The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  I can feel Coach giving us the death stare from her spot. Chloe Orbach already huffing toward us.

  “What did you do?” Orbach says to Chloe Schmidt, her voice urgent. “Coach is gonna lose it.”

  “Me?” Schmidt squeals. “Me?”

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I say.

  It’s not like I’m immune to jealousy. I’ve been jealous of Jadis and Emma. I know for certain that Jadis is jealous of Chloe Orbach. Of course Chloe Schmidt is going to feel territorial about me and Chloe Orbach too.

  “You’ve been treating me like shit ever since Shade showed up on this team,” Chloe Schmidt bursts out.

  “If I hear one more word,” Chloe Orbach snarls, her voice raised now, her finger in Chloe Schmidt’s face, practically touching her nose.

  “Both of you, calm down,” Chloe Clarke says.

  “Get your finger out of my face,” Schmidt says. But then she notices the little bow I etched on to Chloe Orbach’s finger and clutches her wrist.

  “What the hell is this?” Schmidt turns to me, her face in fury. “You did this to her?” She whips back to Chloe Clarke. “See? See what I’m talking about?”

  “I begged her for it,” Chloe Orbach says, the words dripping off her tongue, and pries her hand away.

  Chloe Schmidt runs her nails through her hair, scooping the bow off the crown of her head, tugging a few strands of hair with it.

  “You want a bow? Here’s a bow.” And she chucks the bow so that it smacks Chloe Orbach right in the face.

  There’s a stunned silence between the four of us.

  Coach storming over to us. The rest of the squad is watching. We’ve broken all the rules.

  “Poor little Chloe,” Chloe Orbach purrs. “Insecure little Chloe.”

  You can feel it between them, that a line had been drawn. That Chloe Schmidt, dumbfounded, the fury all over her face, is done. That there has been a break, a fissure that can’t be repaired.

  “I hate you, and I think you’re evil,” Chloe Schmidt says, and picks up her bow from the ground, clips it back in her ponytail.

  “What on earth is this?” Coach says. “Are you arguing? At homecoming?” She glances at the clock. “With four minutes until your routine? You are a team, girls. Pull your shit together.” I’ve never seen Coach mad like this. “Wave and smile or something, Jesus,” she seethes.

  On cue, the four of us turn to the crowd, yelling some form of Go, Panthers! Except for Chloe Schmidt, who shoves through a bewildered Sasha and Olivia, standing by herself.

  “She threw a bow at me.” Chloe Orbach callously shrugs. “She’ll get over it.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Halftime and the band, the award-winning Groveton High School marching band, bleats out “Seven Nation Army,” the sports anthem of all sports anthems. We wait on the sideline. Chloe Orbach grabs both mine and Chloe Clarke’s hands, bouncing up and down to the drumbeat, like none of that even happened, just a few minutes ago. Like all of that rage was somehow normal.

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I say to Chloe over the music. “She seems kind of messed up.”

  The trumpets and drums thundering, everyone completely losing their minds in the stands, chanting, Ohh, oh-OH-oh-oh ohhhh, ohhh.

  “Fuck her, let’s dance.” She rocks her hips to the clamoring trumpets, her hands on mine, tugging me into the music.

  The band marches off, and all that bottled energy, all of that fear and excitement at the tips of our fingers, five weeks of practicing this routine, and it’s finally here. Chloe Orbach yells, “Ready!” and we take the field.

  I pray to the cheer gods that Chloe Schmidt is not going to purposely drop me. It’s a terrifying and somewhat exhilarating feeling to have, putting all your trust in a girl who thinks you’re responsible for her problems with her best friend.

  I shake it off.

  All eleven of us press our bodies into a huddle on the fifty-yard line, that glitter on our skin sparkling off the lights.

  Chloe Orbach, with a big smile on her face as we breathe into each other, the air so hot inside that circle. She squats down to the ground, stares at us, then screams, her veins popping out of her neck, her eyes shut: “WHO ARE WE?”

  We gaze down at her and yelp back:

  “GROVETON!”

  “WHO ARE WE?”

  “GROVETON!”

