The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  She climbs out of the pool, water dripping. “Dead, I’m dead,” she says, and sprawls out on the concrete waving her hand in front of her face, like she’s a fainting Southern belle. “Shade Meyer, star cheerleader, is asking me for a stick and poke? Wake me up. Wake me up.”

  I pull her up from her death pose and wrap her up in a big towel, and we head into her bedroom. I’d rather go home and go to sleep, but Emma Scanlen or not, I know Jadis is lonely. I know me being so committed to cheer has been hard for her. I slam down a Diet Coke and open another one. Let out a raging belch that sounds like it came from the depths of my soul. She takes a few sips of hers and matches me.

  “So what are we doing?” she says, bright-eyed.

  “I want a cheerleader. A flying cheerleader.”

  As soon as I say it, I cover my face with my hands.

  “You want a what?” she screeches. “No way. No fucking way, Shade!”

  “I didn’t say anything when you wanted that musical note on your leg, did I? Did I say, ‘Jadis, one day you’re gonna hate this because it’s going to make you think of your dad’? I didn’t try to talk you out of it, did I?”

  Bringing him up feels below the belt, and her eyes gaze somewhere else, like she’s picturing him.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It’s fine. You should have warned me about that,” she says, and hops off the bed, shaking off the bad juju I invited in by mentioning her dad. “And anyway, I’m me. And you’re you. People expect me to have tattoos that make no sense on my body.”

  “Oh, I’m not cool enough, not an artist enough, to put random tattoos on my body? Oh, I see how it is.”

  There’s a pink pencil on her nightstand. It says Love Is the Drug. I stick the needle at the edge of the pencil, messily wrap the twine around it. I’m not as good as she is. But if I want a cheerleader, I can draw myself a cheerleader.

  I grab the box of ink out of her dresser and keep wrapping the thread so the needle’s stiff until she gives in.

  “Put the thread down and tell me how this cheerleader’s gonna look,” she says. “If I’m going to draw a cheerleader, she’s gotta look amazing.”

  And so I tell her how I’ve been thinking about flying since that day I saw Chloe Clarke going up, the way they tossed her up there. How she seemed so free. And they’re lifting me, and I’m up there, solitary. So strong like a tree. It’s a tingle that won’t go away, like this dagger feeling deep inside and you have to squirm to make it disappear.

  She blinks twice. “It sounds like love.”

  “Maybe it is,” I say.

  So she sketches something, and like magic, she’s created a girl, a stringy doll thrown up in the air. Her hair completely covers her face, across her shoulders. Her limbs, lanky and thin, like mine. No muscles. No texture.

  I stretch out across the bed and she slides one leg over my thigh, the other curled under her. She turns on the light next to her bed. A low-light lamp from the 1960s with a pink velvet tassel shade.

  You have to wrap the tape around the edge of the eraser and then encase the needle in the thread so that it doesn’t slide off. Especially around the top where the ink is going to be thick and full.

  Stretching back on the bed, I pull down my sweats a little. She places her hand on my leg and pushes it to the side, so she can draw right into that soft spot above my hip bone. Just a squirt of alcohol on the cotton ball to wipe my hip clean, and then she presses the needle into my skin, diving down over and over again. Tiny little dots.

  There’s that tingling inside of me. They say that you get addicted to tattoos. That when you get one, you want to get more. That your body craves it. That rush of adrenaline. Your heart racing.

  After about a hundred pokes, you get numb to it. I zone out, humming that song she’s been singing, that low druggy tune, my skin on fire. Jadis wipes away the ink and the blood, and I breathe through the pinch of the needle, replaying my routine over and over in my mind.

  “Open your eyes,” Jadis says, and I come to. “Take a look.”

  I twist around from my dreamy haze, peek down at my flying girl.

  Except she’s not flying.

  My red, blotchy skin. The girl is falling like a rag doll plummeting from a tower after being tossed. She’s down low in the air, her legs up high, her hands in a rising free motion. Her hair in her face because that’s what happens when you drop—everything else flies up. Your legs, your arms, your hair. All of it.

