her little athletic minions following her out.

  Keke, military daughter Keke, turns to me. “That was awkward.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I get home and my mom’s in bed watching an old movie, Moonstruck. She’s watched it a million times. She once admitted that she wished someone would sweep her off her feet and take her to bed like Nicholas Cage did with Cher. “This is what centuries of the patriarchy will do to you,” she told me.

  I hear Olympia Dukakis, who plays Cher’s mother, screaming at her, “You got a love bite on your neck. He’s coming back this morning, what’s the matter with you? Your life’s going down the toilet!”

  My mother’s laughing as I lean in and give her a kiss on the cheek. She puts the movie on pause. Cher can wait. She turns her head to me in shock.

  “What on earth did I do to deserve that?”

  “I just love you sometimes, okay?” I say. “Is that okay?”

  “You love me sometimes?” she says, tears in her eyes. “Yes, it’s perfect.”

  Chapter

  10

  It’s Sunday late afternoon, and I’m still exhausted from the game yesterday. All I want to do is hide in bed, but Jadis wants me to come to her house. Just to swim. They leave the pool’s heater on until New Year’s Day because her mom says it’s good to swim on New Year’s Day to get the stench of the year off you. A new beginning. Then she closes it until summer.

  Jadis says you hardly need any chlorine in the winter, so the water’s got this freshness to it. Last year we swam after a big snowstorm, the steam streaming off the water. The diving board covered in five inches of snow, and we used old saucers to sled into the pool.

  It’s a beautiful thing, seeing that pink late September sky and the reflection of the trees turning red. Jadis says her mom keeps it open out of guilt, that this is her consolation prize since she’s never home.

  Just for a little while, she texts.

  But I’m exhausted. My thighs are raw from slapping down on them. My ribs burn from the baskets. My belly is sore from all of those tucks.

  A slew of texts come in from Jadis.

  Shade you can’t say no

  I miss you

  Come on

  So I go. I have to go.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Jadis’s house is the biggest at the bottom of my street. Every other house is split-level like mine, all looking exactly the same in their row like a supermarket shelf. This whole area was a big stretch of farmland that got split up. Open and wild. A small white farmhouse with a rickety front porch. I’d go to the bottom of the street and watch the bulldozers take it down, my little hand in my mother’s hand, as they built Jadis’s house. “Nothing stays the same,” my mom said. I was only ten years old.

  Jadis came into my life when I turned eleven. She moved into her new, modern house down the street and I walked around it in awe, the cavernous ceilings, the skylights and arches. The paintings on the wall. We’d sit in her room and she’d play her father’s records. He was a music arranger when he still lived with them. Always trying to make his own album, but ended up angry that he had to make other people look brilliant.

  “My father is a mastermind,” she told me once. “He’s a musical genius.” That was before he left her mother for a much younger musician. A woman Jadis’s mother calls “The Wicked Ingenue.”

  Two weeks after her father left, Jadis took lighter fluid from the garage and knocked on my door. She told me that we were going to the school to play a trick on someone. Me and her on our bikes riding through the night. Two young girls shouldn’t have been alone like that. We sat in the empty parking lot of the middle school. Jadis had her little backpack filled with lighter fluid, matches, and her math book. “I’m making a statement,” she said.

  There were a lot of pages in that math book. And she doused it with a healthy squirt of lighter fluid. A cop car drove by and saw the fire, peeled down into the middle school driveway, and called our moms. We both had Saturday detention for a month, and the principal said we were lucky we weren’t suspended. All day sitting there wishing it was like The Breakfast Club, but it was just lonely. The desks at Saturday detention are crammed with boys who inspect their cuticles, dreaming about their phones.

  When I get to Jadis’s house, she’s out back by the pool with her brother, Eddie, and some girl who introduces herself as Sunshine. She’s really skinny and long and smiles at me as if there’s not a care in the world. I don’t know if Sunshine is her real name or not, but I wave, smile. Sunshine has a little kid who’s in the pool in floaties. Eddie’s always been a mystery to me. He seems older than his years, being Jadis’s stand-in parent while her mother traveled and her father disappeared with his new girlfriend. He practically raised her.

  I’ve always had a little crush on Eddie, and tonight is no different. Seeing him with this beautiful hippie lady and her kid should make me want to throw up, but it makes him seem even hotter. Eddie would be a good father; I can see it in the way he’s playing with this kid.

  Jadis is stretching out on a dirty lounge chair watching Eddie and Sunshine splash around in the pool. She rips a long vape cloud that seems to go on forever. Like it came from one of those fog machines.

  “Wow, getting good at that,” I say, and sit down on the chair next to her.

  “Been practicing a lot with Emma.”

  “You and Emma, sweet.”

  “My only issue with her is that she likes that minty vape and it makes me want to puke when we kiss.” She smirks. Then, the vape cloud streaming from her lips, “See. We both have something new. You have cheering and I have Emma.”

  When Jadis would call me at camp to tell me about Emma, she’d joke that we’d have to find some boy for me, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. For one, I don’t really trust boys. Call it daddy issues, call it what you want.

  There was one boy, Jamie Shriver from Moonachie, who I met when I briefly worked at a vile clothing store in the mall. We’d talk about how the mall won’t even be around in twenty years, that there will be these empty, decrepit buildings all over the
country that people used to shop at. And people will point as they whiz by in their self-driving cars, Oh, look, remember the mall?

  It was the way Jamie looked at me in his car one night. The way he ran his fingers through my hair. The way he gently touched my breasts. I shivered when he dropped me off, and it scared me. I had to break up with him before I fell in love.

  She’s not wrong: cheer is easier to commit to than a boy.

  Jadis shows me two of her new tattoos, both of which she did on herself. A ghost and a fox.

  “What’s the fox symbolize?” I say.

  “The fox? Oh, that’s me,” she says. Her confident Jadis grin. “I’m the fox.”

  Then there’s a ghost. It’s more crude. The lines blurred. A little sad ghost all by itself.

  “And what about the ghost?”

  “The ghost?” she says, her face lighting up, giggling. “Oh, that’s you.”

  And she jumps in the water, hardly a splash. I kneel down at the side of the pool. One of the lights is out, the other one shining over her. A silver fish flying across the water. She comes up for air, breathing heavy. Resting her hands on the cement.

  “I’m the ghost?” I say. “Thanks, Jadis.”

  She swears it’s a joke. That it was easy to do and she was bored. “It’s autumn. You know, Halloween-ish?”

  But she’s full of it. She did it to remind me that I untethered myself from her.

  “So what are we doing?” she says. “Going for a drive? Doing a photo shoot in the grass with my ancient spotlight? Tarot cards? Ping-Pong at Sozo’s?”

  That eager need of hers. That hyper desire, to always be moving, to always be creating. Talking. Swallowing people whole. I used to love that part of her. That insatiable side of her. That’s when I’d follow her around like a puppy dog.

  “I have an idea,” I say. “Wanna do a stick and poke on me?”