I shake my head no.
“My mother warned me before I joined the team about this.”
“About what?”
“Shade, Black girls aren’t exactly rolled out the red carpet on mostly white cheer teams. We’re policed, our hair is policed. I have a cousin in New Hampshire who was told to take her braids out if she wanted to be on the team.”
“Did she?”
“No. But I wasn’t sure if my locs were going to be an issue. Keke’s family is military so she’s probably been straightening her hair forever. Military folks are, you know, more conservative. My dad is white and so he gets super defensive. My mother had to tell him to stop making it about him.” She laughs a little, but then a detached look comes over her face.
I know this look of detachment. It reminds me of the time I was working at a health food store and this guy Nate asked me to borrow five bucks for lunch. It wasn’t so weird because we’d become friends.
When I told him I only had two dollars in my bag, he said, “Don’t Jew me down.”
I almost choked. “You know I’m Jewish, right?”
“You don’t look Jewish,” he said.
I wish I could say I’m completely surprised with what Zoey told me about Black cheerleaders and how she took it all in stride, but I’m not. I know from my own experience that bigotry leaves you a little dead inside.
“Anyway, it’s fine,” she says. “No one said a word to me about my hair.”
Zoey closes her eyes for a second. I have more questions for her, ones that might make her feel uncomfortable, and so I keep my mouth shut.
“Chloe Orbach made me feel good about my hair right from the start, did I ever tell you that?”
“No,” I say. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.” But I’m not surprised. Chloe Orbach was a lot of things to a lot of people.
“She was a good leader,” Zoey says.
“She wasn’t even supposed to be captain. Chloe was just more determined than Keke and Gretch,” I say. And just like that the topic changes. I tell her what Keke said about the formal cheer captain application. How possessed she was. “You gave me everyone else’s theories, but you didn’t give me yours.”
She hangs on to her thought for what feels like forever. I feel like she’s waiting for me to tell her what to say.
“I think it was someone close to her,” she finally says. “Someone sweet and nice. The kind of person who one minute you think they’re an angel and the next minute they’re carving up their best friend in the basement.”
“I think you watch too many horror movies.”
But isn’t this already a horror movie? I overheard people saying that at the funeral home. Every parents’ worst nightmare.
“What if I told you I knew what happened to her?” I say. It comes out quick, and I clear my throat from nerves.
Careful, Shade, I think. You can’t just confess to Zoey, as innocent and as trusting as her big brown eyes might seem, that Jadis, your best friend, slipped Chloe Orbach Molly that potentially killed her. She’ll tell someone, then they’ll tell the cops, and then your worst nightmares will come true.
“I’d say you can’t hold on to that kind of information. That’s what I would say,” she says, hesitating. “If you and Chloe are as close as you seemed, that you’d have to tell because it would eat you up inside.”
She tries to take my hand, to comfort me I guess, but I’m beyond comforting. I hate myself for what I’ve done or, really, for what I haven’t done. I hate myself for even opening my mouth this way to Zoey.
“I was just kidding,” I say, and stand up, looking down at her. Shaking my hands out. “Obviously if I knew anything, I would go to the police. There’s a million horrible scenarios of what could have happened to Chloe.” I straighten my shoulders, pull in my lower belly like I’m holding on to a ball, just like Coach taught us. My abs tight. My body, armor.
I tell her to show me what these freshmen are posting, I tell her I want to see the lies. But she’s scared. These are girls I don’t follow on Instagram. They don’t follow me.
“You can’t say anything to them, Shade. They’d track it back to me. I’m the only freshman on the squad.”
“Show me,” I say.
She pulls up a TikTok from an account called Crime-s000lver. It has 11,000 likes.
A girl I’ve never seen before with long red hair pops up on the video. She’s got a septum nose ring and a voice like death.
“What is a murder that happened in your town that you think everyone should know about?”
The redhead cuts out and is stitched with a more familiar face, a mousy girl from school who I’ve seen in the hall, but I don’t know her name. Behind her flashes a picture of Chloe Orbach, vibrant smile, in the grass, pom-poms next to her ears. Chloe and her blonde hair. In her cheer outfit. That glow.
“This is Chloe Orbach. She died at the homecoming dance just two weeks ago, and no one knows what happened to her. Was she killed by her two best friends, also named Chloe?”
I almost fall to the floor.
The Three Chloes, arms over each other’s shoulders, dash across the screen.
“Was it the two senior teammates, who were jealous of her?” the girl says.
Gretchen and Keke in a cheer pose.
“Or was it someone new on the team? Someone she was seen at the homecoming dance with?”
And there it is. A photo of me, one that someone took before my cheer life began. I recognize the photo from last year because it showed up in the yearbook. My curly hair wild and long. Walking through the hallway. Staring blankly at the camera.
The caption reads: What do you think happened ?
I slam Zoey’s phone down, shuddering.