  “Jadis,” I say, shaky. “She’s falling. Not flying.”

  “What? No?” Jadis says. “She’s flying. What are you talking about?”

  My heart races. My hip throbbing, the pain seeping through like the needle is still in my skin.

  Jadis looks at it, her smile turning into shock as she climbs over, sitting next to me instead of facing me.

  “Oh shit,” she says.

  How could this have happened? How did my vision of this flying girl morph into a manifestation of everything I fear?

  Crashing down into the ground. Falling.

  And now she’s on me forever.

  “Handstands will definitely help this problem,” Jadis says. “Just keep doing handstands and she’ll be forever flying.”

  “It’s not funny,” I scream.

  I stand, hike up my sweats. Her sweats. Feeling dizzy. I kneel down on the floor. Like I’m about to pass out.

  “Did you do this on purpose? Were you trying to hurt me?”

  How could I have trusted her? The girl who’s against everything this team stands for. How could I have trusted her to ink me with a cheerleader?

  “Trying to hurt you? What are you even talking about? You wanted this. You wanted a cheerleader,” she says, scowling now. “What goes up must come down. Did that not occur to you?”

  Her words sting. The tattoo stings. I just want to go home. My head pounding. The adrenaline rush. The Diet Cokes. All of it.

  “It’s like an omen or something. Like an albatross,” I say.

  “Shade, you’re the only one who’ll see her falling. Don’t you understand? Everyone else will see her flying. You’re the one person staring at her from that angle.”

  And it’s so true isn’t it? The irony of it all. That I’ll never be able to get away from her. This image of a cheerleader, on her way down.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  At home in my own bed. Staring at this tattoo. Inspecting it. I text Jadis.

  I’m sorry I accused you of trying to hurt me.

  Fine, she texts back.

  Are you mad at me? I write.

  No.

  Then her last text of the night: You need to understand. I gave you exactly what you wanted.

  I glimpse down at my new tattoo. Is it what I wanted? Is it?

  Chapter

  11

  Coach is running us like a drill sergeant on the new routine Monday morning so we can get our pyramid tight by homecoming.

  I’m the weak link. My scorpion still isn’t going well. I can load in, dig my foot into their clasped hands, and they can raise me up. But when I get up there to catch my foot in one hand, the whole thing falls apart, and I plummet through them.

  “Chest up, dammit, Sasha, otherwise she’s gonna collapse on top of you,” Chloe Schmidt says. “Use those monster-ass shoulders of yours.”

  And me, I’m not crisp enough, I’m too sloppy.

  “Arch that back, Meyer!” she barks. Or “Toes, toes, what’s wrong with you? Toes!” Or “Look up, Shade, look up.”

  I’m too distracted to look up or point because every time Pri holds on to my hip, she rubs against my new stick and poke. It’s not Pri’s fault, she doesn’t even know it’s there. I’m wearing extra-high booty shorts to cover it, not the low-slung ones that we usually wear.

  W
hy am I hiding it? For one, I don’t want anyone seeing it until I can stop myself from colliding into Chloe Schmidt. Plus, if she saw it, she’d snicker and call me out for being a presumptuous bitch. That I’m a little ahead of myself for getting a flyer tattoo when I haven’t even mastered anything else besides a baby basket.

  I’m turning out to be quite possibly the worst cheerleader on the planet.

  Pri counts. One, two, then I load in. Sasha pops her chest up, but it’s too sudden, and I fall through them, landing on my ass. Again. We do it again. And again.

  But it’s not working. I wobble and then smash to the ground. Heads and shoulders and knees crashing into each other.

  Chloe Orbach comes over, sees my frustration, and pulls me off to the side for a pep talk. “You’re too worried about falling,” she says.

  “Isn’t everyone worried about falling?” I say, out of breath.

