The Falling Girls

by Hayley Krischer

  “Did Jadis say anything to you leading up to that night?”

  She seems stunned that I’m asking her this. “I mean . . . I don’t know . . . like what?”

  “Anything, Emma. Did she say anything to you?”

  A janitor swings open the gym doors, the sound of it bouncing across the rafters and the cement walls. He looks up at us, and we say nothing. Then he walks back out.

  “She said she was getting Molly.”

  “So you knew about the Molly then?” I say, annoyed.

  This is one more thing that Jadis hasn’t told me: that Emma knows. That it’s not just a secret between me, Jadis, Chloe, and Chloe. It’s a secret that includes Emma.

  “I think she was really affected by what happened to Chloe Orbach,” Emma says. “More than I realized.”

  “Like, what do you mean?”

  She makes me promise not to say anything to Jadis. That she feels it would betray their trust. Isn’t it already broken by meeting me here in the gym?

  She tells me something that happened over the weekend. It was her sister’s twenty-first birthday, and her parents had a whole party with a DJ, a friend from Brooklyn. Drinks. A caterer. Emma was hanging out with this DJ friend who she’s known forever, and I can see where this story is going.

  “A girl?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but she’s a friend. She was spinning and I was just standing next to her dancing. I even called Jadis over to dance with me. But she wouldn’t. It isn’t like her to be so insecure.” Emma winces uncomfortably, like the words shouldn’t even come out of her mouth. “She got really out of control.”

  Emma tells me that Jadis got drunk and started screaming nonsensical things. That Emma wasn’t paying enough attention to her. That she didn’t love her. That I didn’t love her anymore. That no one loved her.

  “That I didn’t love her?” My skin shivers hearing this. This must have been why Jadis was so desperate to sleep over last night. I think of everything that I’ve been doing since the night of the dance, not going to the police, not telling them what Chloe Orbach took, how I’ve been protecting her. How I’ve been racking my brain to fill those blank spots about that night so that I can prove to Chloe and Chloe that the Molly wasn’t the reason Chloe Orbach died. That Jadis had nothing to do with it.

  Because she didn’t. Right?

  How does she not see that?

  “That’s what she said,” Emma says, and shrugs. “You know how dramatic she can be. Especially when it comes to you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, come on, Shade. I don’t want to say that Jadis is obsessed with you because that wouldn’t be the right word, but how about . . . territorial. She always tells me that you guys are the same person.”

  I remember the day we first started saying that. It was last year. Jadis had slept over for a week, the longest she had holed up in my house. She didn’t want to go home because Eddie was in Colorado and her mother was, of course, traveling.

  My mother had a house full of people and they just finished some crappy reading from a friend’s poetry chapbook. Jadis and I tried to stay out of their way, but how could you ignore the empty bottles of red wine and the adults lounging all over the living room floor when you were trying to just get some leftover pizza from the kitchen?

  Then we walked in on some random couple having sex in my bathroom and I screamed at my mom in front of all her friends. Someone muttered that I was a brat and my mother told me to go to my room. That I was too uptight.

  We went to the movies instead. The one about the best friends. “We’re the same person, but with different hair.”

  I was more disgusted than Jadis. It was my mom and her careless friends, so flagrant. Jadis was more intrigued. We made a plan to run away. Like, really run away. We searched prices of train tickets and called her cousin out in Montauk, which seemed the farthest point away from where we were, stuck in my house with messy adults.

  And I was ready to go, to get away from there, to piss my mother off and maybe scare her. Hide in some beach shack in Montauk and spend my days hiking the cold dunes, staring out into the Atlantic Ocean.

  But I knew Jadis wouldn’t go. Jadis, for all of her wild-child exterior, liked everything to stay the same. We stared at our full backpacks, and I told her I knew she wouldn’t go through with it. That she would get homesick. And she crumpled to the floor crying and told me that it wasn’t just that I knew her like the back of my hand, but that I was her hand.

  “Then why can’t you run away with me?” I said. “If it’s good for me, wouldn’t it be good for you too?”

  “You always figure things out, Shade. You always have answers and solutions. We’ll get there and you’ll have studied the map, you’ll do something practical like get a job at a coffee shop. You’ll find a way to do school remote. You’ll call your mom every night even though you say you hate her. I just walk behind you, clueless. Waiting for you to tell me everything’s okay.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I’m the one who follows you everywhere. I’m your shadow.”

  “You would think that about yourself, wouldn’t you?” she said.

  We didn’t go to Montauk.

  Emma gets up from the bleachers, that squeal of the seats as she shifts on her feet. She squints, a sharp stare. She tells me she has to get to class.

  “Did she say anything to you, Emma? About her plan to get the Molly? Where she got it from?” I say. “Did you know that she gave us each different ones with special stamps?”

  She shakes her head. Tells me that Jadis didn’t get into any details with her. “She wanted to make things right, that’s all I know,” she says. “Still, I find the whole thing so weird. How you and Jadis were holed up in the bathroom with the Three Chloes.”

  She’s looking at me like this is a question I’m supposed to answer. Not a statement.

  “Why would it be weird?” I say. “I cheer with them. I cheered with Chloe Orbach. And Jadis was with me.”