“Are they crazy? They can’t post this.” My heart thrumming, my voice breaking.
“Shade, there’s more. Look at the comments.”
She hands me back the phone, and I scroll down, but can only stomach reading the first few.
idk but this death doesn’t sit right with me, one person says.
My respect for the cheerleaders,
The seniors are sus
My guilt boils up, my body ringing with alarm because I know Gretchen and Keke have nothing to do with this. My brain not knowing where to go next. They don’t deserve to get dragged into this mess because of me, because I insisted on bringing Jadis to the homecoming dance.
I text everyone on the squad about the video. Gretchen is friends with the mousy girl’s older sister, and it disappears. But the damage is done.
This is what our classmates are thinking about us? Pri texts.
They’re freshmen. They’re not our classmates, Chloe Schmidt writes.
The video was practically viral you idiots, Keke texts. You can’t just make something disappear off the internet.
She’s right. It’ll never disappear.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Late Sunday night, my mom is back from the forest bath. She stands there captivated in front of the TV and waves me in.
“I haven’t seen television in three days,” she says, groggy. “I flicked it on and there she was. It’s about your friend.”
All sixty-five inches of Chloe Orbach’s face spread across the television, smiling and happy, like the ray of sunshine that she was.
“They just talked about a toxicology report,” my mother says. “Did she do a lot of drugs, Shade?”
I watch my mother’s face. Part of me wants to tell her everything. Would she drag me to the police? Would she force me to talk to them? Would she give me one of her little lectures about how the female friendships in our lives are the most important and that women are the only people we can count on?
“Should I be worried about you?”
“Now you want to worry about me, Mom?
Now?” I say, grabbing the remote and flicking the news off. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Shade, you’re so angry lately. You have to talk to me.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m angry that my friend died. I’m angry that I don’t know who my real friends are. I’m angry that I even joined this cheer team. And I hate freshmen.”
I walk out of her room and slam my door.
* * *
■ ■ ■
This is all everyone wants to talk about at practice on Monday, the video and the news coverage.
“My mother is considering suing for defamation,” Gretchen says, hysterical. “This is something a college can see and then decide that I’m too controversial.”
“You seem more upset about the video than you do about Chloe actually being dead, Gretch,” Chloe Schmidt says. “What’s that about?”
Gretchen, the nicest pastry cupcake, barrels over to Chloe Schmidt, rasping, points to her. “You shut your mouth.”
“Maybe Gretchen has something to hide?” Chloe Schmidt says, needling her.
Gretchen knocks shoulder to shoulder with Chloe Schmidt as she passes her.
Every one of us, watching each other now. Our minds not in the right place.
Mostly we have to be guarded around Chloe Schmidt. She’s out for blood.
Coach strolls between us during our push-ups.
“Starve your distractions,” she says, her favorite saying. “Feed your focus.”
My hands on my bases’ shoulders just about to go into the full up. Chloe Schmidt turns to me and says, ever so sweetly, “You’re awfully quiet, Shade. Don’t you have something to contribute to the conversation from before? I’m sure you have so many thoughts about it.”
They lift me up and I spin, not quite stable, my hands everywhere.
Chloe and Pri cradle me under each foot, Sasha’s hands wrap around my ankles. As I sway, Chloe Schmidt digs her nails down into the front meshy part of my cheer shoe. I wince and buckle.
“Ankles together, Shade!” Coach yells, and Chloe releases her grip, getting me back up straight.
“What the hell was that?” I say to her as they bring me down.
“What was what?”
“My toes,” I say, “you dug your nails into my toes.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says, her teeth gritted, her fake concern, “but I don’t want you to fall on top of me and break my neck.”
“Composure, girls. Composure.” Coach goes over it again, intense, Chloe Clarke and I standing side by side. “Spinning is easy, but your legs have to be tightly together. Squeeze your hips forward.” She roughly adjusts my hips so my pelvis juts ahead. “Squeeze your butt cheeks tight.”
“Like you can hold a pencil in there,” Clarke whispers to me.
“The flyer is only one part of this,” Coach says, then asks me to take my shoe off. She holds the white cheer shoe at eye level with Keke, who is Chloe Clarke’s main base, and Chloe Schmidt. “The main base is responsible for the direction of the stunt. Do you understand me?” But she’s looking directly at Chloe Schmidt.
“Even if my flyer is wobbling?” Schmidt asks. “It’s still my fault?”
I could strangle her.
“Yes, even if your flyer is wobbling,” she says. “The hardest job in the full up is on the main base.”
Because the main base can’t let go. She says it twice.
“This is about trust, girls,” Coach says. “I know it’s a big ask right now. I know we’re all feeling vulnerable.”
“See, Shade, you just have to trust me,” Chloe says, singsongy, as we wrap up. “I know you have trust issues. I know that must be hard for you.”