  She points to Chloe Clarke, who’s on her fourth scorpion cradle in a row; probably a rib is going to fall out of her side. “That girl doesn’t even think about falling. All she thinks about is flying.” A sip of her kombucha, a crack of the neck. Chloe Orbach massaging out a knot in my upper spine.

  I gaze around; the rest of the squad is staring at us. To bask in the sun of Chloe Orbach is to bask in the warmest glow, and I want it, I want her to transform my terrible attitude. I want to show her that I can really get up there on one leg and come down in their arms like a baby even though my ribs ache and even though Chloe Schmidt calls my transitions lesser-than. I want to deserve this sour kombucha.

  “They’re feeding off your energy, Shade,” she says. “That’s how it works when people look up to you.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  My body is weak and my thighs are Jell-O when I get home, but I strap that band Chloe Orbach gave me around my legs. Hike my booty shorts above my hip so I don’t have to see that girl sinking forever to the earth.

  They’re feeding off your energy, Chloe told me.

  Because I’m a top girl now.

  I pull harder on the leg band, clenching my teeth as I wince, tightening it. It’s that wobbly weird feeling when you’re not sure if your muscles can stand it. But I keep going, extend my leg out as far as it will go so I morph into something else.

  Someone else.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  The next day at practice, there’s a shift, and it’s like I’m loading onto metal pipes. Sasha and Pri, their bodies steel, unwavering. Me, six feet high in the air. Pri, her calm, instructive voice, counting. That left leg has got to come up. There it goes, left leg bent behind me. Right arm up, catching my foot in my hand.

  “Lock that knee, Meyer,” Chloe Schmidt growls under me. But her voice is an echoey blur.

  I move forward into it, the searing in my inner thigh, balancing the weight of my entire body on one leg. I’m locked in. Top girl.

  I look across to the upper field. The soccer boys watching from behind the fence. And then farther, to the trees, the slight mountain behind the golden leaves. The view from up top, it’s spectacular.

  They toss me up, and I land in their arms like a fucking baby.

  Chloe Orbach runs across the field, hands outstretched, the rest of the girls running with her.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Later, Jadis comes over even though it’s been a long day at practice and I’m still annoyed with her about the stick and poke. She climbs into my bed like she’s done for years. Curls around her favorite pillow, the one with the real feathers.

  “How’s it going with cheer? Like, really, how is it?” This is the first time she sounds genuine. “How’s the back-tuck basket scorpion pancake cobra going?”

  I laugh because she always makes me laugh at her stupid cheer jokes.

  She jumps up and bounces, my sore body just trying to hold on. And I notice she’s wearing a silver bracelet with a turquoise bead that I’ve never seen before.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Oh, this?” she says, jingling it over me. “Emma. Her mother does art therapy with beads or something. Very Southwest motif. Isn’t it pretty?”

  “You hate turquoise,” I say.

  “I’m trying new things, Shade,” she says, her eyes lighting up. “What? You think you’re the only one allowed to try something new?”

  I don’t say anything, change into my sweats while she dances to some banal song that everyone hates, but no one can stop singing because there are a million iterations of it all over social media. It’s not like Jadis to know this dance, and she does it terribly. Her skinny pale arms and the way her black bob flops in her face make me smile.

  “There’s a homecoming dance after the game,” I say.

  She stops wiggling and stares me down. “Oh my god.”

  “And I’m supposed to go,” I say.

  “So go,” she says flatly. “I’m not stopping you. I’m sure it’s your duty as a cheerleader or something. You probably have to run in with the school mascot. Or maybe you’ll be carried in on thrones.”

  The old me would never have gone to a homecoming game. The old me would have sat at home with Jadis protesting it.

  Our antics flood back to me. That time when she and I learned how to put tampons in together. How we howled inside a public restroom at a movie theater. Is it in? Is it all the way up there? I screamed. Push it in further! Push it all the way in! Bowled over with laughter. A mother scolded us from outside the bathroom stall, annoyed. Girls! There are children in here!

  Just the two of us, in our own backward world.

  “Maybe you and Emma want to come? You know, with me to homecoming?”