  “Because Jadis knows a lot of people, but not any cheerleaders.”

  “Well, I’m a cheerleader,” I say, reminding her.

  “Yeah, you are,” she says, as if it takes her breath away. “You really are, aren’t you?”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Later in the day, after sixth period, I see Chloe and Chloe by a locker, hands flailing all over the place. I want to turn the other way to avoid them, especially Chloe Schmidt. But then I hear Chloe Clarke’s voice. She’s screeching.

  “Fuck off, Chloe,” she’s saying. “You’re going to hell.”

  I turn around like everyone else in the hallway does, because anytime there’s a loud argument you can’t help but look. Any kind of distraction from our banal school day is usually welcome, and I know it sounds terrible to be excited for something like this, to watch people fall apart, but this time it’s different. Because it’s Chloe and Chloe, they’re a spectacle. If they make a scene, then it reminds people of that freshman conspiracy theory, the one we’re all named in. Their very public fight will remind people we were all together that night.

  I hear her again, telling Chloe Schmidt, You’re going to hell. This is very different from Go to hell, and it makes me pause.

  Go to hell is a demand. You’re going to hell is a prediction.

  Then someone starts chanting, “Fight, fight, fight,” and that’s when my whole body turns into shivers, and I want to escape, be far away from this violent tornado sucking everything up in its path. I scamper down a different corridor by the media room and sink to the floor until I can get my breath again.

  Chapter

  26

  Jadis begs me to come over for a swim on Thursday night. Though I’m exhausted, used up from the week, I force myself to go to see if she says anything about what happened at the homecoming dance.

 
When I’m not thinking about Chloe, I imagine Jadis plotting revenge, giddy with the power of tiny stamped tablets.

  She’s out back by the pool, wrapped up in a blanket next to the firepit, so snuggly and relaxed. The steam from the pool rises in the air. Her hair is a different color again. Lavender, because it represents tranquility. Because she needs peace, she says.

  “So what’s new at cheer?”

  “Like you care,” I snipe.

  “That’s the thing, I care more than you know,” she says, the blanket unfurling around her. “So tell me. I’m legit curious.”

  “Fine,” I say. “New stunts. Working on a full up and a standing full.”

  “Full around. Full down. Fall down. Standing full. Full full. Full of shit,” she says, her eyes darting right into me.

  Then there’s silence between us, the two of us staring at each other. Her, twisting her hair.

  “What’s your problem tonight?” I ask.

  “There aren’t any problems,” she says, then gets up and grabs some sticks to toss in the fire, the embers creeping into the darkness. She rips a vape cloud so long and so heavy that it looks like she’s a scorching dragon.

  She throws her blanket down to the ground. Takes off her big New Order T-shirt, just a bra and underwear underneath, and jumps in the pool. She comes up to the surface, her lavender hair peeping out.

  “Before cheer, do you think we were codependent?” she asks me. “That’s what Emma says.”

  “I didn’t know Emma had opinions about our friendship,” I say, and then a bolt of panic hits me, remembering what Emma told me. “Did you tell Emma anything about that night?”

  “We all have to have someone to tell our secrets to, Shade,” she says. “You have the cheerleaders. Well, one less now.”

  She doesn’t even blink.

  The hatred rolls off her so easily.

  “That’s fucking morbid, Jadis. So crude.”

  “To answer your question. No. Of course I didn’t tell Emma,” she says.

  Lie. I know it’s a lie because Emma already told me she knew.

  “Come on, let’s stop badgering each other. Come in already.”

  I strip down to my bra and underwear and melt into the pool, trying to remember why I’m here. It’s to ask her about that night.

  Steam rises above the surface, hovering through the pool lights. My thighs sink in the thickness of the water. All of it feels so good, over my limbs, my shoulders. I tumble in the deep end and press my head underwater, listening to it blub blub blub around my ears, until I hear Jadis singing that Lana Del Rey song.

  “All I wanna do is get high by the beach, get high by the beach, get high . . .” The same words over and over. “We . . . won’t . . . survive.”

  I swing my head up. Water dripping over my eyes and mouth. My heart almost stopping. The last time I heard this song, Chloe Orbach was singing it at the abandoned tracks.

  “What?” she says. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Is it that simple? Maybe I have, I want to tell her. Maybe she and Chloe are the same person and the joke’s on me. Chloe. Jadis. It’s like they’ve fit inside some kind of Russian doll where you just keep opening a new doll head and you get a clone of the next one. A Chloe. Or a Jadis. Over and over and always.

  I dive down deep into the pool until my ears pop. That song repeating itself. Chloe Orbach haunting me everywhere.

  I come up for air, breathing heavily, to see Eddie and two of his friends, Drew Lieber and Luke Kaplan, barrel through the gate. I would have been embarrassed any other time for these guys, or any guys, to see me in my bra and underwear, but I’ve been running around in a sports bra and booty shorts for the past two months, so it doesn’t even faze me. Plus, I’m glad they’re here to ease the tension between me and Jadis.