  Then one last call, one last fiery pump, her voice in its shrieking, deep glory. “WHAT DO WE WANT?” And we all answer her, oblige, screaming back at the top of our lungs: “TO KICK IT!”

  We pop up, our bodies bouncing wild, like a prison break. Chloe Orbach bolts into a cartwheel front handspring front handspring, and me right behind her in a cartwheel front tuck. In formation from mid-field, you can’t see the crowd. You can’t see the stands. All of it’s a blur, a tornado of noise.

  The dance music blares through the speakers, and on three, me, Zoey, and Chloe Orbach backflip across the grass. We run into a V shape, all of us sprouting out like wings from Chloe Orbach, who’s front and center. In sync, everyone slams a toe touch, left hurdler, right hurdler, toe touch. Chloe Schmidt, Chloe Orbach, and Zoey pound into back handsprings. Kaitlyn, who never really could figure out the back handspring, cartwheels a few times.

  I can hear the crowd louder now, pumped when Chloe Clarke and I lift into our scorps, my leg higher than I’ve ever stretched it, my fake smile, tossing my hair back. Pop up on three, I explode in the air, my body straight. Legs together. Perfect timing to that Yellow Claw song:

  And now I’m falling, so promise that you’ll catch me.

  Boom! They hook me in the cradle, and Chloe Schmidt and I lock eyes just before they pop me up to standing.

  “Don’t even,” she says.

  We charge back into formation, arm swings, each row rotating so it looks like we’re swimming. Or drowning.

  Zoey’s on Chloe Orbach’s shoulders to hit our pyramid, and Chloe Clarke and I tick tock up and hit our libs, legs outstretched, Chloe Schmidt, Sasha, and Pri’s gathered hands under me, and I pull up tight through my hips, lock it in, my arms up extending to the sky.

  All those people clapping and cheering in the stands as we hold it. Coach is on the track springing up and down, electric.

  As we run off the field, waving both arms high (because that’s what you do when you’re a cheerleader, these are not my rules), the white lights blazing above the bleachers, the sunset pressing the sky to orange. I scan the rows for that green hair again, hoping Jadis saw me. I shade my eyes from the sun, searching through faces in the crowd.

  And there she is, that shining green streak between all of the blue and white, like a vision. I can feel that relief wash over me. She’s so clear, a sparkling emerald. I wave to her, and her face comes into focus.

  Jadis, completely still. Glaring at me.

  Chapter

  16

  “I don’t know what face I made,” Jadis is saying to me after the game, outside the stadium. “I have a resting bitch face. You know this about me.”

  “You were giving me a dirty look,” I say. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

  She pulls out her vape because it’s become her security blanket, and maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s all in my head. Too many things happened today. My thoughts banging around. It’s already dark out, and that early sundown is tiring me out.

  “It was pretty cool. A lot of, what would you call it? Athleticism?” Emma says, shrugging, and yawns.

  Emma couldn’t care less.

  “You didn’t say anything about my hair,” Jadis says. “I did it so you could see me through the crowd. I had to prove to you I was there. Prove to you that I watched every painful moment of it.”

  She starts bouncing and clapping, mocking me in a high-pitched voice: “We are the tower of power . . . abo
ve all the rest . . .” She throws her arms up in the air, her eyes sparkling, mugging. “We are the tower of power . . . GHS!”

  Then back to her vape. A long exhale. “Are we the tower of power? Or do we just think we’re the tower of power?”

  “They lost,” Emma says, “so I don’t think they can consider themselves the tower of anything.”

  “Ah,” I say, my heart fluttering. “So you were watching.”

  “I was watching.”

  Jadis throws her arm around me, and I’m relieved.

  That’s when I hear my name. Chloe Orbach in her low cheer voice. We stop and turn around to face the Three Chloes, and there’s dread in my stomach, because they’re so much worse together, fighting like deranged family members at Thanksgiving dinner.

  I’m not even sure why they’re together after what happened on the sideline, what’s happened the past few weeks. The bow in Chloe’s face. The I hate you. Words slung like they had no meaning.