  She looks at me, horrified, then slides off my bed to the floor, gasping for breath as if she’s convulsing. I crawl to the edge of the bed, my chin propped in my hands, and watch her.

  “I’m dead. I’m literally dead,” she says. “Put it on my tombstone. Died at the mere suggestion of the homecoming dance.”

  “Does this mean you’ll go?” I say, and stretch my hand out, my pinkie to her, just like our matching stick and pokes. I’m not even mad about the falling girl tattoo anymore—at least not in this moment. At some point in the future, I’m sure I’ll be furious about it. But right now, I miss how we used to be. All those feelings, that shared energy. That line we used to say: Same person, different hair.

  She sits up from her death pose and stares at me. “Serious question. Why do you need me to go? If you have that whole team of yours? Why?”

  “Because I want you to be there with me. I don’t want everything to be so separate. I don’t want us to be so separate.”

  “I will lose my entire reputation going to a homecoming dance with you,” she says. “You know that, don’t you? People expect more of me.”

  “Like who?” I laugh.

  “The freshmen who vape in the first-floor bathroom, for instance. They need someone to look up to, with everyone quitting vaping these days,” she says. “Pussies.”

  Her eyes move from my face to my arm, specifically my bicep. “Look at you. Those muscles you’ve gotten. What are you? The cheerleader Hulk?”

  “Come on, Jadis. Is that a yes?”

  She raises one of her eyebrows, and then a smirk. I can see the change in her eyes, a kind of defeat.

  “Fine,” she says. “I’ll go . . . reluctantly.”

  And I jump up and down in front of her, wiggling back and forth, making her look me in the eye. I take her hand and twirl her around, one time, two times, three times, until I’m dizzy and exasperated.

  “Enough!” she says, laughing, giving in to the moment. “You got yourself a date.”

  Chapter

  12

  “Want a ride?”

  It’s after practice, and Chloe Orbach is waving me over. She’s standing there in front of
Chloe Schmidt’s Jeep. Clean and sparkly and white. The ultimate cheerleader wagon. Her prize possession. And it feels so natural as I walk toward them—just three weeks ago I didn’t even acknowledge the Three Chloes in the hallway. When Jadis and I would stand on the corner by the old farm, smoking cigarettes, we’d see her Jeep whiz by and we’d throw up our middle fingers at it.

  “I can’t give her a ride today,” Chloe Schmidt says, major fish pout. “You know I have to go to the gym. My personal trainer’s waiting for me. I told you this,” she says, then turns to me. “Shade, if I give you a ride, I’m going completely out of my way and I’ll be late.” She actually seems sincere.

  “No problem,” I say.

  “So she should walk home?” Chloe Orbach says. “Like you didn’t work Shade hard enough this week? Like she didn’t bust her ass with those baskets? And I didn’t see her complain about it once. Not like you.”

  “He gets paid by the hour, Chloe,” she says.

  Chloe Orbach mocks her. “He gets paid by the hour.”

  This side of her reveals itself fast and furious. She glowers at Chloe Schmidt, waiting for her to crumble or cry.

  “It’s a commitment, Chloe. He wrote a cookbook!” she squeals.

  “He wrote a cookbook,” Chloe Orbach says, whining.

  “Stop making fun of me.”

  “Oh, poor little Chloe. With her trainer and her chef and her Jeep that no one else is allowed to drive and her Instagram followers. Wah wah wah. She doesn’t want anyone picking on her.”

  I’m uncomfortable with how Chloe Orbach is taunting her, but at the same time, I also get a lot of pleasure from it because not once has Chloe Schmidt offered me a lift home, and she has been riding me so hard at practice with no patience or empathy.

  I think of what Chloe Clarke told me that day in school: One minute Chloe Orbach will profess loyalty to you. And the next, she’ll turn on you and cackle as blood seeps out of your crushed skull.

  “Well, this afternoon is fun and delightful,” Chloe Clarke says sharply, and she hops in the passenger seat.