I just want to slap her for everything. For talking to me that way, for clawing my toes, for accusing Gretchen earlier in the locker room. What makes her think she can act like this to me? To Gretchen? To any of us? But I let her walk away. And the rage inside of her.
* * *
■ ■ ■
After practice I’ve got a slew of texts from Jadis. She saw the news program too, the article in the local paper. All the media coverage. I tell her about the TikTok, and she’s quiet.
I’m sorry for saying this, she texts, but I’m glad someone else is getting heat.
There’s a lull, no word from Jadis—the beast must be resting—until I get incoming rapid-fire texts around eleven o’clock at night. She can’t sleep. She hasn’t slept over in almost a week. Please, Shade, she begs me. Emma’s mother shut her phone off for the night. Please, Shade. She needs someone to cuddle with her. She needs me the way it was. She got into a fight with Emma and she feels sad.
I’m not used to being second fiddle. I say yes.
When she gets to my house, the first thing she notices is the gym mat on the floor with the pillows.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s a tumbling stunt I’m working on for cheer.”
“Ah, cheer, the great equalizer. The one thing that brought us all together. The cheerleaders, the non-cheerleaders, the freshman conspiracy theorists.”
“I thought you were coming over here to sleep,” I snap. “Not to give me a hard time.”
“We sound like an old married couple. I play the snarky wife and you play the cranky husband.”
“That’s because we are.” I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Later in bed, she mentions what she’s most worried about, which is the toxicology report. What it’ll mean when it comes out. That the police are going to talk to us. They’re going to look at the security cameras. How they’re going to arrest her for murder. How she’s going to get thrown in jail.
“Which is why this source is so important,” I say.
“Oh, enough about the source,” she says, and she smacks the blanket.
“Would it be someone I know? Someone like Eddie?”
“Eddie has nothing to do with this.”
“Because if we just knew where you got it, we could prove the Molly wasn’t what caused it.”
She turns over and is so quiet for a while. And then so am I.
“What are you thinking, Shade?”
“When I close my eyes, I see her,” I say. “I see her everywhere.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
It’s about one thirty in the morning, and Jadis is asleep. Her light snore used to be something I loved. Now I hate it. Now it wakes me up.
My eyes drift shut, and Chloe Orbach’s in front of me, her body somehow intertwined with Jadis’s. The two of them, a vape cloud, whirling around each other.
And then my phone flashes, the light shining in my eye. It’s a text from Chloe Schmidt.
The truth shall set you free
Chapter
25
I text Emma in the morning asking her to meet me in the gym. I figure it’s the one place Jadis would never see us. I ask her not to say anything.
We head to the top of the bleachers, the echo as we walk up the wooden planks. The gym so huge with no one in it. We sit at the top, the back row, and lean against the cold wall.
“So this is like your turf,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve pounded the mats here hard this year.”
I think about all of the pep rallies I’ve dragged Jadis to. The basketball games to watch cheerleaders at halftime. How we’d sit up here, all the way at the top, and she’d file her nails while I’d be completely engaged in what was happening down on the floor. She never complained much about it. She would sit next to me taking selfies, doing TikToks, playing the part of a bored friend watching cheer.
And then there’s the other memory of this place. The place Chloe Orbach died.
The memories, overtaking me.
&nbs
p; “Did you hear what I said?” Emma says.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“I used to think that you and Jadis were so different. I didn’t understand how the two of you could even be friends,” she says.
“Really? I always feel like Jadis and I are exactly alike.” But I haven’t felt like that for a long time.
“I don’t know. You’re so quiet and she’s so loud. You seemed more introverted and she was kind of bouncing all over the place, friends with so many different people. Hanging out with that muscle-necked Dave Sozo, which, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand that friendship.”
“It’s about the Ping-Pong,” I say, smiling. “The Sylvia Plath too.”
“Right,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Plath and Ping-Pong. I was at his house twice last week.”
Emma has both her parents living with her. She has a stable home life. She doesn’t know what it means to want to escape all that loneliness. To always want to be somewhere else to fill up that void. Emma doesn’t know what it’s like to have a father who’s disappeared and a mother who is hardly present and doesn’t want to be present, like Jadis’s mother. This is what Jadis and I have always bonded over. That we’re each other’s families.
“Is your mom gone all the time too, like her mom?” Emma says.
“No, she’s not like Jadis’s mom.”
I don’t even try to explain my mother and her art salons and forest baths to Emma or how my mother’s motto is “I deserve to have my own life.”
Jadis was my only constant.
“Do you hate your mom like Jadis hates her mother?”
The question makes me uncomfortable, and I want to change the subject. I don’t hate my mother. I just wish she was someone else. I wish I was her priority.
I’ve seen the pictures on Instagram of Emma and her blonde mother, the two of them with their long straight hair vacationing in Belgium, skiing in the Alps or some other snowy mountain in Europe. She wouldn’t understand what Jadis and I have been through. Anyway, there’s a reason I asked her here.
The Falling Girls Page 15