  Chloe Orbach snaps her gum. Blowing bubbles so big that they catch a pink translucent glow to them. She’s wearing these ridiculous gold-rim glasses. Smoky lenses so that you can still see her eyes.

  This is the other Chloe. Not the Chloe who I gave the stick and poke to at the abandoned tracks. This is the insecure Chloe who pasted pictures of glamorous women all over her bedroom, her name Chloé Chloé Chloé swirling around her. This is the Chloe who demands attention.

  “Such a good stunter we have here,” Chloe Orbach squeals, running up to me, clapping. “Did you catch it, Jadis? Did you see how great your girl has gotten?”

  “I saw,” Jadis says. “She was amazing.”

  “We really have to get going.” I take Jadis’s arm.

  “Why so soon?” Jadis quickly says, her eyes trained on Chloe Orbach, like she’s waiting for a collision. I think of how she posted on Instagram once after that singer got into a car accident. But what was it like when you crashed through the car window? Did you watch the glass fly around your face? It was such a gory thing to write.

  She got slammed by the singer’s fans, her little monsters or gremlins or kitty cats, whatever they called themselves. That she was a sadist. That she was insensitive. That she had forgotten that she was commenting on a real person’s account.

  When I asked her why she would write that, she was all, “What? You never wanted to see a car wreck in slow motion?”

  And just like that, as if on cue, Chloe Orbach sucks on the tip of her thumb so that the bow, the stick and poke that I gave her, faces out center stage for Jadis to see.

  That fucking bow.

  Chloe gazes down at her thumb, sunglasses at the edge of her nose, and grins.

  “Wow, look at you,” Jadis says. “A new tattoo on your thumb.”

  “You like it?” Chloe says, a tormented glee in her voice. “Shade did it.”

  “It’s no big deal,” I say, but I sound guilty, like a husband caught cheating. “I didn’t even think I could do it. I almost called you,” I stammer.

  Jadis stares at Chloe’s thumb, nodding. She’s trying to play it cool, but I know she’s blowing up inside. This isn’t how I wanted her to find out about this.

  Once you give someone a tattoo, you own a little bit of them.

  Jadis will see it as a betrayal.

  “Some art historians say that tattooing in ancient Greece added value to women who were bought for marriage,” Jadis says frankly.

  Chloe grimaces and tells me that she’ll see me later at the dance.

  “Oh, I’ll see you later too, Chloe,” Jadis says.

  All three of them stare at Jadis, pom-poms under their arms.

  “That’s right, ladies. See you at the homecoming dance. I’m going to be Shade’s date. I’ll wear my best black suit.”

  Chloe Schmidt rolls her eyes and walks away.

  “Great,” Chloe Orbach says cheerfully. Chloe Clarke by her side, awkwardly. “By the way, Jadis, I didn’t mean to start anything about the tattoo. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. No harm meant.”

  “Of course not,” Jadis says, her words dripping. Acid. “No harm taken.”

  “Well, we better catch up to her,” Chloe Orbach says. “She’s our ride home.”

  She jiggles her pom-poms at us, takes Chloe Clarke’s hand, and floats away, through the cars and the kids and the parents, and I realize it was a mistake to compartmentalize them the way I have. It would have been better if Jadis hung around cheer practice so Chloe Orbach could see that I had a best friend who wasn’t going to be erased and so Chloe Schmidt would see I wasn’t trying to splinter her little beloved trio.

  But it’s possible that it wouldn’t have changed a single thing.

  “Are we in an alternate universe?” Emma turns to Jadis. “Are you actually going to the homecoming dance?”

  “Oh, Shade and I are going tomorrow,” Jadis says. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “You egged them on,” I say to her. “I tried to pull you away, but you had to stay, didn’t you? You wanted something to happen.”

  “What are you afraid of, Shade?” she says, goading me. “Some friendship rivalry? Isn’t that what we watched on that football field today? Two teams going at each other. Aren’t we all competitors in this little game?”

  I watch the Three Chloes in the distance, Chloe Schmidt walking quickly to her Jeep, Chloe Orbach and Chloe Clarke trailing.

  “What’s that line from The Taming of the Shrew? I would have challenged her to a battle of wits,” Jadis cracks, so pleased with herself, “but I saw she was unarmed.”