  Eddie, Drew, and Lucas get down to their boxers and cannonball into the pool, splashing each other, then splashing us. It’s so light and silly and fun, all that water in my face so that I forget everything, at war with the boys and laughing so hard that my chest is heaving.

  “Come on, Shade. Show us some moves,” Jadis says, that glow in her eyes. “Let’s see some of those flips.”

  I’m not sure if she’s doing this for me or for her own entertainment, but when the guys start chanting, Shade, Shade, Shade, I swim over to the ladder and climb up on the diving board. Lightly bounce up and down. Hands flat by my side. Clean.

  I think of Chloe Orbach. What she would say. Clean! So I yell it out. “Clean!” I stampede down to the edge, take a deep bounce, flip, then straighten out my whole body, toes pointed as I touch the water, pike down. I hear them screaming even below. My body rushes down to the bottom of the pool, their muffled cheers above, and I push off like Supergirl, rocketing up to the surface, all of my energy recharged again.

  My face emerging from the water. “Watch her fly!” Jadis screams.

  “Backflip!” Eddie says. And then the four of them are cheering, but a backflip is for babies. A backflip is for amateurs. I can do my standing full here because landing isn’t an issue. Two back handsprings and the twist, then right into the water. It all makes so much sense. So easy. I could do it in my sleep.

  I start up between the lounge chairs, my wet feet flopping on the concrete. The cold air. I know my white underwear’s see-through, my nipples push through my nude bra. They can all see it now, me on display. For the first time, really. And I know they’re staring at me and somehow, I don’t care. I have purpose. This is what I do. This is when I feel most like myself. My feet firm to the ground. I tingle from it. I drink it in.

  I smack my hands against my thighs and take off, my body backflipping, my hands bouncing off the damp concrete, all of the energy going to that last twist, and I fly up and round my hips, twisting over, then straight down into the pool, their voices like a blur until I’m submerged in the water again, everything floating around me, and I stay down there for a second, my skin sparkling in the glow of the underwater pool light.

  I propel up, above the fog, a deep breath, the water gushing over my face. I did it. I did that beast of a double back handspring full.

  The guys are clapping, whistling and Jadis is right there on the side, her tiny little black bra and her black lace undies, capturing the whole thing on her phone.

  I climb out of the pool and plow toward her. “What are you doing?” I say, snatching at the phone. She won’t let me have it. She holds it above her head.

  “Oh my god, relax, Shade. It’s just a video.”

  “I don’t want you posting that. Do you understand me?” I walk closer to her again, swiping at the phone.

  “Why not? You look amazing.” she says, playing it, trying to show it to me. And I get a glance of myself, my body lit up by the glow of the pool light. “It’s like an independent film from the nineties. We could write a whole book about this video. It’s brilliant.”

  I see it in such a different way than her. I see it as a chaotic mess. Messy girls swimming. My nipples charging through my bra. The boys and their drooling faces, the way they clamor for a peek of anything.

  Then I think about that mousy freshman’s crime TikTok from last week with my face plastered in her video as one of the suspects.

  “You have to delete it,” I say. “Do you understand me?”

  She stops. Her whole face changes. She shoves the phone under her towel.

  “Please tell me what could possibly be wrong with this video? Is it because you’re a cheerleader and cheerleaders don’t do these things? And oooh, cheerleaders don’t swim in their bra and panties with a bunch of boys in a pool? We already know that the girls on that team are not as sweet as they say. They do psychedelics at the homecoming dance, for fuck’s sake.”

  She shouldn’t be so cavalier. This isn’t something I want my cheer team to see. Especially not now, just a few week
s after we buried the team captain. After we buried my friend.

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to look like I’m—”

  “What? Like you’re having fun? Even though she’s dead?”

  She says dead as if she takes pleasure in it. Like it rolls off her tongue.

  “My friend just died,” I say. “Do you not understand this?”

  Jadis’s whole face collapses. “I guess I didn’t want to believe that.”

  “Believe what?”

  “That you were actually friends with her. You being a cheerleader? Sure. I could see you as a cheerleader. You could fake it, but hardly. You could work your ass off to do those moves or those stunts, whatever you call them. But to be friends with them. To call Chloe Orbach your friend?” Her lower lip quivering. Her eyes tearing up. “You said nothing would be different, but everything is different.”

  “That’s what this is about? The cheerleading?”

  “Yes, of course it’s the cheerleading,” she says, exasperated. “I should just put this video out into the world so that you can remember who you are. That you’re Shade fucking Meyer who swims with her best friend in October. Who dances in her bra and underwear. Who doesn’t give a shit about anything or anyone!”

  In eighth grade we made a pact that we’d never leave each other alone. The two of us, sitting in my bed, white sheets wrapped around us. No matter who we loved, no matter who we committed to, we’d always be there for each other first.

  I wrote her a letter last year: Stay forever in my heart and I will hear you in a deep forest. I’ll hear you from the corners of the earth. I’ll hear you when you think of me.

  She wrapped up that letter and sewed a pocket for it and tucked it under her pillow. Said that she’d sleep with it every night.

  I sit down on the lounge chair and look up at her. “What was your intention that night at the dance?” I say.

  “My intention was to make nice with your friends, as you call them.”