  Chapter

  17

  Saturday night. Glowing paper lanterns hang from the gym rafters. Winter theme. Fake snow sprinkled all over the sides of the gym floor. Tiny white lights hang across one wall. A disco ball in a slow revolve in the middle of the stage. Blues and whites and pinks streak across the room.

  Jadis looks fantastic in her suit. White shirt buttoned up to the top. Her green hair sparkles in the disco globe. She’s too good for this school. “I have a surprise for you later. You’re going to be so happy,” she whispers to me as we walk in.

  Surprises from Jadis make me nervous, but she seems to have cheered up since yesterday. Chloe Orbach profusely texted me last night asking me to forgive her because she knows she can be impossible.

  Then there were the intersecting texts from Jadis who told me that she really wanted to be a peacemaker and not the instigator. That Emma, whose mother is a famous therapist, told her to open her mind to new friends and expose her emo-shunnnns, as Mariah Carey would put it.

  Across the gym, the Three Chloes huddle in a corner next to an LED tree. All of them lit up in metallic and white. They hold court for a glut of freshmen who gather around their queen, Chloe Orbach. All the freshmen follow the unspoken rule: Wear a black body-con dress above the knee and white Converse sneakers to the homecoming dance or you’ll be blocked at the door. If not blocked, then humiliated.

  Zoey is the only freshman on our team and she hops over to me, so excited, so grateful I’m here. She squeals, grabbing my hands, and Jadis sneers, but I laugh. I’ve learned to appreciate enthusiasm.

  “I’m sorry you have to wear that dress, Zo,” I say, even though she looks beautiful, her locs down, framing her face.

  But she does a twist, her little body contorting. “Are you kidding? I’m so comfortable in this. I can do a back handspring. Wanna see?”

  “Yes, show us,” Jadis says, in this evil tone.

  “No, no, not now, Zoey. Not now,” I say, and she smiles, then leaps over to someone else.

  The black body-con dress and white sneakers is a long-standing tradition in this town. All the mothers know about it. Freshman girls buying up all the tiny black dresses weeks before the dance just to get to this moment. The only way to avoid it is to not go to the homecoming dance whe
n you’re a freshman, and sit in your bedroom watching Heathers two times in a row like Jadis and I did.

  Chloe Orbach sees me and her face lights up. She interlocks her fingers in mine as Chloe and Chloe follow her over to us.

  This uneasy feeling floundering inside of me, the five of us together feels wrong.

  I glance at Jadis, who I expect to be twitching beside me, but she waves her finger, her best witchy impression, calling us in closer, that come-hither look.

  “Closer, Chloes,” she says, her voice, reaching out to us so softly. “Closer, you adorable little cheerleaders. Don’t be scared.”

  She pulls a tiny little pillbox from her pocket. The box says Quaaludes in gold letters.

  Her giddy face, lit up from the disco lights. There are five colored tablets inside: blue, yellow, white, green, pink. I’m stunned. It’s Molly.

  I drag her away from the tight circle.

  “You brought Molly to the homecoming dance?” I say. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I told you I had a surprise, Shade,” she says. “What? You think I can deal with this shit sober?”

  I look back at the three of them waiting with their mouths gaping.

  “You need to play this cool, because your friends are watching us,” she says. “I’m opening my heart to them.”

  “This is your idea of opening your heart?” I know that they’ve tripped on Molly before, I heard them talking about it once. But to do something like this at a dance inside the school is a different kind of risk. “What makes you think they’ll even do it?”

  “Please, that little hellion Chloe Orbach? The one who convinced a total novice to give her a stick and poke on her thumb for anyone to see? I assumed she was up for anything.”

  The novice comment hurts, but I ignore it.

  “Why didn’t you even tell me that you planned this?”

  “Why? Because you would have said that we couldn’t possibly roll on Molly during the homecoming dance, like, Oh my god, Jadis, I’m a cheerleader. Cheerleaders don’t do that sort of thing,” she says in this baby voice. “But I think it’ll be fun for all of us. Really, I mean that. I took Emma’s advice.”